An Open Letter to Stanford University

The Committee for Dish Access speaks for friends, alumni, donors, former and current faculty and staff and other local supporters of Stanford University. We do not live on campus, but we do love and appreciate the university and all it brings to our area.

In particular, we love the Dish. So do lots of others, witnessed by 750,000 entries through the Dish gates annually.

The popularity of the Dish trails can be attributed to an increasingly urban environment surrounding Stanford, intense residential development, awareness of the health benefits of exercise, desire for access to nature, women’s safety concerns, the convenience of paved paths for mothers with strollers and an accessible and challenging 3.5 mile workout for people with busy schedules.

The traffic congestion along Stanford Avenue is the result of too many cars competing for too few parking spaces. The university has reduced available parking over the past few years by implementing parking restrictions on almost every nearby street, even as the Dish has grown in popularity.  And the Stanford Avenue gate has become virtually the only access point to the hills.

Although there are many sites where the university could accommodate parking and many gates that could be opened, Stanford has resolutely resisted proposals to provide parking or to open alternative access points. We believe this is based on outdated and overly conservative legal advice about loss of private property to public use in a way that might limit the university’s future options.

Stanford’s current proposal to eliminate half the parking along Stanford Avenue and replace it with parking on Coyote Hill Road, without providing access anywhere near Coyote Hill, can only be explained as an effort to limit the number of hikers and runners on the Dish.

The plan Stanford filed with Santa Clara County makes Dish access more difficult and hazardous, sending hundreds of Dish walkers across the busy Page Mill/Junipero Serra intersection at rush hour.  The proposal works at cross-purposes with the university’s own promotion of healthy lifestyles -- BeWell@Stanford -- and with the construction of a new $5 billion hospital complex.

We urge Stanford to reconsider its current parking proposal.  The university should promote the common good of its greater community and find a way to facilitate, and not discourage, access to the Dish.