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Vine St Reconstruction and Widening Project
Considerations When Answering Survey:
One of the outcomes of the widening of Vine St, as county is proposing, is that parking in front of homes is only allowedbetween the new gutter and the property. You are not allowed to park in the gutter. This creates a visual dynamic that makes the roadway look much wider than residential lane widths of 9’. Lane widths on Hwy 101 for example. are typically 11’ or 12’, what is being proposed is a roadway with gutters that appears to make Vine St. have those same freeway widths or even more — 14’ widths. That is just a visual feel of course, but it is a real perception.
Many neighbors do not wish to have the high speed drivers in our neighborhood - it is a serious problem for safety and for peace of mind. Yet, to create a roadway that appears to be as much as 56% wider is not going to slow people down - it is going to incur much faster traffic speeds.
Plus, if any of the options 2 through 4 are selected, especially options 2 and 3, much of our rural landscaping and ambience will be taken away to be replaced by paved gutters. Add to this that parking will have to be on the property side of that gutter, the roadway will appear to be wide open. Much wider than the visual widths of Leland and Stanford (those sections that have curbs - north of Palo Alto Way). The reason is Stanford and Leland allow parking next to the curb and thus reduce the travel lane width. This would not occur with Vine as parking would not narrow the road and the gutters would visually widen the road even more.
The County Survey for the Vine St project closed on Jan 27th. It was appearing that the majority of Vine St residents did not want the widening proposals County offerred. Unfortunate that County did not offer to simply repair and repave the street as it has been 50+ years that any major repair has occurred.
Assuming that the widening options were not selected, our entire neighborhood can and should ask County to include Vine Street in the Pavement Preservation Project (See Below where an email action is outlined).
Links: County Project webpage is: Reconstruction of Vine Street
County pdf of the Vine St Survey Letter
There are 4 choices that property owners can choose from:
Option 1 — keep the current road (County is doing a pavement refinish project this year, so Vine could be part of that new repair and new coating project along with the rest of our University Park neighborhood (see map)Option 2 — widen Vine street to be 24’ wide (18’ center lane with 3’ gutters)Option 3 — widen Vine street to be 28’ wide (22’ center lane with 3’ gutters)Option 4 — widen Vine street to be 22’ wide (18’ center lane with 2’ gutters)
For reference, Vine is currently a rural style road with a varying width of about 18’.
Comments and Feedback: Please use the form below for adding your comments or feedback.
ACTION NOTICE:
County Pavement Preservation Project for our neighborhood:
During the County outreach for the Vine St project, it does not appear that County explored in any detail the other County project, the Pavement Preservation Project. This other project is occurring this year in our neighborhood. County link to the webpage for this pavement project.
The county project covers much of unincorporated west Menlo Park. Below is the project map section that covers our University Park neighborhood:
It has been 50 or so years since our roads had complete surfacing work. So this pavement project is very much welcomed and appreciated; however, we need to make sure that County includes Vine Street, as it is currently excluded.
Take Action:
You can take action by clicking this link ( Please email County Administration and Public Works) to request that Vine Street be included in the Pavement Preservation Project. This will allow it to have the pavement preservation treatments being applied to all the other UnivPark and local streets in county.