BY ADRIANA HERNANDEZ
Daily Post Staff Writer
Bus-only lanes may work well in London, but they likely won’t work for Belmont, a councilman said.
SamTrans is shopping around options to various city councils to make El Camino Real safer for bicyclists and pedestrians, and one of the options includes a bus-only lane.
Belmont Councilman Tom Mc-Cune has lived in London and said the bus-only lanes work well there.
“That’s not the kind of bus service we have here. We have buses that run not very often,” McCune said.
Other safety options
McCune and the rest of the council on Feb. 10 reviewed plans by SamTrans to reduce driving lanes from three to two in each direction on El Camino to make way for bus-only lanes.
Council preferred the option with a continuous separated bike lane with wider sidewalks. The other option included wider sidewalks with more trees, rather than a bike lane.
Mayor Julia Mates said a separated bike lane with wider sidewalks would be the best way to prevent any bicycle deaths.
San Carlos also pans idea
Belmont council’s review of the bus lane idea came a night after San Carlos City Council panned the idea for similar reasons. San Carlos Mayor Pranita Venkatesh said on Monday that in other cities, she’s seen cars driving in unused bus lanes. Similar to Belmont’s council, most of the San Carlos council members who offered their two cents on Monday also liked the separated bike lane option.
SamTrans officials are working to make El Camino Real safer for pedestrians and bicyclists through the Grand Boulevard Initiative, a $750 million plan. Council will be revisiting the plan in August, according to Halls.
I can’t be on the road for more than ten minutes without seeing three driverless rideshare vehicle. Buses (and trains) are the walking dead of the transportation underworld only kept alive by boomers desperately clinging to hopeless Age of Aquarius solutions… and political power.
Between the rarely used trash-filled El Camino bike lanes and now this, are our “leaders” trying to cripple our ability to get anywhere?? Whatever are they thinking — and I use the term “thinking” loosely.