What a wonderful addition to our community that provides safe access to the Baylands for pedestrians, bikes, scooters, skateboards, roller skates, and other human powered vehicles!!

And by staging the ceremony on the west side of the bridge before it opened, we only had to risk our lives one last time by cycling on the San Antonio overpass!

I'll refuse to use this bridge! Why? Because it's TOO ugly and doesn't make a "statement" that this is Palo Alto. Everyone knows that PA is special and needs a beautiful bridge. Maybe we can place a billboard on the bridge saying it cost double with all the delays just to prove how special we are.

Argh, I got my west mixed up from my east in my earlier comment.

Corrected:
"And by staging the ceremony on the EAST side of the bridge before it opened, we only had to risk our lives one last time by cycling on the San Antonio overpass!"

Completing this bridge in ten years is warp speed compared to progress being made with the Chaucer St. bridge. It only took 4 years to build the Golden Gate Bridge.

When I see a construction like this, I'm always bothered that there's no separation for bikes and pedestrians. The Homer Avenue tunnel in Palo Alto is a good design, with raised sidewalks for pedestrians and the bike lanes in the middle.

Separation of bikes and peds is an issue that has been studied and researched for many years, and nobody has found a solution that really works. Pedestrians in the Homer tunnel don't stay in their lane, but the step keeps bikes from encroaching on the ped space. A good approach is to provide tons of width with clearly designated lanes, but that gets VERY costly when you are talking about a bridge. This one has basically the minimum width that meets safety requirements for shared-use paths.

Ok, now we just need to name it the Benjamin Lefkowitz bridge (the name of the prior "underpass" which this bridge replaced) in honor of the Palo Alto cycling enthusiast who pioneered biking in this area many years ago.

So stupid that this is 10 years in the making and making headlines. It is over budget and long past due. Should have been designed economically from the very beginning. No iconic statement - for goodness sake, it is just a pedestrian/bike bridge across a drab freeway that provides access to a fairly underutilized badlands area.

I rode over it today and I thought it was all well-designed and tasteful. Already you could see that it was affording more people the opportunity to get around safely and explore the Baylands.

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Interesting to see all the cars parked in the office parking lot with occupants heading for the Baylands across the bridge. With parking at the end of San Antonio parking lot often full, this seems set to become a route for those who want to drive to Shoreline Park to find parking at weekends.

This trivial bridge "10 years in the making ["...actually a 20 year effort...", according to Simitian]" symbolizes sclerotic decline more than progress: the tallest building on earth was built in 6 years.

> This trivial bridge <over 20 years. symbolizes sclerotic decline more than progress

I did mention to my friend from Mainland China that in China, they would have built 20 bridges in this time. He said "Yes, but 5 of them would already have fallen down, 3 would be falling apart ready to fall, 9 of them would go to and from nowhere sitting unused as "investments", and 2 would be reserved only for high party members. So, the result would be the same."