The following are letters written into the editor of The Pilot for the July 2010 issue. Letters can cover a wide range of topic and often are concerning local issues discussed in previous issues of the paper. 

 Dear Editor,

A 3500 pound car, your SUV is about 4000 pounds, accelerating from 0-35 mph

In half a block uses about .025 gallons of gas. The next .025 gallons of gas will carry that same car about half a mile at a steady 35 mph. It costs much more to accelerate than it does to keep a car rolling. The second part of this is the amount of pollution that is introduced to the air by these frequent starts is significant.

Considering the number of stop signs on RWS Parkway and Marine Pkwy and the number of cars traveling in and out of RWS, the wasted gas and pollution created by the 0-35 accelerations is staggering.

There are, as I see it, 2 solutions:

1- Replace the stop signs with signal lights sequenced to, let’s say, 30 mph. Woodside Rd west of El Camino has 2 traffic lanes in each direction, planted median with dedicated lift turn lanes, as do our main arteries. The sequenced signals work there. And closer to home, El Camino is set up that way. Imagine, once you start moving on Marine Pkwy or RWS Pkwy and not having to stop until you come upon the blinking ”METOR ON” sign at the freeway entrance. Don’t get me started on this “METOR ON” nonsense, that is another whole talk show. I’ll bet we could get the feds to pay for the signal lights as part of some foscil fuel saving, clean air program.

2- San Antonio Road west of El Camino in Los Altos is the same 2 lane each way , planted median with dedicated left turn lanes. There is a school that has a signal light at the intersection and 2 miles down the road there is a library with a signal light at that intersection. In between, no traffic controls. This works there because the traffic gets staged at the lights, so between the 2 lights there is ample time for cross traffic to move.

Both of these conditions are way better than the “STOP SIGN” at every intersection we are dealing with on RWS and Marine Pkwy.

RSCA, you have been an effective advocate for positive change and RWS is a better place to live as a result. Come on, get behind it and convince Redwood City we need change on our main arteries.

— Redwood Shores Resident

 I’ve lived in redwood shores for 15yrs; I live in a house that faces Shell Pkwy and am so appreciative and grateful for how the Shores community is run. It is an oasis, to me, and one I would like to support and protect.

On that note, I wanted to share with you a story and hope that people become more compassionate and attentive as a result; Last week, it may have been Wed, I was home at 3pm. 3 young boys, maybe 12 or so in age, with backpacks were walking from Marine world down Shell toward Redwood Shores Pkwy. As I went into my yard to begin to do some gardening, I saw one of the boys leaning over my back fence, laughing, as he backed away. I walked over to where he had seemingly dropped something into my yard and thought it was a stone. I thought ‘how odd’ but okay; and then went around to see if I could speak with him, but they’d walked away quickly.

I went back into my yard and the ‘stone’ was gone; It wasn’t a stone but a young baby gossling. It was terrified and as I spoke to it, it cowered in the corner and became a ‘stone’ again; I left my yard so as not to scare it.

My first thought was that it’s mom and siblings were just the other side of the fence on the grass; and it could hear her but couldn’t find her as my walls are too high. I was filled with two emotions. One being annoyance and dismay at what was a very very cruel thing for these young boys to do; If I knew their parents, I would suggest they seek counseling as this seems cruel, not childlike innocent behavior. I was disappointed in man’s inhumanity to other sentient beings so to speak.
 
The second feeling was a bit of panic as to how to get the young gossling back to its mom before they left. I called a friend who was a police woman in her past and, as I had anticipated, she took control, picked it up safely, and we walked around to the back to find its family.

The mom bleeted a few times, and we placed the gossling down, and it waddled very very quickly back over to its family; and I was happy. 🙂

I was so pleased this had a happy ending but concerned. My neighbors to my left have two very large dogs and I was thankful the young boys chose to drop the gossling into my yard that was ‘safe’. If it had been next door, I do not want to describe the likely outcome.

I don’t know how you wish to communicate this, or even if you wish to do so, but I had to share it. I was hoping that an article referencing something of my above story, coupled with the firm communication that this is dangerous and really cruel act, be shared. Our wildlife here coexists with us as best we can accomodate; and it is so much more gratifying to know that children may rescue animals rather than put them in harms way.

I hope and pray our Redwood Shores community continues to be a place where people wish to come to enjoy the wildlife; where we can look and smile at how we can observe nature’s cycle as we live in the middle of Silicon Valley.

— Eilish McCaffrey

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination.”
~John Keats