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The last day of February was an objectively dreadful day for bicycling in Palo Alto, with torrents of rain indiscriminately drenching both the city’s snarled roadways and its prized bike boulevards.
The weather did not, however, stop about 80 residents – including some wearing bike helmets and reflective vests — from flocking to Palo Alto High School to learn more about the city’s most ambitious and divisive bike project: Bike lanes on El Camino Real.
Spearheaded by the state Department of Transportation, the project calls for removing parking along the entire stretch of El Camino Real between Menlo Park and Mountain View and installing a mix of protected and unprotected bike lanes, bike boxes, crosswalk markings, direction signs and other amenities aimed at making El Camino safer.
Unlike most city bike projects, which tend to take years — if not decades — to implement, Caltrans is speeding ahead with its work on El Camino, a state route. It has already begun to repave a segment of El Camino that also includes Mountain View and Los Altos, cities that are also set to get bike lanes. According to a timeline that Caltrans staff presented at the Feb. 29 meeting, the project is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2025.
“If it’s implemented, it would be done right after the new paving is done,” said Eunmi Choi, project manager with Caltrans.
In making the case for the bike lanes, Caltrans officials pointed to El Camino’s history of crashes. Between 2016 and 2020, there were 20 crashes that resulted in injuries and one fatal crash on four segments of El Camino in Palo Alto, according to Caltrans. The segments between West Charleston Road and Maybell Avenue; between Wilton and Matadero avenues; and between El Camino Park and Quarry Road each had four injury crashes during this time. The stretch between California Avenue and Park Boulevard had eight injury crashes and one fatality, a March 2020 collision in which a driver of a flatbed truck struck and killed a middle-school student who was riding a bike near California Avenue.
Nick Saleh, district division chief at Caltrans, was among the agency officials who claimed that bike lanes would improve safety.
“A bikeway, first and foremost, it provides a much better orderly movement of traffic,” Saleh said. “And with that, there would be hopefully less surprises and less confusion. When those two things are down, the risk tends to go down.”
Another goal of the project is to strengthen the connection between the communities through which El Camino runs, said Sergio Ruiz, Caltrans’ coordinator for “complete streets,” a policy it adopted in late 2021. El Camino already connects many downtowns around the Peninsula, he said, and the high speed on the street points to the need for the bikeway.
“El Camino Real often rises to the top in terms of the potential need and also the potential benefit for providing bike facilities for really addressing mobility needs,” Ruiz said.
The El Camino project in some ways exemplifies Caltrans’ recent shift toward bike and pedestrian safety. In December 2021, the department adopted Director’s Policy 37, also known as the “complete streets” policy. With DP-37, Caltrans officially recognized that “walking, biking, transit, and passenger rail are integral to our vision of delivering a brighter future for all through a world-class transportation network” and that streets are used not just for transportation but as “valuable community spaces.”
“Accordingly, in locations with current and/or future pedestrian, bicycle, or transit needs, all transportation projects funded or overseen by Caltrans will provide comfortable, convenient, and connected complete streets facilities for people walking, biking, and taking transit or passenger rail unless an exception is documented and approved,” the policy states.
While Saleh and others maintained that a bikeway on El Camino will improve safety, the agency’s pitch received a mixed reaction from the Feb. 29 crowd. Some bike advocates cheered the transformation of El Camino. Others had questions and severe reservations.
Art Lieberman, a Barron Park resident who serves on the Palo Alto Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, noted that cars often travel on El Camino at speeds that are far higher than then posted speed limit of 35 mph. That, he said, is relevant given that the safety measures that Caltrans is proposing are intended for state highways with 35 mph speed limits.
“If in fact people are traveling faster than 35, shouldn’t there in fact be more separation than what you’re showing in their design?” Lieberman asked.
City Council member Pat Burt, a frequent bicyclist, also left the meeting unconvinced. Burt said in an interview that he has yet to see convincing evidence that creating a bikeway on El Camino would make biking safer or more convenient. Palo Alto already has several north-south corridors that are designed for biking, most notably Bryant Street and Park Boulevard.
“I would never today take El Camino Real versus Park Boulevard because it’s slower and it’s a lot less safe,” Burt said. “The question is: Would painting a bike lane or even having a protected median bike lane make El Camino Real safer?”
Burt said he is not sure it would. He noted that 76% of the crashes on El Camino that Caltrans reported were broadside collisions — ones in which a car and a bike (or a car and a car, or a car and a pedestrian) meet at a 90-degree angle. Yet, Burt said, the agency’s preferred remedy — bike lanes — seem better tailored to addressing rear-end of side-swipe collisions, which are less of a problem on El Camino.
Even if bike lanes would make things safer for the cyclists who already frequent El Camino, the project could bring more riders to the busy corridor, he worried. And while that may be great for the regional vision of El Camino as a thriving “grand boulevard,” Burt suggested that it may not actually make the corridor safer.
“The question is, ‘Did you actually reduce the risk for each rider?’ I’m not seeing it,” Burt said.
Then there’s the issue of bus stops. El Camino is, among many other things, a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus corridor. Burt, who serves on the board of the VTA, said he was concerned about the bikeway proposal because the proposed lanes would run through the bus stops and require bicyclists to either wait under the bus loads and unloads passengers or swerve into the nearest traffic lane.
“From the VTA standpoint, bicycle-bus collisions are a big danger and liability for VTA as it is,” Burt said.
While Caltrans staff assured the audience at the Feb. 29 meeting they had considered bus stops as part of their design work on El Camino, Burt said that his conversations with agency officials made him feel like Caltrans hadn’t thought through the ramifications of having the new bikeways pass through stops all along the corridors.
Even though Burt and his council colleagues won’t have the final say on the El Camino project, which is under Caltrans’ purview, they will have an opportunity to influence it. On April 1, the council will consider a request from Caltrans that it pass a resolution removing parking from El Camino, consistent with the bikeway project.
“When I talked with Caltrans folks, they were making the case that they believe that essentially the people we have who currently ride El Camino Real, and there’s not very many, may be more protected,” Burt said. “I’m not sure that’s the case.”
Others in the community are more gung-ho about the El Camino project. Ken Kershner, a bike advocate with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, said many of the El Camino business owners that he has spoken to have told him that they want to see the bike lanes.
“Many have witnessed Palo Alto youth getting hurt on their bikes and on sidewalks, particularly riding the wrong way. … Many businesses are eager for more bike and foot traffic and studies show protected bike infrastructure increases revenues for businesses,” he said at the Feb. 29 meeting.
One question that he and others had going into the meeting was: What will happen if Palo Alto does not adopt the parking resolution on April 1? Will Caltrans proceed anyway and exercise its own authority to remove the parking spaces without the council’s support?
Technically, it could do so by declaring parking spots a traffic hazard. But Saleh told the crowd that Caltrans won’t simply move ahead with the project if the city opposes it, an assurance that was met with murmurs of disbelief and disappointment from bikeway supporters (“So there might not be a bikeway?” one audience member in a bike helmet asked.).
“We’ll continue working with the city,” Saleh said. “Caltrans will work with the city to come to a conclusion.”
The Feb. 29 meeting was the first in a series of hearings on the El Camino bikeway project. The Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee and the City/School Transportation Safety Committee are scheduled to discuss the project at 6:30 p.m. on March 7 at Mitchell Park Community Center, 3700 Middlefield Road. The Planning and Transportation Commission and the Human Relations Commission will meet jointly to talk about it on March 13 and the council will take it up on April 1.
Burt said he has not yet taken a position on the bike lane project but that he hopes to get more information from Caltrans in the coming weeks to back up its assertions about improved safety and convenience. Others in the biking community are more optimistic. Bruce Arthur, chair of the bicycle advisory committee, advocated at a recent meeting for the city to conduct a parking survey on El Camino Real and to ultimately support the project.
“I think the opportunity to add bike lanes to El Camino Real would be great,” Arthur said at a Jan. 31 meeting of the Planning and Transportation Commission. “I understand it will take away some parking and there are some side effects, but I think it’s worth investigating and pursuing.”
This proposal to put bikelanes on highway 82 the El Camino Real is folly. Caltrans staff assert they are about safety. Language matters as they insist the ELC is a ‘route’ and not a highway. They acknowledge the bus issue is unsolved and problematic as bike lanes and buses will intersect. Drivers coming out of driveways turning onto the highway is another potential danger for cyclists. Pollution from cars is unsafe for cyclists as well. Driving habits have erroded greatly during and after Covid’s peak. Some drivers and cyclists blow through stop signs. The speed limit is often not adhered to by drivers on the ECR.
One fellow brought up his arthritic mother who parks on the El Camino Real. He asked, “How are disabled and elderly people going to get to businesses without parking available on the El Camino Real?” Kushner said businesses will not be harmed with parking removed and said 88 percent have adequate parking on site saying itis a myth that businesses will be inpacted without parking on the highway.
Saleh ran the meeting in a casual manner which did not impart the seriousness of the matter at hand. My sense is Caltrans wants to use funding for the much needed paving of the ELC and implement bike lanes at the same time.
When you have the avid cyclist and city council member Pat Burt mentioning concerns you know there are indeed major issues with this proposal. A former Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commissioner was shocked that Caltrans was unwilling or unable to answer Nadia Naik’s question about the causes of the accidents and how many were traveling on the ECR. I agree.
Caltrans showed a chart featuring a fatality and injuries. The declined to name the child who died traversing legally with a greenlight at the corner of California Avenue and the ECR. His name is Paul Lafargue. A tow truck driver turned right and fatally struck this boy.
Other terrible accidents include the deaths of Maria Elise Jabon on Foothill Expressway and Sarah Ida Raphaelle Muller on the Embarcadero at Newall Street. Yes these tragic accidents did not happen on the the ECR but they demonstrate that even when cyclists are rightly following the rules of the road they have little protection.
The city needs to address a corridor with CALTRAIN which is SAFE and not near vehicular traffic. Again, this alternative is best for cyclists and would decrease potential crashes.
There are alternatives to using a highway for cyclists.
I agree that this project is sheer folly. Any sensible person / parent knows that biking on busy roads like El Camino is unsafe.
I’m glad to read that PA won’t proceed without community buy-in, especially since it will destroy businesses and thus reduce sale tax revenues. while denying all the new residents of the nearby services their huge new housing complexes were supposed to get.
BUT big question for PA: We spend multi-millions of dollars on a Communications/PR staff. Where was the notice about this important meeting????
Instead of meeting notices, the city’s wasting OUR money sending us weekly mailings with new recipes and health tips like which toothbrushes to use.
Curmudgeon,
I was notified about the meeting. It was a Caltrans event , but the City Transportation Department included it in their “Transportation Connect Winter 2024” email on 2/24 to people who signed up for their newsletters. The linked website in the notice even had a link to provide feedback on the topic.
The meeting, or perhaps just the Caltrans website for this, was mentioned in an earlier PA Online story about this a month or two ago,.
Mountain View and Los Altos already approved these bike lanes on El Camino Real (ECR). It will be ridiculous if they end at the Palo Alto border. Hundreds of Stanford students, faculty, and staff live along ECR and can utilize these lanes. I can’t believe Palo Altans are defending car parking over reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable transportation. Embrace this simple change for the good of future generations.
A couple of things. Yes, bus stops and the many driveways and turnings will mean vehicles are constantly in bike lanes or crossing bike lanes.
Another issue is left turns for bikes. Any bike that visits a business on the right and then wants to return will need to do a left turn (or travel against traffic). Left turns for the many bikes that need to turn left or do U turn will be problematic.
One thing that would make it safer would be foot bridges across El Camino. Crossing ECR as a pedestrian or bike is dangerous and many children have to cross back and forth each day for school. Has there ever been any discussion in putting in foot bridge over ECR?
I totally oppose bike lane on EL Camino, as well as biking on Alma, which is also dangerous.
The city has provided bike paths north to south, close to El Camino that are much safer.
This is a recipe for disaster, both for bikes and drivers. How many deaths does it take to convince those in their ivory towers that they are making bad decisions.
Let’s drop this idea ASAP.
If Park or Bryant had bike lanes you would make a valid point. But since both are only pretend-bikeways called “Bike Boulevards” they are not safer. On the contrary, according to CHP data, Palo Alto downtown around “Ellen Fletcher Bike Boulevard” is Silicon Valley’s most dangerous spots for cyclists.
Palo Alto always pretends to be a Gold-standard bicycle city – and yet it requires Caltrans to actually follow through with it.
The ECR Green bike way is silly. What’s missing is Stanford. Luring highest brain human power to a 8000 acre campus, while neglecting major human factors: housing costs, commuting to the campus. ECR splits in two wealthy Stanford and budget beleaguered Palo Alto and the rest of us. And Mr. Le Land Stanford placed his bets long before his University. W a rail line down center HWY 82/ECR. Stanford still holds the cards (the right of way) and won’t show their hand. Look at outdated, flood prone culvert buried under University/Palm overpass or Cal Ave underground creek bed. Find the clues and the answers reveal.
So much for the Progressive Brain. Pick a rationale to disrupt standard usage practices – in this case “Safety”. El Camino has not been safe for anyone – including your car. I really don’t believe that anyone on a bike would go down El Camino because it is a total wreck. I do not go down it in my car. Spending money – taxpayer’s money is always such a joy for some. They feel a necessity to commander taxpayer money and love disruption.
This street is a “working and living” street – business and apartments. The business and hotel people generate a lot of money for the city and now you are trying to cut that off.
Caltrain has been negligent in it’s maintenance of this street. Why has this been allowed? Was it to create a “problem” that they then needed to solve? Standard Progressive Playbook – ruin something purposely so you can justify spending taxpayer money to “fix it”. This is so disgusting.
No kidding. Interior stanfod and SRP roads streets smooth as silk — yet the artery he continued his empire hence forth a rutted mess — and Stanford “untouchable” to partner with? Unacceptable.
Strongly in favor of adding bike lanes, although I am a bit skeptical of its initial success. This is the first of many steps needed to support bicycles becoming a viable transportation solution in Palo Alto.
As for all the detractors about how El Camino isn’t bike friendly today, aren’t you really arguing for this to happen? Today’s El Camino is the result of solely focusing on car traffic, not pedestrian and not bicycle. El Camino is rapidly changing from small businesses to high density housing. Putting more transportation option closer to residential areas is a good thing.
I agree there are other North/South bike routes, but I will take what ever we can get from the state to improve bicycling in this town. Can we get some focus on Embarcadero and Oregon now?
The only positive thing is the elimination of campers on El Camino.
Having bike lanes will make bikers think it’s safe but it’s not safe to bike in Palo Alto, there are many, many bike accidents every year but they are not all publicized unless it’s a death. Back when I graduated from Paly in the ’80s we didn’t even have a traffic signal between Town & Country and Paly because there were hardly any cars on Embarcadero Road. Now, that road is like an expressway. Our entire city has too many out-of-town commuters whizzing through our streets now, it’s unsafe to bicycle. Once your student is hit while biking to school, you’ll understand.
Palo Alto has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to work with Caltrans (state funding) to improve the safety of the proposed bike lanes on ECR. Safe Routes to School has been hugely successful in Palo Alto. ECR is where errand trips and business workers need safer routes which means protected infrastructure, slower speeds from narrower lanes, improved sightlines, and upgraded intersections. Bikers TODAY ride ECR, skirting the curb lane and endangering pedestrians on sidewalks. Why? They need to get to destinations on El Camino and choose the perceived safest infrastructure. El Camino Real needs these upgrades to realize its potential future as a place people want to go.
Why does Palo Alto get no regional concessions for 30+ years of bike lane planning?
Asher,
Because it’s only planning; no doing. Look what happened to the Ross Road project. PA is putting all the dense housing where there is no bike infrastructure (e.g. San Antonio Road and ECR). They haven’t even made Park Boulevard a proper bike route. It is plagued with cut through cars (avoiding ECR), two-way stop signs (at Carolina and Tennessee), horrible pavement, and dangerous median slots. I applaud Caltrans for stepping up and giving us bikers more options.
“Us bikers”? I hope you’re not referring to such bikers who got a bike lane through Foothill Blvd. Another deadly 4 lane highway with safer routes on the parallel roads. “Us bikers” are those speed cyclists who don’t want to slow or stop at lights or walk themselves or their bikes across deadly intersections, or walk through underpass tunnels while wearing racing toe clip shoes. “Us bikers” are not the multi-modal travelers who must get to a public school campus, push a baby bugger, walk a dog, carry a bag of groceries, wheel luggage from the train, walking to get lunch or dinner — you know all the everyone else of us who use all types of transit to travel the roads within. The green paint is just that – a strip that serves one kind of traveler, “Us bikers”. Or were you referring to motorcycle riders?
This whole debate boils down to “us bikers” vs “us parkers”. Based on your other posts, it seems like you have some very site specific concerns about the proposal. I suggest you work with Caltrans to try and ameliorate those specific issues.
What came of the “Dutch crossing” at Embarcadero and ECR? It died is the answer. With Stanford’s absence on this “partnership” so will good plans. As long as they are absent they are not accountable to process or progress. Afterall Stanford came here on his train way (now ECR). Yet Stanford U and SRP are absent and they are a major inflow of all types of surface inflow and outflow of surface and subterranean out flow. Why??
What came of the “Dutch crossing” at Embarcadero and ECR? It died is the answer. With Stanford’s absence on this “partnership” so will good plans. As long as they are absent they are not accountable to process or progress. Afterall Stanford came here on his train way (now ECR). Yet Stanford U and SRP are absent and they are a major inflow of all types of surface inflow and outflow of surface and subterranean out flow. Why??
Hello MV Los Altos a lot less resident populous than Palo Alto! Get real Donald! Palo Alto “Us riders”” want a clear thru way to their Google etc cubicles. Or is working from home really working from the seat of “us riders”
Biff. Good question! It’s probably why the city is refusing to yellow tap traffic signals a very clear and real way to alert and traffic calm .
The auto-Cad computer generated “design” is taken straight from S. California Ave vantage point looking south on ECR. It’s where Wells Fargo is, City Bank across the street, dumb VTA bust shelter at Wells Fargo, under an over hang shelter where south bound 522 & 22 buss’ double stack up into the cross walk over Cal Ave. This is a deadly intersection — U turns still okay off of ECR at Cal Ave at Well Fargo, right turn okay off of S. Cal Ave onto ECR, in front of Wells Fargo. Cal Ave blocked off with water barriers to through traffic for what? Also W. Cal Ave prohibits trucks over 2.5 tons, yet these massive delivery trucks, emergency vehicles all bi-pass the Oregon – Page Mill intersection, use Hanover to travel down W. Cal Ave all the time. So many sight line interferences, noise and blowing stop signs.
Removing street parking from ECR right in front of Vista Center for the Blind & residential Related Mayfield Place, a very low income SRP owned property is not a solution. The Mayfield “mandatory” all electric Klaus lift (breaks all the time or just goes out in a power outage) such erector sets does not allow for or fit utility trucks, disabled vehicle parking or family sized vans. What about fire hydrants or loading zones.
This green stiping is also where Fambrini’s Cafe is where there is a line out the door on Saturday and Sundays and Sandhill Properties does not allow anyone to park on weekends for the Sunday Farmers Market or outdoor dining experience across the street. Protected bike lanes (are electric motor scooters going to use the green strip?) right where no-one rides bikes north or south. It’s traffic chaos from Stanford Ave north all the way to Page Mill. And yet Cal Ave North is a pedestrian, SRP employee, family all wheeled vehicles (wheel chairs), families, pets, carriages, scooters, skateboarders are traversing Cal ave in both directions.
Cal trans solution to this “cross at your own risk”, intersections meyhem? Ill conceived bus stop, newspaper racks, traffic signal boxes. What about bright yellow cross walk diagonal striping. Or A No U turn allowed, A No right turn on red. It’s like no entity wants to touch the elephant in the room. The under-grounded creek flowed once down the very strip that is now Cal Ave N ending at ECR (a fork of the San Franciscito Creek). There is a well where once a free flowing creek. The directional of Cal Ave is not correct. N or S California Avenue should be East and West Cal Ave. This is a problem. Cal Trans / PAPTC is working together. Great. Yet not for residents and workers who cross ECR every day to get to safety in the Cal Ave shopping pen — This is the issue. Throwing down some green paint is not traffic calming, safe pedestrian friendly solutions.
Where is SRP in this partnership? SRP owns the soil where Wells Fargo is, Vista Center, Mayfield Place, Fambrini’s Cafe, Sandhill properties, The Soccer field complex. For gosh sakes! there is only one entrance exit at the soccer field. Why not an additional exit onto Page Mill? Green striping ECR at this critical corridor intersecting problems and is not the silver lining solution and adds more chaos. And do I dare share that Waymo and Cruz cars — as well as Amazon trucks, UPS blow the stop sign at Yale on N. Cal Ave all of the time (I have video to prove it).I suggest Cal Trans and the City and SRP jointly come up with better solutions to the deadly intersection at Cal Ave and ECR and at ECR and Page Mill/Oregon. Here’s a solution all three entities sit out there for stints of day and hours at a time with counters and human eyes (Saturday and Sunday, evenings too) and witness by eyesight and by crunching numbers, the Cal Ave ECR – Page Mill mess. Striping on Highway 82 (ECR) where bikes should not be traveling, is wrong. To me it’s just a quick, cheap way to say the City and the State with the absence of Stanford are not addressing the deadly corridor within our city and ignoring ECR crossings at major intersections, without making real infrastructure changes for the safety of modes of travel up, down and across.
This plan is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Whether Pat Burt would ride his bike on El Camino is irrelevant. There are people doing it now, and Caltrans has an obligation to make it safer for them. Let’s not make the perfect be the enemy of the good. Removing parking is a huge improvement for bicycle safety, which is more important than a bit of convenience for car drivers. Let’s start with this plan and then make it even better over time.
Deal with the multi modal cross ECR traffic at Cal Ave U turns and right turns, Page Mill driveways, sightline impediments first. It’s frightening and deadly crossing Cal Ave at ECR in either direction. Green striping on a major arterial highway is NOT the solution — window dressing. Camp out here for a couple of hours on this corner and bring a hand counter — see for yourself how unsafe and dense all types of surface comings and goings are. There is not even the dignity or safety of a count down crossing light. People who want this do not live here. Walk, bike, drive like your kids live here — but give us the tools and proper equipment to do so.
Holy false narrative! The bike community came out in force that night to support bike lanes. YES we all want it safer in 100 different ways – this is just the beginning.
We all want a NETWORK across the Peninsula that gets us all to the stores, schools, businesses, and jobs we want to go to. This will help get us there, along with the improvements 15 other cities are making for bikes and peds on ECR.
We need to stop being the community of NO ON EVERYTHING. Of course it isn’t perfect. This is a repaving project that we will build on. You cannot put 2,000+ new residents on ECR and not offer an alternative to driving for short trips for those that can/want to bike. Let’s make it awesome – this is just a start.
I beg you to com and stand here at corner of ECR & Cal Ave or Galvez & ECR or Stanford & ECR just for a minute and witness the chaos. No Yellow Diagonal striping, no count down crossing lights, no reflective tape wrapped signals, no yellow flashing slow lights. 1. Galvez ECR Stanford/Paly/TownCountry shop ctr 2. Churchill Paly/Stanford U entry 3. Cal Ave Entry to SRP, Gunn, Green , Cal Train, outdoor dining/shopping, tunnel . Addressing a green strip down ECR is not a solution but creating more probs. Fix cross school, shopping, resident/town/universitySRP entry points first — East West corridors. Or. Install big Round a-bouts at Embarcadero and Page Mill at EcR instead of green cement paint.
Gennady Sheynor’s reporting is getting shoddy. I suspect it’s because he is overworked. No one who attended that meeting and was paying attention could have come to the conclusion that “the bike community” is split. That meeting was an agony to attended because the acoustics were terrible and CalTrans staff handled to comments and questions poorly. The people who spoke against the plan were not cyclists. They were people riled up at the thought there would be parking spaces eliminated – they don’t care where that happens, they just get upset whenever that is proposed anywhere.
About parking being removed – CalTrans said (tonight) that it’s not an either or. They are willing to “work with the city” on this.
About Pat Burt – I don’t know what’s up with him. Someone who bikes sometimes as opposed to never isn’t necessarily a cyclist. I bet he drives more than he bikes.
If you are wondering why Palo Alto was surprised by this when Mountain View and Los Altos approved the parking removal years ago and have worked out well-developed plans with Caltrans, here is the answer. Some bicycle advocates on the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee have for years objected to spending any time or thought planning for El Camino. They argued that any time spent on plans for El Camino takes resources away from working on alternate routes. Staff bought that argument and ignored El Camino, failing to engage with Caltrans and develop a plan. What we see here is the result: Palo Alto being surprised by a plan developed entirely without local input.
Thanks. That explains a lot. It seems like some folks on the PABAC are more concerned with protecting bicyclists from themselves than getting even any space to ride. Maybe time for some new blood on PABAC?
The Safe Routes to School crowd is also controlling a lot of the priorities, and they don’t want anything to do with El Camino or any major cross-town commuter routes that many adult cyclists want.
“Adult cyclists” want their own green gilded path to wherever their top 1% job exists. On the seat of their bike. Riding, walking, scootering, skateboarding our public surface boasts apparently is nill. You want your own “private” bikeway along side a deadly highway. Try out for the Olympics if you’re so “gun ho”. You can’t “bike” or buy your way in to this one. It’s a highway or your bike way? Stupid.
Hello MV Los Altos a lot less resident populous! Get real Donald!
Hello MV Los Altos a lot less resident populous than Palo Alto! Get real Donald! Palo Alto “Us riders”” want a clear thru way to their Google etc cubicles. Or is working from home really working from the seat of “us riders”
Have you all heard of “Real ID”? It is a state mandate due by March 2025. Most have already been through the process and are now renewing with the DMV based on their birthdays. You can update via on-line or go down to your local DMV and take the tests; take your picture; pay your fees, vision test, and if over 70 drive with a DMV driver to show your driving skills. The book that they produce is in many languages. The book is telling you what the rules of the road are for car drivers, bike riders, pedestrians. That is the LAW. The law is not whatever you all conjure to please each other city by city. All this debate above is about what ever you all like – not what is legal and not legal. You all are citizens of a state that tells you what the rules are. Review them, understand them, and do what they say. That is hard for pedestrians who walk across the street looking at their phones, hard for bikers who disregard the rules of the road and get hit by a car. Please quit trying to compromise the state regulations – they have already sunk money into updating to be in compliance with the rules of the road – that is the type of lines in the road, where and how you park, how you transition through intersections. Quit trying to “manage” the system to suit yourselves. Follow the state mandated rules and regulations concerning how and where you drive, bike, and walk.
Apparently none of the human comments above have to live and raise families near or on ECR or Alma — fighting every day of every hour the multi modal chaos. The section corridor from Stanford to Page Mill on ECR is a nightmare, anytime. Driving, walking, riding, strolling w pets and baby carriages, scooters, skateboards, wagons, rolling suitcases, grocery bags (and carts) is inhumane. No striped horizontal crosswalks, timed count down lights, flashing yellow lights,, or reflective yellow tape around traffic signals. Driveways off ECR zero “right turn” only signage at Sandhill properties or soccer field. Must I remind. SRP and Stanford U emboldens themselves at the ECR edge between (the very HWY Mr. Stanford owned the rail line) . Apparently Stanford owned the right of way. They do nothing to improve Galves/Embarcadero – Churchill/ECR, Stanford, Cambridge Cal Ave or page Mill at ECR. Yet their property like a shore abuts the Highway 82 El Camino Real. How does Stanford get a pass. As well their waste water from the University to the hospital to SRP all share the sewers line centered under ECR! We dance around the massive Elephant. Stanford. Cal Trans, Palo Alto AND Stanford —all three are the partner arm.
There is an updated police report today about the recent cyclist fatality on Embarcadero and Newell. From the report it seems that the initial report shows information which is now updated and definitely changes the scenario of how this happened. I hope the new updated information becomes a new article rather than just updating the old articles now that the new format of the Weekly doesn’t cater for updates or additional information posted in comments as easily as the old Town Square.
@Bystander
I guess you mean this update:
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/News-Articles/Police-Department/Update-on-Embarcadero-Road-Fatal-Collision-from-February-19
I’m still confused on the details; the update says the bicyclist “…had been stopped astride her bicycle in the number one lane of eastbound Embarcadero Road at the crosswalk at Newell Road…”. Is that the left turn lane, or the leftmost through lane (i.e. the middle of 3 lanes at that point)?
@Deborah
Re: ” The people who spoke against the plan were not cyclists. ”
I hope my preference for non-electric 26er mountain bikes does not disqualify me as a cyclist 🙂
I spoke against the plan as being an “attractive nuisance” – luring riders into close proximity with heavy vehicle traffic without providing them any physical protection. As Caltrans noted, this is a paving project, so they can’t engineer any grade separation or physical barriers, especially with the enormous number of driveways.
They also noted that the vast majority of injury accidents identified were broadsides; it’s unclear how bike lanes would prevent those.
Finally, as others noted, cyclists in the bike lanes would either have to stop and wait for buses at bus stops, or attempt the dangerous maneuver of passing while boxed in between car traffic on the left and a bus on the right.
Improving cycling corridors on routes parallel to El Camino instead seems like a win/win solution to this problematic proposal.
Highway 82 is a state highway that runs the whole length of the state. It is typically the main street for big buildings, hospitals, restaurants, commercial business, and large residential condos and apartments. For many cities this is one of the main tax resources for a city. In our case it is also the main street for destinations at PAHS and SU. It is the main route for busses that support those educational institutions. The street should be managed to support the tax generation for the city. It boggles the mind that Bike people who live here are not supporting the city need to generate the tax base and protect the long time institutions that have located here based on the El Camino address. There are sufficient bike paths in the city to get bikers from point a to point b. Bikers are not generating tax base for the city – they are indulging themselves and think that they are going to convert people. Visit any big event in PA as well as the daily PAMC parking garage and you will see that people are coming from all over in cars – not bikes. And you are not going to convert anyone from a car to a bike that has to travel more than a couple of miles. All of our events at the school sports events are supported by both teams and that is one team traveling by bus and cars to get here. I do not see many locations where a family with children would be living on El Camino. Many families are in the blocks directly behind El Camino and live there because they can walk to the stores. They are not typically bikers. They work in the hotels and restaurants. They need those large entities to be there for work. I don’t get that argument.
I took my car to the Shell Station on El Camino in College Terrace to get smog certified. I sat out side and watched the traffic go by. The number of construction trucks was higher than the number of cars. Huge trucks, messy trucks. 3rd world trucks. They all have a purpose to be there. If you closed up El Camino then they would be on residential streets – and residential streets are not available in that area for large trucks. What are you people thinking? Is the world suppose to stop because you want to bike down the street? We got a pamphlet at the earth Day that shows the bike paths in the city. You have bike paths. Huge trucks have El Camino.