At the meeting on April 10, the group reviewed the Palo Alto task force's section on transportation. The group brainstormed about focus. John Fox will draft a mission statement to help the group stay focused.
The group also brainstormed potential ideas for for Menlo Park:
- Provide accessable transit information and bike route maps on the city website
- Publish the bike route maps in the Almanac.
- Highlight a citizen or business of the month, telling their stories of how they are reducing their footprint.
- Have a geographic transit/transportation lookup tool, that not only provides a map on how to get somewhere but gives all the options, bus, train, and the carbon emissions of each.
- Reduce car/truck idling. Shorten wait at pedestrian-activated stoplights, discourage drive-through services, discourage idling while running into Starbucks for coffee, etc.
- Buy local to avoid the hidden cost of freight and to help with local tax revenues
- Encourage water filtering instead of bottled water which is transported for long distances.
- Explore permeable asphalt as a material for future road and parking lot replacement. (We noted the parking lot in downtown from this material)
- Tire pressure checking. Work with churches, schools, clubs doing car washes, businesses to routinely check tire pressure for parents, customers, etc. John Fox noted that we could save 2% of our gas consumption by having properly inflated tires.
- The Menlo Park train station has a bike storage locker that is controlled by the Joint Powers Board. It apparently has not been accessible for many years. As Palo Alto has instituted a huge bike storage area, the suggestion was to turn over the Menlo Park bike area to Palo Alto to run for a small fee.
- Work with schools for better transit/transportation accommodations and for educating young people. John had many more suggestions on this topic that we will explore further.
Attendees: Charlie Bourne, Jim Calhoun, Tom Forrest, John Fox, Elizabeth Lasensky
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