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April 13, 2016 – San Jose Mercury News
Menlo Park: Bike safety plan hits speed bump
MENLO PARK — Menlo Park hit a speed bump in its efforts to create safe bicycling routes to local schools. Staff on Tuesday asked that the City Council reject all bids for planned pedestrian/bike improvements along Valparaiso and Glenwood avenues, El Camino Real and Middlefield Road. Of the two bids it received, one came in at $674,586, or 40 percent higher than engineer estimates of $485,620, and the other came in 65 percent higher, at $793,812.
It might just be a case of poor timing.Transportation Manager Nikki Nagaya said there may be many similar projects pending over the summer, raising labor costs. She said the city still plans to get the improvements in place over the summer, after the project’s scope is “amended slightly.”
The city plans to remove the green bike lane markings along Valparaiso, Glenwood and Middlefield from the scope and add it to a separate project, and switch the lighted crosswalk from in-road warning lights to a “more cost effective” flashing beacon system. The city has a maximum of $564,007 dedicated to the project through its capital improvements program. The bulk of that money is funded through grants; the city is responsible for coming up with $65,224.
“The project would be delayed slightly,” Nagaya said. “We’d still be looking to do construction this summer when school is out and traffic is lower on Valparaiso.”
The project includes a continuous sidewalk on the south side of Valparaiso between Politzer and University drives; lighted crosswalks and red curb treatments on Valparaiso, at Elder and Emilie avenues; audible pedestrian signals at six signalized El Camino intersections; and two speed feedback signs along Valparaiso.
Comments:
Does this mean the project less bike improvements will be delayed and the bike improvements NOT implemented in 2016?
Menlo Park has funds to start Middle Avenue tunnel design
The city of Menlo Park now has the funds to begin preliminary engineering work on a pedestrian and bicycle tunnel that would run under the Caltrain tracks in the vicinity of El Camino Real and Middle Avenue.
February 2016 – Station 1300 Website
More Details from Greenheart about its support for bicyclists.
- Apartment secured bike storage for 180 bikes including a bike repair area with a bike stand and tools.
- Office secured bike storage for employees.
- There is also outside guest racks for apartment, retail and office visitors.
- Shower and changing rooms in each office building.
- We are working with a couple of organizations to bring a bike share company to Menlo Park and onto our site.
- Class II Bike path along Oak Grove (5′ wide separate bike lane) as well as a Class III bike lane along Harwood (Combined bike area and car lane).
COMMENT: Class III bike routes are poor solutions and no longer recognized by NACTO in its widely respected Urban Bikeway Design Guide. A better solution is needed.
February 2, 2016 – The Almanac
Menlo Park: Grant pays for safer routes to school
by Kate Bradshaw
The city of Menlo Park has received a $498,783 grant from OneBayArea, a transportation fund of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, to pay most of the cost of a project to increase bike and pedestrian safety for Menlo Park and Atherton students.
The project will create a continuous pedestrian pathway along Valparaiso Avenue that will be clear of vegetation or other obstacles, enhance bike lanes with a “green” road treatment to increase vehicle awareness, and improve pedestrian and bicycle crossings along Valparaiso Avenue.
Total cost of the project is expected to be about $564,000; the city will pay the remaining $65,000 or so.
Also, San Jose Mercury News- January 14, 2016.
The project, set to start in spring, will bring a continuous, unobstructed pedestrian walkway along Valparaiso; bicycle lanes enhanced with green treatments; and improved pedestrian and bike crossings at Valparaiso and El Camino.
The city received approval from Caldrons in November to begin sidewalk improvements and add bicycle safety signs along Valparaiso; install in-road warning light crosswalks at two Valparaiso intersections without signals; and install an audible pedestrian signal system at six signaled intersections along El Camino Real.
The city’s Safe Routes plan, crafted in September 2012, is intended to establish safe access for students and their families to Menlo, Sacred Heart, St. Raymond, Hillview, Nativity, Encinal and Oak Knoll schools.
COMMENT: Great news…extend bike lanes to Laurel and Menlo Park has a great east-west bike corridor at the north end of our city.
For the past year I have closely followed the City’s efforts to improve our community bike network, in particular, proposals to add bike lanes to El Camino Real, and more recently, an east-west bike corridor on Oak Grove Avenue. An avid cyclist, I greatly appreciate your attention to the need for safer and more convenient Menlo Park bike routes for all kinds of bike riders. Last August I explained my opposition to El Camino bike lanes (my rationale is presented in detail on the Re-Imagine Menlo Park website*), and I am now concerned about the Oak Grove project as it could be a suboptimal use of city resources. It would also negatively impact motorists by reducing street parking by more than 100 spaces and increasing motorist-bicyclists accidents and conflicts by encouraging many more bike riders to share vehicle lanes on downtown Santa Cruz Avenue. More …
January 26, 2016 – Mercury News
Menlo Park: City officials weigh three bicycle safety plans
MENLO PARK — Members of Menlo Park’s transportation and bicycle commissions met with the City Council and staff at a special meeting Tuesday night to gauge support for three specific plans to make bicycling safer.
The plans call for installing a bicycle boulevard along Oak Grove Avenue, developing a strategy to increase bike and pedestrian safety along Middle Avenue and possibly implementing an electric bicycle ordinance.
The bike boulevard, which is being posed as an experiment, would connect the east and west sides of the city to El Camino Real and extend north from Valparaiso Avenue south to Stanford University. It would require removal of as many as 114 parking spaces along Oak Grove.
COMMENT: Continue to oppose. Menlo-Ravenswood and Valparaiso-Glenwood would be more valuable and have less negative impact on other street users.
January 21, 2016 – Letters to From Bike Commission Chairman
Bike Commission Concerns About Menlo-Ravenswood Bike Corridor
Dana-
Thanks for all your hard work and good thinking in putting your bicycle plan together.
My comments:
Valparaiso/Glenwood – the speed limit on Valparaiso is 35 mph, which means traffic regularly travels 40 or faster. Combined with no buffer and the high volume of traffic, this makes for a very uncomfortable and dangerous route for a bicycle corridor. I would not recommend this route. The Bicycle Commission is going to recommend that speed limits be reduced in Menlo Park in many locations, including this corridor. If the speed limit was 25 or 30 MPH on Valparaiso, we would have a much safer and more comfortable corridor for bicycles.
Menlo/Ravenswood – this is a key east-west corridor as you have identified, and needs major work to be made safer for bicycle access. I think your idea of two-way bicycle a lane on Menlo and elsewhere are good ideas, but the politics, cost and complication to install makes them a non-starter.
More… and my response.
January 21, 2016 – Daily Democrat
Menlo Park bike commission wants to lower speed limits
MENLO PARK — A city commission’s push to lower speed limits on residential streets, possibly starting with Valparaiso Avenue, could meet some resistance from police.
The Menlo Park Bicycle Commission, which wants to see the speed limit on Valparaiso Avenue reduced from 35 mph to as low as 15 mph, was told by staff that although statistics support changing it to 30 mph, police wouldn’t be able to use radar guns to enforce any limit below that because of California Vehicle Code rules.
“Menlo Park police don’t want to spend all their time in court fighting tickets,” Kristiann Choy, a senior transportation engineer, said at the commission’s Jan. 11 meeting.
The other issue is that one side of Valparaiso belongs to Atherton, which is “not interested in changing Valparaiso at this time, so it would be hard for Menlo Park to change,” she said.
COMMENT: General 30 mph speed limit would be fine as school zone already has 25 mph limit. Lower limits not needed.
October 12, 2015 – The Almanac
New bike routes for Menlo Park proposed by city commissions
Proposed downtown bike lanes among project ideas to make Menlo Park more green, bike friendly.
COMMENT: Oak Grove Bike Corridor is not an essential element for our community bike network and has too much negative impact on other users. See next news item.
October 12, 2015 – The Almanac
Guest opinion: Let’s build an effective east-west bike corridor
The Menlo Park Bicycle Commission has recently proposed the idea of adding bike lanes on Oak Grove Avenue. While I strongly favor a better east-west bike connection, an Oak Grove solution is suboptimal. Ravens wood and Menlo avenues are more convenient locations for an east-west bike corridor, as these streets are centrally located and close to popular destinations such as downtown, the Civic Center, various facilities at Burgess Park, the train station, and neighborhood schools. I have submitted a design proposal that illustrates how a combination of state-of-the-art bike facilities on Menlo and Ravenswood avenues and El Camino would offer bike riders an attractive, safe, convenient and comfortable way to travel between the east and west sides of our city.
COMMENT: This is my opinion piece.
September 2, 2015 – The Almanac
Cover story: What to do about El Camino Real? (Bike Trial?)
In the end, however, the opinions of the five elected City Council members will decide what to do about El Camino. What the council members seemed to agree on was that rather than making any permanent changes to El Camino, the city should conduct a trial of some kind of bike lanes to see how they work.
Nicole Nagaya, the city’s transportation manager, said the meeting gave her and W-Trans, the consultants working on the $459,713 study, a long list of tasks, including:
● Discussions with the Menlo Park Fire Protection District about the effect of bike lanes on emergency vehicle response.
● Discussions with Palo Alto, Atherton and Redwood City to gauge interest in a multi-city bike-lane trial.
● Discussions with the California Department of Transportation (which has jurisdiction over El Camino) about a trial bike lane, including timelines for designs, permits and construction.
● Discussions with local businesses on El Camino between Live Oak and Ravenswood avenues about alternatives for parking if on-street parking is removed.
● A closer look at the trees on El Camino near Ravenswood Avenue and how to protect them.
Ms. Nagaya said the council will get a progress report in October before deciding what it wants to do.
COMMENT: I strongly oppose bike lanes on El Camino. See my evaluation.
April 20, 2015 – My Letter To City Council & Commissioners Re: El Camino Bike Lanes
I cannot decide whether I am more disappointed, exasperated or distressed about how the city is handling the El Camino Corridor Study. After more than a year and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars it has so far failed to provide the essential information needed to make good decisions about the future use of El Camino Real by bicyclists, motorists, pedestrians and public safety vehicles, and I fear it was never required. Despite this major problem three city commissions are relying on their own limited knowledge and experiences and inadequate information to interpret the potential impact of several alternatives and make proposals about new bike facilities and vehicle lane configurations. Why have they been put into this unenviable position? And why hasn’t anyone including a well-paid consultant raised red flags well before now? It is clear the two most important considerations – safety and convenience – have NOT been adequately addressed yet apparently the city council plans to make important decisions soon. I recommend that it not make any final decisions about El Camino Real and instead focus on ensuring the best ones are made and clearly explained to all Menlo Park residents. That means everyone needs better information. More…
June 6, 2015 – San Jose Mercury News
Menlo Park: City panel chief pushes bike-lane experiment
The head of a city commission wants to speed up an aspect of the El Camino Real/Downtown Specific Plan.
Bill Kirsch, chairman of the Menlo Park Bicycle Commission, on Tuesday asked the City Council to install bike lanes on a trial basis along El Camino Real, as well as along the Ravenswood/Menlo corridor and Oak Grove Avenue between Middlefield Road and University Drive.
COMMENT: Valparaiso-Glenwwod and Menlo-Ravenswood Avenues should serve as primary east-west bike corridors. Oak Grove Avenue offers fewer benefits and significant negative impacts on motorists and other users.
Menlo Park commission recommends bike lanes, no third lane on El Camino Real
Given a choice of three options or leaving El Camino Real alone, the Menlo Park Planning Commission gave a unanimous thumbs up to one design that would create buffered bike lanes along the city’s main corridor – as long as trees at its intersection with Ravenswood Avenue are left alone.
Consultant W-Trans has been carrying out a $459,713 contract to analyze ways to improve travel along El Camino Real for bicyclists, pedestrians and vehicles. During a study session on Monday, April 6, the seven planning commissioners supported the second option given in the staff report. With that design, bike lanes would be added on El Camino Real in both directions by narrowing the existing vehicle lanes by 1 to 3 feet, and getting rid of street parking along the road north of Roble Avenue. An additional 3-foot bike buffer would be created with paint.
COMMENT: Very Bad Idea. See my analysis.