to increase density, not just because ABAG requires more housing units, but because when we add more housing units, at least some of those will be occupied by people employed here, thereby reducing auto trips. Palo Alto must also have additional low-income housing units, to enable at least some of the low wage earners to live nearby (e.g., especially caregivers for seniors). Programs T-1, T-2, and T-3 are all useful approaches. Single family homeowners should be allowed and encouraged to add small in-law units (and be relieved of the current parking regulations for second units). Single-level parking lots should have housing above them (e.g,, behind the retail stores on California Avenue). Consider some commercial zoning within neighborhoods so that markets, coffee shops, hardware stores can be walked to by residents. Current commercial activites are limited to "centers" / University/California/Middlefield/San Antonio and lots of people can't walk to them, so everyone drives, causing more cars on the road and congestion in the parking areas. Parking should be unbundled - i.e. you pay if you want to use it. Lots and lots of young people and seniors would love to live in housing where they're not implicitly paying for parking they don't use and lots of them don't need or want a car, particularly if they're living right near the Caltrain. We should also experiment with housing that doesn't have any parking at all in areas where we have parking permits. Just never give those people permits. Part of the problem with mixed use development is that the FAR for the housing portion is really small. We should be encouraging ground floor retail + 3 floors of housing or retail + commercial + 2 floors of housing. But the current restrictions don't allow you to build that much housing, which exacerbates the jobs housing imbalance. We have never actually instituted density minimums but really need to. We should no long be building single homes or gigantic condos within half a mile of train station. We should make this actually happen. All of the ideas below, for enhancing flow, could be supported by having the Comp Plan delineate how bad the congestion can be at each intersection (LOS) and not allowing development to push it higher than that. The Comp Plan could state that the LOS at a specific intersection would have to IMPROVE in order for more development to be allowed. Delineating the LOS required might be the only remedy the city has to the gridlock- enabling loophole in CEQA . (The one that says CEQA cannot be used in relationship to gridlock isn't it Orwellian that this CEQA protection has been eliminated?) To build, developers would have to consider HOW THEY can take responsibility for the impact of greater density, rather than shifting the burden to the existing residents or the public in general.