54,000 cars use El Camino each day, other streets studied
By Elaine Goodman

More than 50,000 cars travel on El Camino Real in Palo Alto and Menlo Park each day, making it the most heavily traveled, non-freeway thoroughfare in the two cities and on the Stanford campus.

Sand Hill Road at the Interstate 280 interchange comes in a distant second, with 29,000 car trips a day.

Those figures are found in an environmental impact report released Friday for Stanford's long-range development plan. The plan calls for 4 million square feet of new development on the university's 4,000 acres in unincorporated Santa Clara County.

The 3-inch thick report is packed with traffic numbers and intersection diagrams.

The consultants found 54,703 cars travel on El Camino Real at Cambridge Avenue in Menlo Park as measured on April 12. The Sand Hill Road measurement, which counted 29,319 cars a day near the Interstate 280 interchange, was also taken in April.

An earlier survey in February 1999 counted 51,382 cars on El Camino at Page Mill Road in Palo Alto.

At University and Woodland avenues, just off Highway 101, 23,000 cars a day were counted in October 1998.

As reported in Saturday's Daily News, the environmental impact report says Stanford's new development could increase delays at 17 local intersections where traffic already backs up, including El Camino Real and Middle Avenue in Menlo Park; and Middlefield Road and University Avenue in Palo Alto.

Stanford officials aren't yet commenting on the report. They just got it on Friday and haven't had a chance to read it.

The report says the problems could be avoided if Stanford uses a car-trip reduction program or if steps are taken to improve the intersections, such as by making turn lanes longer. Stanford is using car-trip reduction strategies as part of its current development agreement with the county.

But the report says the county can't require Stanford to use a trip reduction program in the future. And the intersection improvements need approval from cities, so there's no guarantee traffic won't get worse.