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Construction is now underway to add protected bike lanes, high-visibility crosswalks and other safety improvements to a 1.4-mile stretch of California Street in Mountain View. The city plans to reduce driving lanes from two to one in each direction to make room for the additions.
Work began last month on the roughly $6 million pilot project, which will run along California Street from Showers Drive to S. Shoreline Boulevard. The city expects that construction will be completed by the fall.
The city plans to add protected bike lanes along the full length of the project. Either side of the road would include a bike lane, followed by a buffered area, a parking lane and then the driving lane. To provide clear sight lines at driveways and intersections, about 63 out of the current 275 on-street parking spaces will be removed.
The project will also include a “road diet,” removing one lane of vehicle traffic in each direction.
There will now be a single driving lane in each direction, plus a center left-turn lane from Showers Drive to Mariposa Avenue. Between Mariposa and Shoreline, there won’t be a center lane because an existing median with trees will remain in place.
According to the city’s website, the project is meant “to enhance safety, eliminate fatal or severe injury crashes, and increase the number of sustainable trips.” California Street is included on the city’s “high injury network,” which refers to the roads with highest rates of severe injury and fatal crashes.
In addition to the changes to bike and car lanes, the project will include a number of other safety improvements. Among them are high-visibility crosswalks, protected intersections that separate bikes from vehicle traffic and temporary bulb-outs that add protected space at corners.
The city will also add three high-visibility midblock crossings, which will include bulb-outs, refuge islands and enhanced lighting, according to the city. The new crossings will be located between Showers Drive and Ortega Avenue, Ortega Avenue and Rengstorff Avenue, and Rengstorff Avenue and Escuela Avenue.
The new bike lanes will be separated from the parked cars by a five-foot buffered area. The city plans to test out different options to fill this area, including flex posts, small oval-shaped bumps called “armadillos” and planter boxes.
As a pilot program, the city will use certain “non-permanent treatment measures” and will assess the results of the pilot one year after construction is complete, city spokesperson Lenka Wright said.
Installing permanent improvements isn’t currently funded and is expected to be a “significant cost,” Wright added. The city has previously estimated that the permanent build-out could cost $30 million.
During construction of the pilot project, the city has said that some traffic disruptions should be expected, including lane closures.
Brilliant idea, approve 7 story apartment buildings around the area, then cut it down to 1 lane. We all know the delivery trucks, maintenance trucks, moving vans, car carriers, tow trucks(for repairing cars), and Uber pickups will not use the single lane because parking spots will be plentiful after the changes and increased population.
Only in Mountain View can you have intersection where your Tesla will shut down while in traffic because it thinks you forgot to put it in park (after 10 minutes of inactivity – Rengstorff/Crisanto is one of the intersections – only takes 3 train traffic skips). Or where you can slow emergency vehicles by 2 minutes by adding multiple massive speed bumps that aren’t notched (Villa street but keep the speed limit of 30 MPH so newbies lose control/damage their vehicle). We’ll be famous with all the congestion we will cause by these continued changes; as we know already when you make unreasonable changes/delays to traffic you get unreasonable responses from drivers/pedestrians tired of waiting for the crosswalk to work. 0 Vision will be a smashing success! As for the “road diet”, I still see the same amount of Asphalt used; reminds me of a “see” food diet.
All local cities facing this same set of problems have two easy, effective, quick wins that rarely get talked about. Together, they likely reduce the accident rate 15% to 25%:
a) Outlaw black clothing at night for riders. Direct MVPD and PAPD to actually enforce the ordinance. Why do we continue to enable the poorest decisions any rider can make, the ‘cloak of invisibility’ referred to for example in our local Reddit bike chat groups?
Regulated hours would have to extend beyond simple ‘night hours,’ since sunlight coming in sideways in the two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset creates a mottled shade/sun/shade road condition that very effectively camouflages riders. Coyotes hunt during those hours for a reason.
The Tech Bro uniform gets riders hurt, yet the human nature of conformism is powerful. We will never achieve Vision Zero by only focusing on infrastruction while ignoring black clothing at night and during twilight.
b) It’s clear the worst friction points are our very big, scary, ferocious intersections. Easy Safety Win #2 is pass an ordinance that riders must dismount and walk their bikes in the crosswalk as pedestrians, with the full range of protections that the existing pedestrian crossing systems provide.
This doesn’t have to be at every intersection or driveway, but a carefully crafted list of hyper-dangerous spots informed by up-to-date accident data. At a minimum, it has to include the below.
(This used to be a core part of youth bike training, but is largely lost today. Dumb, very dumb.)
Bicycle activists need to consider this next part before reflexively throwing up on the idea: IMHO the two 1year olds who died at Grant/El Camino in MV and at California Ave/El Camino in PA, and the young woman killed at Embarcadero/Newell would still be alive today if this protocol was still heavily trained into our youth’s safety mindset. The kid injured in February at Middlefield/San Antonio would have stood a better chance dismounted, and walking their bike as a pedestrian. Same story a half-decade ago when a rider my age was wiped out in the middle of the day at San Antonio/El Camino.
When your hair is standing on end, listen to your instincts… dismount and go stand on the sidewalk. When the pedestrian crossing light comes on, cross as a pedestrian!
It’s a big mistake that all our civic conversation centers on design and construction, but ignores behavior and training.
Why would we not bank the low-hanging fruit first – get a quick reduction in accident numbers – and only then spend a ton of money on hardscape?