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A proposal by Stanford University to convert a strip of land of El Camino Park into a roadway for buses received a mixed reaction from the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission on March 26, with some members urging the university to replace the parkland that would be lost.
The plan, which Stanford and the Palo Alto city officials are looking to place on the November ballot, calls for “undedicating” about about 0.33 acres of land at the park to create a direct connection on Quarry Road for buses between the Palo Alto Transit Center and El Camino Real.
Currently, buses need to rely on University Avenue and University Circle to get to El Camino, a route that takes more time and creates congestion for other road users, project proponents say.
Leslie Lowe, Stanford’s director for transportation and environmental planning, said that buses currently take more than 1,200 daily trips on University Circle in both northbound and southbound directions. The Quarry Road link would reduce these trips by about 59%, she said, improving throughput on University Avenue and reducing emissions.
The change is expected to reduce bus trips by five to eight minutes, Lowe said. Some bus operators on the Marguerite system, which serves Stanford, would be able to take buses out of service because of the time savings.
“The bus would be able to do the route so much quicker, so they wouldn’t have to run as many buses,” Lowe said. “It’s huge savings.”
But while Stanford and the city’s Office of Transportation fully support the change, members of the parks commission had some concerns about losing parkland. Even though the roads would only take up about 0.24 acres in a largely unused portion of the 10.75-acre park, Shani Kleinhaus argued that these numbers downplay the project’s impact.
Stanford is also hoping to include a buffer zone as part of the park “undedication,” which would raise the amount of needed land to 0.33 acres. The location of the proposed road, she suggested, would also make a larger portion of the park inaccessible to visitors. The actual loss of “usable parkland” is about one acre, she said.
She argued that as part of the project, Stanford should find an acre of space elsewhere that would be dedicated as parkland to compensate for the loss.
“Even if you plant some trees and make it nice for connectivity, that is good,” Kleinhaus said. “But we’re losing parkland, which is really, really precious, and the city keeps trying to get parkland and we’re losing parkland.
“Stanford should find a place to provide parkland — one acre.”
Commissioner Jeff Greenfield also called the loss of parkland a “big deal” in Palo Alto and suggested that finding land elsewhere could make the ballot initiative more palatable to voters. While undedicating parkland is extremely rare, it’s not unprecedented. In 2013, voters undedicated 10 acres of land in the Baylands so that the city can explore the construction of a waste-to-energy facility, a project that never came to fruition. Kristen O’Kane, director of the city’s Community Services Department, said this was the city’s only park-undedication vote since 2000.
“If there are opportunities to do some sort of a swap to … effectively barter some new parkland for the parkland we’re undedicating, I think that would significantly help get this passed,” Greenfield said.
But just like the 2013 measure created a rift between Palo Alto’s environmentalists, the new proposal is raising questions over whether it’s greener to preserve parkland or improve public transit circulation. Philip Kamhi, Palo Alto’s chief transportation official, argued that the proposed transit road would bring environmental benefits because it would reduce the distance buses would have to travel.
He pushed back against suggestions that Stanford should provide parkland at another site and argued that the project would bring “an environmental benefit, a public transit benefit and a local congestion benefit.”
“With the buses doing less travel in the area, the air quality actually improves, even with existing fleets,” Kamhi said, noting that most bus operators will soon be required to go fully electric. “So this proposes a pathway with less vehicular travel, in particular for uses in this area, because they’re doing less turning movements.”
While the commission didn’t take any votes on the project, most members acknowledged the project’s benefits, including the proposed bike and pedestrian paths that would accompany the road improvements. Commission Chair Amanda Brown shared Kleinhaus’ concerns about the new road cutting off access to a larger part of the park but also touted the circulation improvements that the project would bring.
“Whether or not it’s suitable or not, it does slice right in the middle of a site, so I understand the tradeoffs,” Brown said. “It does provide more access to parkland, so that I’m all for.”
The city has until Aug. 9 to place the measure on the November ballot.
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