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Popular but polarizing, car-free California Avenue is now officially permanent.
Nearly five years after Palo Alto officials first approved the closure of Palo Alto’s “second downtown” to cars to foster an outdoor dining scene during the pandemic, they took action on Monday to ensure that it will remain pedestrian-centric in perpetuity.
By a unanimous vote, the City Council revised the city’s land-use bible, the Comprehensive Plan, and approved the environmental analysis that was required to cement the car-free status of two prominent commercial areas: A 200-foot segment of Ramona Street between University and Hamilton avenues and the stretch of California Avenue between El Camino Real and Birch Street.
The change follows years of incremental zoning revisions and intermittent debates about the future of both streets, which typically ended with the council temporarily extending the car-free status of each. With its Monday actions, the council signaled that this debate is effectively over. Ashwini Kantak, special projects adviser in the city manager’s office, noted that the Monday change will allow staff to make further improvements to the two streets.
“Right now, the challenge is that because it’s a temporary closure, we have not been able to update any of the signage, so we anticipate if council approves that action in front of you today, we’ll be able to do that as part of improvements and have clear signage that indicates there’s no thoroughfare on that street. …,” Kantak said of Cal Ave.
The move to close both streets to car traffic was both popular and contentious. Surveys by the city showed the vast majority of respondents favoring the closure of both streets to cars. A report from the office of City Manager Ed Shikada noted that 79% of the survey respondents supported keeping Cal Ave. car-free and 70% felt the same way about Ramona Street.
While the city is in both cases trying to encourage outdoor dining and retail vibrancy, the two streets will carry different functions and designation. The council’s revision to the Comprehensive Plan creates two new street types: a “pedestrian” street, where cars, bikes and skateboards are forbidden, and a “community” street, which allow cycling and which remain accessible to commercial vehicles during special events. Car-free Ramona Street would be the former; car-free Cal Ave., the latter.
Not everyone is celebrating the change. On Ramona Street, numerous property owners came out swinging against the proposal to keep the street car-free in perpetuity. Developer Roxy Rapp was among them. He claimed in a letter to the council that cutting off car access creates hazardous conditions on the block just outside the closed-off area.
“The major problem is there is not enough space to accommodate cars entering and exiting the garage, needing to go down the alley, nor adequate space for cars attempting to park above grade,” Rapp wrote.
Elizabeth Wong, a property owner on Ramona Street has opposed the imposition of the car-free status, noting that the street was closed to cars abruptly because of a health emergency and without sufficient feedback from property owners. She also lamented the loss of parking that the street closure entails.
Attorney David Lanferman also criticized the city’s move and suggested in a letter that the city has failed to justify its determination that the closure of Ramona Street would not cause significant environmental impacts.
“The city should not, and cannot legally, continue to put the Ramona Street community in ‘limbo,'” Lanferman wrote.
Others strongly supported the closure of both streets. Nancy Coupal, owner of Coupa Café in the car-free segment of Ramona, said the closure of the street to cars has been a great success and urged the council not to let a few landlords call the shots.
“The issue is not whether pedestrian-friendly streets are viable and beneficial – they clearly are,” Coupal said. “The real challenge lies with certain building owners who resist progress, failing to see the immense benefits a walkable, community-oriented environment can bring.”
Council member Keith Reckdahl acknowledged the very strong feelings on both sides of the issue. The vast majority of his neighbors really like the street closures, he said.
“But there’s strong feelings on both sides,” Reckdahl said. “The ones that don’t like it really don’t like it, and the ones that like it really do.”
The Monday action comes just days before the city is set to break ground on the first phase of improvements on Cal Ave. These include repaving the street, adding bike lanes and replacing plastic orange barriers at the entry points to the car-free zone with bollards and planters. The project was set to kick off last month but was delayed when the bollards were held up in customs inspections as they were being shipped from Vietnam to Long Beach.
The one thing that just about everyone agrees on is that Cal. Ave. has been in limbo for too long. Even though the street has been closed to cars since June 2020, the city has yet to approve a uniformed design for parklet, improve landscaping replace the aged monument sign at the El Camino entrance. Michael Ekwall, co-owner of the restaurant La Bodeguita del Medio, said in an interview he has been frustrated by the city’s pace and its failure to consider objections from business owners who are skeptical about the streets car-free status.
One objection he had with the current plan is the staff proposal to allow biking on Cal Ave., with a speed limit of 15 mph. This, he argued, would create a safety hazard.
“There’s so many close calls where pedestrians walk across the street,” Ekwall said. “Even though the city has signs to walk their bikes, nobody walks. I don’t have a lot of faith that it will be done correctly.”
The council agreed, with numerous members stressing the need to lower the speed limit and Mayor Ed Lauing suggesting that bike traffic be moved from Cal Ave. to Cambridge Ave., which runs parallel to the street. Council members ultimately approved Council member Pat Burt’s proposal to set the speed limit for cyclists to 8 mph.
Burt noted that the Monday action is just a preliminary step toward greater improvements later this year. Staff is scheduled to bring back in a few months a proposal for permanent parklet designs. City officials are also working with consultants to refine a broader plan for activating the street and giving it a distinct identity. The council, he said, has been “anxiously awaiting” the required environmental review that will enable the future improvements.
“I think that’s going to be really exciting,” Burt said.
It will also be quite difficult, Reckdahl suggested.
“We need to do a full-court press to make it work. There are a lot of challenges – keeping it clean and keeping it orderly. This is not the end of the project. This is the beginning,” Reckdahl said.
