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Over the past decade, Mountain View has taken steps to prioritize pedestrian and bicycle-related projects, with ambitious goals to develop the city’s traffic corridors into safe, accessible and low-stress routes for walkers, bikers and rollers.
But its approach has been piecemeal, and for some community members, far too slow as many projects have not gotten off the ground.
In response, the city is in the process of developing an active transportation plan that, when complete, will lay out a roadmap of policies and projects to support an integrated network of bicycle and pedestrian experiences in the city.
The City Council weighed in on one component of the plan – the scoring criteria for active transportation projects – at its meeting on Tuesday, May 28.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council approved the guiding principles of the plan but stopped short of fully committing to the scoring criteria, instead preferring to take a more holistic view of active transportation projects.
“Where’s the network? Where’s the path? Where’s the way people will go? … To me, without that, I really struggle to prioritize projects, no matter what the criteria is because I need to understand how it’s going to fit into the network,” Council member Lisa Matichak said.
The council did not disagree with the core principles of the scoring criteria, which focused on four categories: safety and comfort, access and equity, mobility and connectivity and sustainability and biodiversity. Rather, members wanted the opportunity to consider the plan in its entirety, before weighing in on how to evaluate and rank projects.
Similarly, community members pressed the city to adopt a more holistic approach to the plan. Mountain View resident Cliff Chambers encouraged the council not to focus on standalone scoring for individual projects unless it was related to “a robust active transportation network.” Projects also should focus on closing the gaps in the network, he said.
The city has mapped out and invested in major road safety improvement projects that will bring traffic-calming measures to busy thoroughfares like California Street and El Monte Avenue. However, these capital-intensive projects have taken years to develop, as part of the city’s commitment to a Vision Zero policy that aims to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2030.
For these reasons, community members urged the council to focus on projects that could make a big impact but be completed quickly and without major financial commitments. “Let’s just do it! Let’s complete these streets and be done with the bare minimum we need to do,” said Lada Adamic, who serves on the bicycle pedestrian advisory committee, in a letter to the council.
Council member Lucas Ramirez also questioned the scope of the active transportation plan, noting that a substantial portion of pedestrian and bicycle improvement projects identified a decade ago have not been implemented.
The bicycle transportation plan listed 183 possible projects. Of these, 52 have been completed or are in active construction while 34 are partially completed, according to city staff. This leaves about 72% of the remaining projects, the report said.
Similarly, a large number of pedestrian projects, 66%, have not been completed, the report said.
Acting Public Works Director Edward Arango attributed the slow rollout to budget constraints and to the pandemic, which delayed many projects. The city has been catching up since then, he said. The city also is timing some projects to align with other roadway upgrades, like the El Camino Real repaving project.
Still, Ramirez said the numbers were not encouraging and it might be more effective if the city “right-sized” its expectations and planning efforts. “I don’t want to make the same mistake where we adopt (an active transportation plan) that five to 10 years later only results in the delivery of a quarter of the projects that we’ve been taking the time to identify,” he said.
A cost-benefit analysis, included in the scoring criteria, also would be key to identifying the feasibility of some of these projects, Council member Margaret Abe-Koga said, agreeing with community members who encouraged the city to focus on projects that “give us the biggest bang for the buck.”
As part of the next steps, the Council Transportation Committee will weigh in on the active transportation plan and make recommendations, with more opportunities for the community to deliberate on it before it comes back to the City Council in the fall.
Anything that moves us toward a better network of cycling options is a step in the right direction. Let’s hope that the projects that end up being approved in support of this network do more than hammer a sign in the ground that says “peninsula bikeway” and call it a day. We need separated bike lanes, dedicated trails, and they need to go to places people will actually use.
The city has tackled the “low hanging fruit” already with the “let’s just do it” strategy. They need to tackle some of the hard things now – address the dangerous gaps that create a piece-meal network. For instance, Miramonte is getting a great upgrade that will help Graham students get to and FROM school safely. But, from Castro to Shoreline will continue to be a dangerous gap where bikes are forced to share the lane with cars. Or, one can go down Castro but at El Camino then face the same problem continuing. So, how do they safely reach California that is also being upgraded to be a safe corridor? This small gap means that these 2 substantial upgrades add up to still being a dangerous route that many riders will avoid and choose to drive instead.
I’d like to thank Councilmember Ramirez for pointing out a Good Governance foundation / gov. needs to Right Size a project so that it can show a lot of progress in less than a decade! If more than 70% of the project plans from the comprehensive plan were Not Completed isn’t that enough proof that that was Way TOO BIG?
No Priority metrics? Come on, add “Vital Connectivity” rate it on 1-4 and then with the other stuff, see where the Chips Fall first pass. Have the Council, the Staff and the advisory Bike and Pedestrian groups independently rank. (The advisory committee can hold-quick-public hearings before they rank-vote)
Waiting – does not seem smart. We have done that! For almost 3/4 of the projects on the Last Comprehensive plan that has been proven ineffective (nothing done = ineffective). Major connectors no done = ineffective.