Facebook Headquarters Will Force Approval of Bayside Development

I would imagine that the opponents of bayside development on the midpeninsula were passing bricks through their lower intestinal track when the news came out that the Facebook facility in Menlo Park is going to dump close to 10,000 commuters onto 101 in a couple of years.

Facebook is planning on moving their headquarters into those buildings and several others across the street in a former Tyco complex that will be three times the number of workers that Sun had there.  There is virtually no public transit available which means those workers will be driving in and out every day.  

Facebook is pushing Menlo Park to lift the current cap of 3600 workers and 7,000 trips to 15,000 trips.  All of this traffic will be spewed out to University Avenue, Willow Road and good old Marsh Road.  

Anyone remember all the screaming about how many cars will be put on the road 30 years from when the Saltworks development is finished?  Well we are gonna get all of that before the Saltworks plan gets out of the planning commission.

So what's the answer?  Well, we need to expand public transit to the bay side area to get people out of their cars.  We need to have housing developments to hold about 30,000 more people between Menlo Park and Redwood City.  We need to build levees to protect those homes and industries that will be flooded by sea level rise.  We need to restore the wetlands in those areas so our levees don't need to be 6 feet tall.  And we need a whole lot of property tax revenue to pay for it all.

And you have the Menlo Park City Council, those wonderful anti-development politicians, to thank for it all.