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As Palo Alto advances an ambitious plan to create a new residential community around San Antonio Road, city leaders are confronting a complex challenge with no clear solution: the new neighborhood would sit along a congested traffic corridor with no good options for cyclists or bus riders.
The transportation problem is casting a cloud over the planning effort, which the council initiated last year and which it is banking on to generate about 1,500 new housing units. It also spurring discussions and disagreements over whether the newly proposed developments on San Antonio are compatible with citywide policies that encourage bike and transit use.
The San Antonio Area Plan envisions a host of mobility improvements along all major roads and intersections in the planning area, with most of the projects clustered in the area between Middlefield and Charleston roads. A recent memo from the city’s consultants, Rami + Associates and Strategic Economics, lays out three scenarios for mobility improvements that vary in cost and ambition.
The most expensive of these would create a two-way bikeway on both sides of San Antonio, which would require the city to reconfigure the street, remove and replace all existing street trees; and acquire easements and relocate utilities and other infrastructure that serves area businesses.
A less ambitious alternative would feature a shared-use path on the north side of San Antonio and a bikeway on the south side. The cheapest option, meanwhile, calls for one separated bikeway and a possible widening of sidewalks.
City staff and consultants frequently acknowledge the area’s transportation challenges and the urgent need for improvements. A recent presentation on the planning effort notes that the San Antonio corridor “experiences heavy traffic and truck volumes with congestion throughout the day” and that existing development patters prioritize automobiles. It also cites the area’s “poor integration with transit,” “disconnected bike lanes,” “narrow sidewalks” and “wide arterials that create barriers to walking and biking.”
The city’s Bike and Pedestrian Transportation Plan also identifies San Antonio as one of Palo Alto’s major problem spots when it comes to cycling. The plan, which is now being finalized, calls for separated bikeways on San Antonio, between Alma and Charleston, and a shared-use path for cyclists and pedestrians between Charleston and the Baylands Nature Preserve.
It’s not clear, however, when these improvements will materialize or how the city will fund them, a key issue at a time when the city is facing a projected budget deficit of $14.9 million. Consultants have recommended several mechanisms, including issuing bonds to pay for the infrastructure improvements, creating a special “impact fee” for new developments in the San Antonio area and relying more on the city’s transportation impact fees, which are used to fund street improvements throughout the city.
Developers, for their part, are not waiting for the transportation amenities to materialize. The city has already received numerous applications for housing projects in the planning area, some of which bank on long-term future transportation improvements to make their near-term projects feasible.
The most recent of these, a 167-apartment complex at 788 San Antonio Road, epitomizes Palo Alto’s transportation conundrum. Even though the San Antonio area is often characterized as car-centric, developer Grubb Properties has proposed just 74 parking spaces for its apartments, along with 167 bike parking spaces. Its transportation plan also calls for seven rideshare vehicles, having an on-site transportation coordinator and potentially working with the city and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to create a bus stop on the block.
While Grubb expects its transportation measures to reduce parking demand, the city’s Planning and Transportation Commission greeted the development plan with skepticism. During an April 8 review, the commission voted 3-2 to advance the project to the Architectural Review Board, with Vice Chair Bryna Chang and Commissioner Kevin Ji both dissenting (commissioners Cari Templeton and Todd James were absent).
Joan Larabee, who lives in the Greenhouse condominium community on San Antonio Road, characterized San Antonio Road in its present state as a “a parking lot.” Biking is not safe and there are no bus stops on the road, she noted.
“My main concern is I find it hard to believe that a lot of people will not want to have a car,” Larabee said. “They will park on other people’s property.”
Several commissioners shared her concerns. Chang noted that San Antonio Road currently consists of four lanes with “essentially no amenities.” She said she was not confident that the transportation changes that the developer is hoping for will materialize within their timeframe.
“That’s really one of the challenges here. We have a much larger transportation problem,” Chang said.
Commission Chair Allen Akin called project’s parking and transportation-demand-management plans “unrealistic” and suggested that parking will be “the single-largest concern” that the commission have to deal with when the project returns for its next review. Ji concurred and noted that the only two bus stops in the area are both on Charleston Road.
Ji called the segment of San Antonio where the city is preparing to build the new residential neighborhood a “transit desert.”
“There’s two bus stops with very limited frequencies for this area, and the parking concerns are pretty significant to me,” Ji said.
The project at 788 San Antonio is one of several that the city is evaluating in the segment of San Antonio near the U.S. Highway 101. Planners are also reviewing a proposed 175-condominium complex on an adjacent site, 800 San Antonio Road, and a 228-apartment complex at 762 San Antonio Road.
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