PALO ALTO — A trip to the recently opened Foothills Park nature preserve could soon cost you a $6 vehicle fee after an increase in visitors prompted the city council to limit attendance in an effort to preserve its natural beauty.
This week, city council members voted 6-1 — with Alison Cormack dissenting — to craft emergency rules imposing the new fee and lowering the attendance limit from 750 people at any given time to at most 400, not to exceed 500.
The council also directed the Parks and Recreation Commission to explore a more complex fee system to give discounts for specific groups, create a reservation system and assess staffing needs. Currently, there are no fees.
The council’s decision is in response to a rise in complaints about traffic from Los Altos Hills residents, reports of illegal parking inside the preserve and people generally not adhering to park rules.
Less than two weeks ago, the preserve announced it would be closing on weekends and holidays during peak hours to deal with the traffic while the council considered entry fees and ways to limit access.
After a lawsuit from the NAACP and ACLU of Northern California forced the park to open on Dec. 17, the 1,400-acre nature preserve has become a popular attraction for people across the Bay Area. The park was once the private domain of Palo Alto residents and was thought to be the only public park in California to restrict non-residents.
Just over a month after it opened, the once-quiet park has been transformed into a tourist trap bustling with cars, hikers and families descending on the preserve for a peek at wild ferns, panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay or the twisting Madrone trees and Manzanita bushes.
Council member Eric Filseth said he’s gone to the park several times since it opened and is concerned with what he’s witnessed there. He said he’s seen people littering, people hiking up the bare hillsides, kids throwing rocks at water fowl and people parking wherever they want.
“It’s Disneyland over there, as people have said,” Filseth said. “But it’s not supposed to be an amusement park, that’s inconsistent with being a preserve. Maybe it’ll subside, but it’s pretty much out of control. We need to do something quickly.”
There’s no doubt the park has changed. Since it opened, city staff say it has reached maximum capacity numerous times, most frequently between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekends, “which creates safety concerns and road hazards, and large numbers of visitors have been turned away.”
Over 4,000 visitors stopped by the park during the weekend before Christmas 2020, almost six times more than the same weekend in 2019. On the days the park reached capacity, staff said an average of about 400 vehicles were turned away a day.
But for Cormack, seeing all the new faces has been uplifting. Since the park opened, she’s volunteered four hours on Saturdays at the park, picking up litter and guiding people through the park’s various amenities.
Cormack said she’s opposed to imposing entry fees to deter attendance and suggested returning to the Foothills Park conversation later in the year when the novelty has subsided and people stop going.
“We should let the Parks and Rec commission do its work,” she said. “I believe the closures during the middle of the day have been mitigating the crisis for the last couple of weeks and traffic conditions have changed. I would be nervous to act on this tonight.”
Ignoring Cormack’s suggestion, an otherwise united council moved forward the emergency process and will return to make a final vote on Feb. 1, with fees likely to begin Feb. 20. Newly elected council member Greer Stone pushed for moving quickly.
Stone said the council should also consider imposing fees for pedestrians and bikers to stop people from parking outside the park and walking in, like many people do at other popular state and county parks in the Bay Area. He also said city staff should consider putting up barriers at unstaffed entrances to the park — a suggestion the council generally supported too — and advocated for reduced pricing for seniors and no fees for students.
“We’re hearing all of these complaints about the degradation with the preserve and wildlife,” Stone said. “People are not seeing the level of wildlife they saw in the past. We don’t know what will happen when the novelty wears off. We need to move immediately on the cap.”
