From: Tim Mather
To: City Council
Cc: Michelle Ohye; Aaron Miller
Subject: May 24th City Council Meeting
Date: Friday, May 20, 2022 7:23:15 PM
Attachments: Milk Pail Presentation.pdf
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Hi,
Three neighbors, all residents of Mountain View, request permission to speak about agenda item #5 during the May 24th City Council meeting. Specifically, we want to give the attached presentation to the City Council about high density developments in the San Antonio area (PR-40). We request a single nine (9) minute speaking segment (3 minutes per speaker) for a seamless, coherent presentation. Thank you. _______________________________________________________ Tim Mather
Mountain View, CA (Silicon Valley)
U.S.A.
- I stand with Ukraine! Cлава Yкраїні
Mountain View´s Overwhelmed,
Failing Infrastructure
And residents´ declining quality of life
Tim Mather, Aaron Miller, Michelle Ohye (neighbors)
All three are Mountain View residents for > 20 years
● San Antonio Road
● Telecommunications (MNOs - mobile network operators)
● Wi-Fi
What infrastructure is overwhelmed, failing?
2 San Antonio Road - daily; this is 10:40 AM
3 Exif data:
Camera
Apple iPhone 12 Pro
GPS Position
37.414903 degrees N, 122.103858 degrees W
Date of Creation
2022:04:12 10:39:54
Resolution
2016x1512
Let's look at this 1.6 mile section of San Antonio Road ● East Charleston Road to
El Camino Real
● Important because this is
how many residents in
this part of the city (and
parts of Los Altos) get to /
from Highway 101
● Even at the outset of the
pandemic, the road was
overwhelmed
PA
MV
4 No traffic analysis for San Antonio Road
● What coordination has the City of Mountain View done with the City of Palo Alto on this traffic problem?
● City of Mountain View´s P-40 (San Antonio) Precise Plan does not contain a traffic analysis for San Antonio Road; it contains only a description of the current transportation infrastructure
● Far more attention has been paid to parking analysis than traffic analysis to get to that parking
● Addendum to the San Antonio Precise Plan EIR for Precise Plan Amendments, dated February 2022, acknowledges that the ¨...traffic volumes at affected intersections [on San Antonio Road, will not increase] beyond 44,000 vehicles per hour;¨ [Emphasis added; page #57] - that is an 5x peak traffic on Highway 85, not San Antonio Road
5 And yet, magically…
● That same report states on page #35 that:
● ¨The project proposes the following Transportation Demand Management (TDM) measures and strategies, which are anticipated to reduce peak-hour traffic by approximately 30 percent. [Emphasis added.] These measures include, but are not limited to:
○ Providing secure, transit-oriented building entrances ○ Enhancing transit stops, pedestrian crossings, and bicycle network through incorporation of shuttle stops and passenger loading zones, and supporting new bike signage, sharrows, and lanes
○ Constructing secure bicycle parking
○ Providing an onsite bicycle maintenance and repair station ○ Implementing a Bicycle Share program;....¨
6 And, the traffic problem is only going to get much worse ● San Antonio Village Center Phase I: 330 apartment units ● San Antonio Village Center Phase II (Hyatt Centric): 167 hotel rooms ● 458 San Antonio Road (The Dean): 7 stories with 583 apartment units ● 2580 and 2590 California Street / 201 San Antonio Circle (Landsby):
mixed-use development with 632 residential units and 20,000 square feet of commercial space with below-grade parking (partially completed) ● 744 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto (AC Hotel by Marriott): 144 guest rooms ● 750 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto (Hotel Citrine): 150 guest rooms ● 334 San Antonio Road (currently a Valero gas station): 5-story, mixed-use building with 62 condominium units and 2,003 square feet of ground floor retail with underground parking (not yet approved)
7 Summarizing:
● An increase of 2,068 ´residential´ units (i.e., apartments, condominiums, and hotel rooms) - directly along San Antonio Road in < ten (10) years, not even ´nearby´
● These are all new, additional ´residential´ units; none of these developments have replaced existing residential housing ● This is just from East Charleston Road to El Camino Real - a mere 1.6 miles
● Plenty of (easy) parking discussions; few (hard) discussions about vehicles getting to and from that parking
Sources: Planning Division Development Update, February 2022; Mountain View Voice 8 San Antonio Road traffic offset by CalTrain ridership? ● Several developments are proclaiming themselves close to CalTrain as an offset to increasing traffic
○ ¨It is located within easy walking distance of the San Antonio station¨ (Landsby) ○ ¨Walk to San Antonio Caltrain Station¨ (The Villages Residences @ San Antonio Center) ● Even though San Antonio (CalTrain) station is a limited station (i.e., no Baby Bullet service), it is the 17th busiest station already (out of 31 total stations) ● #233 train leaving San Antonio station northbound is already one of the fullest trains, running over capacity @ 104%
● How much more passenger traffic are trains to / from San Antonio station expected to absorb?
Source: Caltrain 2019 Annual Passenger Count Key Findings (latest available) 9 PG&E´s capacity planning is completely unacceptable
Outage Date: # of Customers
Impacted
Outage Date: # of Customers
Impacted
May 20th, 2020 September 18th, 2021 Planned; 5.5 hours
August 27th, 2020 December 13th, 2021 2,227
January 19th, 2021 December 14th, 2021 1,771
March 24th, 2021 8,213 December 20, 2021 2,213
April 9th, 2021 March 27, 2022 2,223
June 3rd, 2021 2,213 April 11, 2022 4,851
July 12, 2021 2,218 May 7th, 2022
Fourteen (14) outages in the last two (2) years, lasting from minutes to several hours ¨Customers¨ = households or businesses, not individuals. Source: PG&E voicemail messages 10 Impact of PG&E´s unacceptable capacity planning
11 ● Significant negative impact on remote / home workers ● PG&E´s lack of capacity planning also has a direct negative impact on the local EV charging infrastructure (e.g., waiting for 4+ years @ Crossings Condominiums)
● What is the City´s liaison to PG&E doing about these local capacity issues? 5G Telecommunications - no public access high band
● Check the MNOs (mobile network operators) own coverage maps ○ AT&T - midband only
○ T-Mobile - low band only
○ Verizon - midband only, with the exception of the Waymo campus (100 Mayfield Avenue, adjacent to San Antonio Road), which has high band for its own use ● The result: dropped calls, calls that never complete dialing, voicemail messages that arrive hours after being sent
● Certainly understand that this is not directly under control of the City; however, the City should be pressuring the MNOs to increase capacity along the San Antonio Road corridor; it's about the City working to improve residents´ quality of life
12 Wi-Fi
● Wi-Fi density is so high in newer
housing developments, that latency
often makes the networks unusable
● Not a City responsibility. However,
the City should be running a public
service campaign to educate and
encourage residents to upgrade to
Wi-Fi 6 (specifically engineered for
dense environments)
● It's about the City working to
improve residents´ quality of life
13 How the City evaluates development projects
14 As Rebecca Shapiro, Deputy Zoning Administrator for the City of Mountain View, stated during the last EPC call, ¨each development plan is reviewed individually¨. That's exactly the problem! The City looks at these developments through a soda straw. The City is utterly failing to to appreciate the cumulative impact of all of these projects together. R4 + R4 + R4 = too much development, and too much density for the present infrastructure to handle.
Change your methodology - now
● It's about the cumulative impact
● R4 + R4 + R4 + more = too much
Source: Google Earth; photo taken on September 5th,
2020
15 In Summary
● As of 2014, ZIP code 94040 had a population of 34K, with a density of 9,205.41 inhabitants / square mile; detailed 2020 census data is not yet available (May, June). There is no substantive discussion about density and its impact on the San Antonio Road corridor in either PR-40 nor it´s addendum ○ 94040 population density is already ½ that of SOMA (San Francisco) ○ R4 + R4 + R4 = too much
● Infrastructure in the San Antonio Road corridor is overwhelmed, and is only going to get significantly worse under current City planning ● Residents´ quality of life is deteriorating
● The City of Mountain View is failing to properly serve its residents 16 Call to Action
● Why are so many of these high density projects being dumped on the San Antonio neighborhood?
● Milk Pail development (365 - 405 San Antonio Road / 2585 - 2595 California Street): turn it into open space instead
○ Why is the City Council even considering the exemptions requested by the developer? ● Valero gas station development (334 San Antonio Road): leave the gas station as is, for now
● Both projects need to be rejected; current infrastructure, and projected improvements, cannot and will not handle these additional developments 17