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After months of debate, state officials are preparing to break ground in early September on a major repaving project along El Camino Real, an effort that will include removal of parking spaces, installation of bike lanes throughout Palo Alto, and relocation of dozens of RVs from the state road.
According to the state Department of Transportation, which is spearheading the repaving project, work will begin in the north part of the Palo Alto segment, near Sand Hill Road, and proceed south over the subsequent months. Later this month, Caltrans will be installing changeable message signs at multiple locations on El Camino, as well as “No Parking” signs along the corridor.
According to Caltrans, vehicles will no longer be allowed to park along El Camino Real starting the week of Sept. 3. Most of the work will take place at night, between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., and will require lane closures. Caltrans plans to complete the $30.9 million repaving project in Palo Alto and Mountain View by fall 2025, according to the agency.
While Palo Alto residents and officials have long clamored for El Camino improvements, Caltrans caught the city by surprise last year when it announced that its repaving plan will include installation of bike lanes and elimination of more than 500 parking spaces in the city. Many bike advocates have cheered this road modification, which they argued will strengthen the regional bike network and make cycling safer. Critics of the project, including local cyclists and council members, have been arguing that El Camino will remain an unwelcoming place for bicycles and that losing parking spaces could hurt local businesses.
To address the parking concerns, the Palo Alto City Council this week approved changes to the Residential Preferential Parking programs to accommodate employees near the Evergreen Park and Southgate neighborhoods who have been parking on El Camino Real. They will now be able to buy permits to park in residential streets.
Next week, the council will take an action to address another constituency that relies on El Camino parking spaces: people who live in RVs along El Camino. According to a report from the office of City Manager Ed Shikada, there were 21 RVs or campers and 16 cars with residents parked along El Camino Real in June. Outreach workers connected with 35 people, including 14 children, who live in these vehicles, according to the report.
To accommodate some of them, the city is preparing to expand the “safe parking” site at 2000 Geng Road, which currently accommodates 12 RVs (or two cars per space) and which would now have capacity for 22 RVs. The site, which is near the Baylands, is being operated by the nonprofit Move Mountain View and includes a kitchen, a library, laundry facilities and case workers who work with residents to find permanent homes.
To accommodate more vehicles, the safe parking area would expand to encompass an adjacent area that had been most recently used for staging activities for utility projects, according to city staff.
“Expansion of the services-rich Geng Road site means the additional clients will have direct access to already-established services,” the staff report states. “Additionally, from a service provider perspective, this will allow for a smoother set-up and operation by the service provider who can leverage resources to enhance existing facilities.”
The move won’t be cheap. While Santa Clara County currently provides most of the funding for the safe parking program at Geng Road, the city will have to kick in about $266,162 annually for operations in the expanded area, according to the report. The city is also preparing to lease an 0.86 acre site in Mountain View to serve as the Utilities Department’s staging area once the Geng Road site is not available.
Currently, the Utilities Department is leasing the Geng Road site, which it uses for staging of the advanced meter infrastructure (commonly known as “smart meters”) for $3,064 per month. The Mountain View site would cost more than 10 times as much, $35,639, according to Shikada. Ultimately, the city is hoping to buy the site, which has an estimated cost of about $8 million. Shikada’s report notes that it can be used for the smart meter project as well as staging for current utility materials and future projects.
Next week’s expected approval of the Geng Road site expansion is just the latest in a flurry of actions that the council has taken in response to Caltrans’ decision to install bike lanes. Between April and June, city staff and council members negotiated with Caltrans to make a host of modifications to the bike plan, including wider bike lanes, narrower vehicle lanes and more barriers separating bikes from cars.
The revised plan also includes restriction on right turns along El Camino, a key change given Caltran’s finding that most of the crashes occur at intersections. Right turns on red light will be prohibited at El Camino intersections near school corridors, including Arastradero Road, Page Mill Road and Churchill Avenue.
Caltrans has opted to install bike lanes on El Camino to comply with a recently adopted state policy that encourages increasing safety for all modes of transportation. Its data showed 33 collisions involving bicyclists between 2016 and 2020 in the project area, with 32 injuries and one fatality.
While members of City Council had initially questioned whether enticing more cyclists to El Camino would actually reduce crashes, most of them also acknowledged that Caltrans owns the El Camino corridor and has the power to pursue the bike lane project with or without the city’s support.
“We didn’t have a great deal of leverage, and yet we have a drastically improved outcome as a result of the council’s initiative on this,” Council member Pat Burt, who served on a committee that negotiated modifications with Caltrans, said at the June 18 meeting, shortly before the council voted to support the project.
Vice Mayor Ed Lauing, who also served on the El Camino committee, noted at the June hearing that Caltrans and other transportation agencies had also agreed to consider other safety measures for future implementation, including flashing lights at the backs of buses that would turn on when the buses are pulling over, warning bicyclists to go around them.
“Over time, when it’s not conflicting with their paving project that’s on a special timeline, they’ll work with us some more to get a better situation out there,” Lauing said.
It appears that this article covers only Palo Alto. When will the repaving of El Camino Real begin in Mountain View? Estimate?