Community Corner

Residents: Fremont Avenue Roundabout Wrong Solution

A proposed roundabout at Fremont Avenue and Fallen Leaf Lane runs into a buzzsaw of criticism in south Los Altos.

 

They came to Grant Park Community Center armed with technical reports from the Federal Highway Administration and the National Traffic Safety Administration, their ire and frustration. 

About than 100 residents came to the first public meeting in south Los Altos to question why the city was planning a roundabout at the intersection of Fremont Avenue and Fallen Leaf Lane Wednesday night. 

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The crowd was so restive, Council member Megan Satterlee, who came to see what kind of community input might emerge, addressed the audience to calm fears that the plan was not imminent and the bulldozers were not rolling in next week.

She spent a half hour answering questions from residents after the meeting ended.

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Engineers and city staff faced a skeptical crowd during a meeting to receive input on design of a roundabout device. During the intial presentation, the consulting engineer from RBF told the audience that te intersection was identified because there had been 24 accidents there, and speeding on the road was a concern.

The roundabout was a way to slow traffic down, RBF consulting engineer Frederik Venter said during the presentation.

While not common in California, roundabouts are slowly gaining a foothold, Venter said. People tend to resist roundabouts because they are new to them, he said. They were more common in the east, where they are also called rotaries or circles, and in Europe. Cities such as Santa Cruz, Truckee, La Jolla, Oceanside, Ceres and Oakland have successfully installed roundabouts, he said. The roundabout near a troublesome intersection near the Santa Cruz boardwalk seemed to be doing the trick, he added.

They played a short video that described how roundabouts served to slow traffic and regulate entry into the intersection, as cars had to yield to those already in the circle. It showed how cyclists used the circles, and how pedestrians crossed.

Except, it appeared, people were having none of it.

"I feel it's insulting to show us a movie about what a roundabout is," said resident Walt Fant bluntly.

Others asked for more data about the 24 accidents, when they occurred, what kind of accidents, how they occurred. They talked about the difficulty getting onto Fremont at rush hours. They expressed concern about removing the mature trees that line the route, how they valued the street's more rural feel as people enter Los Altos from Sunnyvale to the east. 

And they questioned whether a roundabout was the right solution.

"I grew up in New England and I've used rotaries," said Dave de Villers, deeming them efficient for managing traffic. Yet he said he wasn't convinced that the proposed roundabout was the answer for this intersection.

Reading excerpts from a technical report on roundabouts by the Federal Highway Administration, Villers cited Paragraph 3.2.2 of  instances where roundabouts were not a good solution, notably locations where there were bottlenecks.

Roundabouts, the report said, depend on unimpeded flow of traffic, and Villers pointed out the are well-known backups at rush hour, so bad that residents who live along that stretch have difficulty getting out onto Fremont Avenue. The Fremont-Fallen Leaf intersection backs up considerable behind array of signal lights, most related to the Hwy 85 freeway ramps, and controlled by another agency, in neighboring Sunnyvale. Such cases, Villers read out lout from Paragraph 3.5.1, are very difficult to solve with any traffic control.

"These are two significant flaws" in the roundabout proposal, Villers said. "You have to address this." 

Residents stood up to voice concerns about bicycle safety because it was a major bicycle route and Stevens Creek Trail was being developed nearby. Those who were frequent pedestrians were concerned about crossing Fremont Avenue.

Planning Commission member Jeannie Bruins, who represented a group of 24 other home owners who had identified concerns and possible alternatives, asked for a community workshop. And she asked for a broader examination of the traffic situation on Fremont Avenue corridor from Grant Road into the Sunnyvale.

"We owe it to the residents to do not just what the city needs, but what they need," she said.

Neal Amsden, who lives on Truman Avenue, wondered why engineers weren't prepared to answer questions like the bottleneck problem that the federal highway reports said rendered roundabouts ineffective.

"Your attitude seems to be, 'Trust us, we'll build it, and you'll like it.'"

Afterwards, Adam Porter, one of the city's civil engineers who conducted the meeting, said he thought the meeting was successful, because they indeed got feedback from the public, "which was what we intended to do." They'll next present the results at a yet-unscheduled meeting of the City Council and ask the council for direction, he said.

And two members of the crowd think the neighbors Fremont Avenue neighbors came out better armed than another recent neighborhood protest. Viviana Bardina and Jane Osborn who opposed the , were impressed by the arguments.

"Los Altans are highly intelligent, and they research," said Jane Osborn, one of the residents who gathered more than 400 signatures against the traffic signal.  


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