Palo Alto set to rule on El Camino bike lanes

Palo Alto will have a rare chance to dramatically transform one of its main thoroughfares on April 1, when the City Council considers a proposal to remove parking spaces all along El Camino Real to make way for bike lanes.

But as the council nears one of its biggest transportation decisions of the year, city officials continue to face a thorny dilemma: Should they support a design that many consider to be imperfect and that their consultants say fails to comply with the city’s newly adopted “safe systems” approach? Or should they oppose the project and effectively ensure that El Camino Real won’t see any major bike improvements for four or more years.

The proposal from the state Department of Transportation has galvanized both significant support and vociferous skepticism from local bicyclists and city officials since Caltrans unveiled it last year. Both were in evidence over the past month, as Caltrans officials made their case at public meetings that replacing parking spaces with bike lanes would improve El Camino.

According to Caltrans’ analysis, there were 20 crashes on El Camino in Palo Alto between 2016 and 2020 that resulted in injuries and one fatal collision.

Yet a recent review by the city’s consultant Fehr & Peers found that the project fails to comply with some of the principles of the “safe system” approach, which seeks to minimize the number and severity of injuries related to collisions and which both Caltrans and the city have embraced. Specifically, the review faulted the plan for failing to account for high speeds of motorists along El Camino, which create a hazard for cyclists at intersections and which would continue to pose “significant risks to vulnerable road users.”

The review puts the city in a bit of a bind. While the city hopes to bring safety improvements to its network of high-injury roads — which includes El Camino — as part of an ongoing effort to upgrade its bike master plan, it hopes to do so on its own pace. And as those who use the Charleston-Arastradero corridor can testify, Palo Alto’s pace can feel glacial. The city’s phased plan for improving the heavily used road has been stretching for well over a decade and is still not entirely completed.

While Caltrans has authority over El Camino, which is a state highway, Caltrans officials had assured the city that if the state agency does not get local support for the bike lanes, it would continue to work with local officials on a new plan. But in recent hearings, Caltrans also made it clear that without advancing the current project, which is tied to a broader effort to repave El Camino, delays could jeopardize the project.

If the city were to decide in the future that it wants bike lanes on El Camino, Caltrans would need to look for a new funding source, officials said. And even once this source is identified, the agency would have to start all over with planning and designing.

“Even if we are able to secure the funding, it will take us like four year to develop the project to install bike lanes in the future,” said Aung Maung, senior transportation engineer at Caltrans, at a March 13 meeting of the Planning Transportation Commission and the Human Relations Commission.

Yet moving ahead poses its own risks, city officials say. Council member Pat Burt, who attended the Feb. 29 community hearing that Caltrans hosted to discuss the project, told this publication after the meeting that he remains unconvinced that the proposal from Caltrans would actually make El Camino safer and reduce the number of collisions. He noted that the city has many safer bike routes, including Park Boulevard, and questioned the benefits of attracting more cyclists to El Camino.

Planning Commissioner Keith Reckdahl similarly touted the superiority of Park over El Camino at a recent discussion of the Caltrans project. He also exemplified the city’s ambivalent attitude toward the project. He said he loves bike lanes but noted that many factors remain unresolved, including impacts on local businesses that don’t have off-site parking.

“It seems like we’re rushing things and I’m always worried about rushing things and not making informed decisions,” Reckdahl said.

Others were more excited about the proposal. Planning Commissioner George Lu said that while he was concerned about some aspects of the design, including bike lanes that disappear in certain segments of El Camino, the project would overall benefit the community.

“I think the net ridership on ridership will be positive,” Lu said at the March 13 discussion. “I think there are a lot of use cases where bike lanes on El Camino are different bike lanes from Park — people who ride their bikes on the bus, people who live on El Camino or maybe have multiple destinations along El Camino and don’t want to circuitously detour.”

Human Relations Commission Kaloma Smith, a supporter of the Caltrans plan, said he was struck by the inconsistency between the city’s vision, which is all for bike improvements, and its cautious attitude toward actually implementing projects. He supported moving ahead with the bike plan, its imperfections notwithstanding, and called the Caltrans plan an opportunity to further the city’s values.

“When you start putting bike lanes and other commuter-friendly things on main intersections, you will start generating more opportunities for economic activity,” Smith said. “Also, if you connect to regional bike options, you now create equity because essential workers who are taking the VTA bus can now ride. … So it’s an equity issue.”

A new report from the city’s Office of Transportation lays out four options for the city council to consider on April 1, three of which would delay (and potentially derail) the project. It could adopt the Caltrans approach and remove parking spaces while acknowledging that more improvements would need to be made to align with the “safe systems” approach; defer action until Caltrans plans compliance with “safe system” principles; defer action until Caltrans considers reducing travel lanes on El Camino (which is not part of the current scope of work); or defer action to align the El Camino decisions with the completion of the city’s bike plan upgrade, which is slated for late 2025.

The report from Chief Transportation Official Philip Kamhi also notes that there remains some uncertainty over whether the council will even have the final say over the bike lane project.

“While Caltrans staff have consistently expressed a desire to collaborate with the City on improving safety on El Camino Real, to date, Caltrans has not stated if it will implement the proposed bicycle lanes without a Council vote to support the removal of parking,” Kamhi’s report states. “Caltrans has established that a bicycle facility is needed on El Camino Real based on a safety analysis. Given the safety and complete street policies that now govern state transportation planning, it is unclear if Caltrans will re-pave El Camino Real without adding a bicycle facility, regardless of City support.”