Cities, Counties, and Countries

Margaret Pye has been bike commuting from San Carlos to her job at a law firm in Palo Alto for the past 10 years. Pedaling home on Middlefield Road through Menlo Park and Atherton, there are bike lanes, but when she gets to North Fair Oaks in unincorporated San Mateo County, the bike lanes suddenly end with no signs indicating where bike riders should go.

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.

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.

This is the first in a series of stories on East Palo Alto’s proposed bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing.

Alameda County could usher in a new era of progressive transportation projects if voters pass a proposed half-cent sales tax increase known as Measure B1 on November 6.

Seventeen blocks of Shattuck Avenue, normally one of Berkeley's most traffic-clogged streets, were filled with an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people walking, biking and skating for the debut of Sunday Streets Berkeley this weekend.

The Green Caltrain blog has some promising news today for moving Caltrain toward a stable funding solution. Adina Levin from Friends of Caltrain reports:

In June, the city of Vancouver hosted the Velo-City Global 2012 Conference, where international cycling planners, professionals and advocates convened.

In theory, the East Bay has nearly perfect terrain for bicycling. Streets slope gently east for miles from the Bay, and once over the hills, pedaling conditions are almost idyllic -- that is, if you feel safe enough to ride.