BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council has decided against putting bike lanes on major arteries like Middlefield Road. Instead, the city will improve routes for cyclists on quieter neighborhood streets.
“I don’t want the fumes. I don’t want to see cars. I want the canopy that’s over on Cowper (Street),” Councilman Keith Reckdahl said on Monday, when council reviewed the city’s bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan.
Senior City Transportation Planner Ozzy Acre said the updated plan “embraces arterials” with separated bike lanes.
Acre said Middlefield Road, for example, should be a neighborhood street and not an alternate route to Highway 101. Middlefield Road connects Palo Alto to Menlo Park and Mountain View and is close to schools and other key destinations, he said.
“It might be tough to visualize a new type of Middlefield moving forward, but think about streets that used to be two lanes in each direction, such as Cal Ave. maybe 20 years ago. And now we’re having a conversation around car-free,” Acre said, referring to the lane reduction and ensuing closure of two blocks of California Avenue.
But Acre’s approach to Middlefield Road received pushback from residents.
Mayor Ed Lauing and Councilman Pat Burt said the city should appeal to people who are considering switching to bicycling, and not cycling enthusiasts who want the most direct route through the region.
New cyclists are more likely to take neighborhood streets, so that’s where the city should focus its efforts, Lauing said.
Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker said she would be open to bike lanes on the northern end of Middlefield Road after struggling to bike to her dentist in Menlo Park.
“It was treacherous,” she said.
Councilman George Lu said slowing down cars on Middlefield Road is “really critical,” especially between Loma Verde Avenue and Meadow Drive.
The road is two lanes in each direction with no stop signs, crosswalks or speed limit signs, and cars go “almost freeway speeds,” Lu said.
El Camino’s new bike lanes are a mess and they’re dangerous. Council acted as if that was imposed on them by Caltrans in Sacramento. But if they put bike lanes on Middlefield, they couldn’t pretend they were forced do so. So the idea is dead for now. But Acre sounds like a “true believer” in a car-less society, and he’ll probably come back with another lane-reduction plan when nobody is paying attention. How does the city get people like him?
Thank heavens some sanity prevailed. This is the third — THIRD time the city has tried to sneak this dangerous plan through without any outreach to those directly affected.
Fortunately — AGAIN — an alert neighbor alerted residents to what the consultants with no local knowledge had proposed.
Thank you, Jim Fruchterman, for the warning that got so many trying to wade through the incredibly dense and difficult to navigation pedestrian and bike plan.
Let’s hope we don’t have to fight this battle again.
“Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker said she would be open to bike lanes on the northern end of Middlefield Road after struggling to bike to her dentist in Menlo Park.
“It was treacherous,” she said.”
Incredible! If she’s so concerned, maybe she shouldn’t have voted against reining in Builder’s Remedy atrocities like the Sunset Magazine project right there at the PA / Menlo Park border that will make her bike rides even more treacherous when she has to contend with the new traffic generated by the huge and SERIOUSLY underparked proposed new development that includes:
“Heneghan wants to develop the seven-acre property with three towers with 675 apartments, 130 hotel rooms, 301,662 square feet of office, 36,973 square feet of retail and 1,453 parking spaces.
The towers would range from 301 to 461 feet, taller than any building from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Heneghan is invoking the Builder’s Remedy, a provision in state law that allows developers to ignore local zoning rules in cities that were late on getting their housing plans approved by the state.”