Streetsblog San Francisco

Alta Planning + Design's rendering of different options for a future bicycle/pedestrian bridge over Highway 101 in East Palo Alto. Images: Alta

The dream of reconnecting the two halves of East Palo Alto divided by Highway 101 with a bicycle/pedestrian bridge moved one step closer to reality last month with the release of the project’s draft feasibility study [PDF].

Five alignments for the bicycle/pedestrian bridge were analyzed in the feasibility study.

Alta Planning + Design, which conducted the $300,000 study, examined five different possible alignments for the bridge, which are estimated to cost between $6.5 million and $9.5 million to design and construct. According to Alta’s estimates, the bridge would be used for 130,000 to 230,000 trips per year (350 to 630 per day) — an unusually high volume for bike/ped bridges due to the dense residential and commercial development on either side of the highway.

EPA City Council members who reviewed the study at a meeting last Tuesday didn’t indicate a preference for any of the bridge designs, though all four of those present voiced their support for the project (one, David Woods, was absent).

“The current overpass over the 101 freeway is not safe,” said Council Member Laura Martinez. “I see this project as a solution to get our residents across town. This is a major connection for our residents to get to schools, shopping, our grocery store. This overcrossing encourages walking and biking.”

When planners gathered input on the project at a series of community meetings last year, “issues of traffic safety rose immediately to the top,” said Alta’s Casey Hildreth.

As Mayor Ruben Abrica noted, East Palo Alto is one of the last Peninsula cities divided by Highway 101 to receive a bicycle/pedestrian bridge. “There has been a pedestrian bridge in Menlo Park, there has been a pedestrian bridge in Palo Alto, for many years. We are the only ones who don’t have one,” he said. ”It’s good for business, it helps children get to school, it connects us more to the surrounding communities, and to the Bay.”

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Space for parking up to 2,000 bicycles was provided at Maker Faire this year. Photos: Andrew Boone

The runaway success of Maker Faire, the annual San Mateo festival that celebrates do-it-yourself technology and crafts, has led organizers to get creative in encouraging attendees to come without a car and avert a traffic mess.

One of the ever-popular fire sculptures on display at Maker Faire.

Since Maker Faire’s debuted in 2006, organizers have developed a model program for managing traffic demand for the growing number of attendees — estimated at more than 120,000 this year — who flock to the two-day event to see the eccentric and occasionally practical inventions of 1,000 “makers.”

At this year’s event, held last weekend at the San Mateo County Event Center, the valet bicycle parking lot “had 735 bikes at 1 p.m., and about 1,000 bikes at 3:30 p.m., which was about the peak,” said bike parking organizer Gladwyn de Souza.

“It’s also part of the attendee experience. We want people to have a good time, so we want to provide them with choices that don’t involve driving,” said Katie Kunde, Maker Faire’s senior sales manager.

Maker Faire’s website provides comprehensive details on how to get to and from the event by transit, bicycle, walking, car-share, driving, paratransit, and even combinations of those modes.

Maker Faire also coordinates with local bicycle clubs to organize group bike rides to the event on Saturday from San Francisco and San Jose, and gives riders free copies of Momentum, an urban cycling magazine along with a free “I Rode My Bike to Maker Faire 2013″ patch. Read more…

Commuting to work on Gateway Boulevard in South San Francisco. Photo: Andrew Boone

Among the record-breaking 9,000 bike commuters celebrating Bike to Work Day in San Mateo County on Thursday, County Supervisor Dave Pine led a convoy from downtown Redwood City to the Oracle energizer station, crossing Highway 101 using the Ralston Avenue bike-pedestrian bridge in Belmont.

San Mateo County Supervisor Dave Pine and Redwood City Council candidate Diane Howard at the Oracle energizer station. Photo: Andrew Boone

“We really have to look at bicycling as a viable and important part of the transportation network and not just a recreational pursuit,” Pine said. “The county needs to take more of a leadership role to publicize bike routes and get cities to work together to construct practical bicycle infrastructure so that people can get to work more easily.”

Bike to Work Day is booming throughout San Mateo County, with ridership increasing 33 percent since last year, and more than doubling since 2011, according to the Peninsula Traffic Congestion Relief Alliance.

Commuters were greeted with 37 energizer stations along popular bike commuting routes, where volunteers from the PTCRA and the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition helped them fuel up with coffee and snacks. Nearly 1,000 cyclists enjoyed an outdoor breakfast at Oracle’s energizer station at the company’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, which lies along the Bay Trail, a route favored by many bike commuters for its long sections of off-street bicycle and pedestrian paths and beautiful views of the San Francisco Bay.

Each year, more Silicon Valley employers — from tech giants like Genentech, Facebook, and Google, to other major businesses like Kaiser Permanente (which partnered with Whole Foods) and Food Service Providers — are holding their own events to encourage participation in Bike to Work Day as a way to promote employee health and reduce traffic congestion.

“Bike to Work Day provides an opportunity for people who are considering biking to work to try it along with thousands of others, while being cheered on at the energizer stations along the way,” said PTCRA Executive Director John Ford. “Once people try cycling to work, many of them make it part of their regular commute.”

While improvements to make bicycling in San Mateo County safer and more convenient have been hampered by a lack of bureaucratic coordination between cities, a few are starting to take the lead. The city of San Mateo is currently planning safer crossings over and under Highway 101: a bike-ped bridge at Hillsdale Boulevard, and a bike-ped path along the 16th Avenue canal under the freeway.

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South San Francisco opened up a section of downtown Grand Avenue to people for last year's "Streets Alive! Parks Alive!," though the event continues to mostly take place in parks. Photo: San Mateo County News

Editor’s note: Today we welcome Andrew Boone, co-founder of the Peninsula Transportation Alternatives Blog, as our new reporter providing coverage in San Mateo County.

In its fourth year, 16 cities in San Mateo County will take part in this weekend’s Streets Alive! Parks Alive!, an event aimed at getting people outdoors with programmed activities. While most of the events will be held in parks, a few blocks in Millbrae and Burlingame will be temporarily closed to car traffic and opened up for people to walk, bike, skate, dance, and socialize.

Image: Streets Alive! Parks Alive!

“Streets Alive!” was initiated by SM County Supervisor Carole Groom in 2010 as a way to promote community and physical activity, and the event has grown from an initial ten cities to 16 this year. “Parks Alive!” was added to the event’s name in 2012 — and it’s more accurate, given that the event mostly takes place in parks, unlike popular “Ciclovia”-style events such as San Francisco’s Sunday Streets, which are held primarily on the public right-of-way and have spread to hundreds of cities around the world.

Eric Pawlowsky, an aide for Supervisor Groom who helps organize the events, said the relative cost of closing longer sections of urban streets to car traffic has limited cities’ ability to expand beyond park space. Still, he argued that the three blocks in Millbrae and one block in Burlingame that will be opened up for people for Streets Alive! in the spread-out suburbs is substantial. “We don’t define length of street closure as a factor of success,” he said. “Even closing just one or two blocks, when you look at it in terms of square footage, that’s a park.”

Cities will be holding myriad activities coordinated with other ongoing events, from Zumba, Tai Chi, and Hula at the Belmont Farmer’s Market, to riding in an outrigger canoe at Foster City’s Polynesian Festival, to free bike tune-ups from REI at the Pulgas Water Temple at the weekly “Bicycle Sunday” event on Cañada Road.

Check out a map of activities for “Streets Alive! Parks Alive!” throughout the county after the break.

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The north side of the University Avenue overpass over Highway 101 has no bike lane and a four-foot sidewalk. Pictured: Brent Butler, East Palo Alto Planning Manager, leads Streetsblog on a tour of the area. Photo: Bryan Goebel.

East Palo Alto was recently awarded $5 million to build a freeway off-ramp designed a decade ago that even the city’s traffic engineer admits is no longer needed because traffic volumes are down. But as part of the project, the north section of the University Avenue overpass — a treacherous but often necessary route for East Palo Alto residents who bike and walk — would be widened to expand the skinny sidewalk to twelve feet and add a five-foot bike lane.

“I’m not crazy about the off-ramp, and I see little benefit, in my opinion, but it’s a package that we have to do together,” said Kamal Fallaha, East Palo Alto’s traffic engineer. “We need the widening for the pedestrians and bicyclists.”

Bike advocates not only take issue with the off-ramp, they say the proposed improvements for bike riders and pedestrians fall far short of what’s needed. They’re concerned the approaches to both sides of the bridge — which have no bike lanes and narrow sidewalks — would not be improved as part of the project. Nor would the south side of the overpass.

“We are about to spend $5 million for a tiny reduction in motorist travel times but cannot even provide decent pedestrian and bicycle accommodation at a place with very high ped and bike traffic volumes,” said Andrew Boone, a bicycle advocate who lives in East Palo Alto and helped start the Peninsula Transportation Alternatives blog.

Alex Fabrikant, a bike commuter who also lives in East Palo Alto, “avoids the bridge like the plague” and was disappointed the south side “would be just as terrible,” he said. ”It feels like the kind of improvement that would be a small step forward but it won’t radically change the biking patterns until both directions are covered.”

The story of why this critical project treats safety as an afterthought highlights major shortcomings in the way regional and state agencies plan, fund, and build improvements for walking and biking. Stingy safety funds from the county’s transportation authority and the rigidness of Caltrans have conspired to stymie a common-sense approach to what should be a simple task: Providing a safe passage for people to walk and bike across Highway 101.

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A bike rider braves the Willow Road highway overpass in Menlo Park. Photo: Bryan Goebel

San Mateo County has the third highest rate of driving mileage per capita in the Bay Area, behind Marin and Sonoma counties. Eighty-two percent of residents drive as their primary mode, due in part to a built environment that keeps people stuck in their cars. Low-income and transit-dependent populations who take the bus face dwindling service, while those who ride their bikes and walk face hostile street conditions, enduring dangerous highway overpasses to get to their jobs or school.

The county also faces a rising adult obesity epidemic and a population of people over 65 that is expected to double by the year 2050, according to the Indicators for a Sustainable San Mateo County report, issued in May. The report notes that automobiles are the primary source of pollution in San Mateo County, which contributes to a variety of health problems.

Bicycle, pedestrian and transit advocates interviewed for this story say the City/County Association of Governments (C/CAG) is partly to blame, with its history of favoring the automobile over other modes in the way it disperses state and federal funding to cities for transportation projects. It’s been slow to embrace sustainable transportation and livable streets principles.

“You look around Highway 101 and you’ll see huge new projects in place for additional expansion,” said Gladwyn d’Souza, a pedestrian advocate and Belmont planning commissioner. Read more…

Advocates say C/CAG has historically funded automobile infrastructure to the detriment of the environment and the health of San Mateo County residents. Photo: San Mateo County Transportation Authority.

As San Mateo County’s congestion management agency, the City/County Association of Governments (C/CAG), is supposed to be responsible for reducing auto congestion. It also controls the purse strings on transportation projects, doling out millions of dollars in state and federal grants to the region’s 20 cities, whose appointed representatives make up the agency’s governing board.

“It started primarily as a transportation planning agency and to a large extent it still is,” said Joseph Kott, a former transportation planning manager at C/CAG who is now a consultant and visiting scholar at Stanford University.

The man at the helm of the agency for the last 17 years, Richard Napier – an engineer who is a former Sunnyvale mayor — is now retiring. As executive director, he gained a reputation as a skilled politician whose biggest accomplishment was building consensus among his member cities’ parochial interests.

“Richard has been a combination of a traditionalist and a cautious innovator. A traditionalist in the sense that he’s convinced that the automobile is and will remain dominant in our society,” said Kott.

Some of those innovations include programs Napier is proud to talk about: a transit-oriented development incentive fund and a “green streets and parking lot” program. The agency also oversees the county’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), which makes recommendations on funding.

“He’s a super administrator and really made C/CAG what it is today,” said Sue Lembert, a former San Mateo mayor who sat on the C/CAG Board for four years and writes a weekly column for the San Mateo Daily News. “It wasn’t just a job for him.”

While no one doubts he was dedicated to his work and successful in attracting money, more than a dozen bicycle and pedestrian advocates interviewed by Streetsblog — some of whom would not go on the record — said Napier’s auto-oriented thinking on transportation would be a welcome departure.

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