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For years, Mountain View has been planning to build a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over Highway 101 in North Bayshore. That project is now on hold although the city still plans to forge ahead with bicycle and pedestrian improvements on Shoreline Boulevard.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council passed a consent item Tuesday evening to appropriate $58,707 for a “study report” to close out a bridge project. The initiative is no longer considered a priority, as commute patterns and office market conditions in North Bayshore have changed since the pandemic.
With the recent appropriation, the total budget for the report and preliminary design of the bridge amounts to $791,215.
“It’s fully appropriate that we need to be flexible as conditions change,” Council member Pat Showalter said at a Nov. 4 council meeting. “I’m very supportive of this change, but I do hope that in the future we’ll see the need for this bike bridge and be able to put it in.”
The study will document work that has already been done to design the bridge and will identify “unreconciled” issues to make it easier for the city to resume the project in the future, according to the council report.
However, Council member John McAlister was skeptical that the bridge was a good investment for the city – along with bicycle lanes more generally.
“There are a lot of projects that we want to get done, but I think we need to be more prudent about the cost-benefit of putting in these bike lanes when there’s not a big demand for them,” he said.
While construction of the bridge has been deferred, the city plans to continue moving forward with other Shoreline Boulevard road improvements, which will be carried out in three phases.
Phase one
The first phase of road improvements will focus on bicycle and pedestrian safety and utility work on Shoreline Boulevard between Pear Avenue and West Middlefield Road. The city plans to install protected bike lanes and intersections as well as updated sidewalks, modified traffic signals and new landscaping, according to the council report.
The design work is nearly finished for phase one and construction is anticipated to begin in the spring, taking about 18 months to complete. Most of the construction will occur at night to avoid impacting peak commute times on Shoreline Boulevard, the report said.
Phase two
The second phase will focus on a feasibility study for interim pedestrian and bicycle improvements on Shoreline Boulevard at the Highway 101 interchange. The council report describes the potential for a two-way bicycle path to be installed where the median currently sits on the bridge over Highway 101 between Terra Bella Avenue and the La Avenida Street or Pear Avenue intersection.
According to the council report, the placement of the bicycle path along the median would avoid on- and off-ramp conflicts with vehicles using the freeway. Bicyclists would have access to the median via intersection improvements constructed during phase one.
City staff plan to introduce the feasibility study in the spring when the City Council is considering its capital improvement projects.
Phase three
The third phase will focus on constructing a median bus lane on Shoreline Boulevard. No date has been set for when this phase might happen, because the city plans to wait until the conditions in North Bayshore support more transit use, according to the council report.
Other road improvements that would be added at that time would include median barriers and curbs to separate opposing traffic lanes, a bus stop platform, and transit signals and signs, the report said.
The deferred pedestrian and bicycle bridge project would resume in tandem with the bus lane improvements, with the bridge expected to replace the interim bike lane proposed for phase two. A specific timeline has not been set for the project, according to a council memo.
Once there is a bus lane….developers can build 9 story buildings within a quarter mile. That’s the new law.
Enjoy!
Great!
That’s an interesting point, but not necessarily true. The relevant definition of bus rapid transit includes other required criteria, such as all-door boarding.
California Public Resources Code § 21060.2 (2024) :: 2024 California Code :: U.S. Codes and Statutes :: U.S. Law :: Justia https://share.google/QIUkvnMG4G2XO0hz4
Improving the cycling safety of shoreline seems like a more pragmatic approach. I cross here all the time and it’s not unsafe, but it’s very very busy.
Sadly, neither the agenda item listing nor the provided documentation made it clear (to the public who may not be used to the wording) that this effectively kills the project. It sounded more like this was a step forward in the project.
“Acting as the City Council and Board of Directors of the Shoreline Regional Park Community, authorize the City Manager and Community Manager, or their respective designees, to amend the professional services agreement with Biggs Cardosa Associates, Inc., a California corporation (Entity No. 1293239), for Shoreline Boulevard at Highway 101 Bicycle/Pedestrian Bridge, Preliminary Design, Project 16-60, to add $58,707 for additional project close-out services, for a total not-to-exceed amount of $791,215. The total cost of preliminary design for the project will be funded 100% by the Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund.”
I want to know how many of these decision makers are bike riders. Did we ever need a new pedestrian bridge here? You already have within half a mile, the Permanente creek trail to the west and the Stevens creek trail to the east, which have respectively, a bridge and underpass to get across 101.
On protected bike lanes with those weird looking barriers, it’s not clear to me they improve bike safety at all.
As a driver who’s trying to make a right into a driveway, it’s harder for me to see the correct driveway, and to spot riders I don’t want to cut off.
As a rider I need to watch out for cars that may cut me off because they never saw me. And when there are cars that encroach into the bike lane while waiting to turn into the street, ili can get squeezed between the barricades and the car.
And why have we decided to wage war on car use on shoreline? We already have Castro mostly closed off to car traffic to take you from El Camino to Central. Why this desire to choke off the one 3-lane artery that takes cars from El Camino to Central and then on to 101?
This isn’t a bad outcome… if there is ever a time when development resumes north of 101 around Google we can pick up the discussion again.
That being said, it’s never been clear the two existing and (perfectly fine, underutilized) bike trails were inadequate. If you live anywhere on the downtown of Shoreline, simply keep taking the Stevens Creek bike trails into North Shoreline. And if you live anywhere on the RengstorffSan Antonio side of Shoreline, simply keep taking the Permanente Creek bike trails into North Shoreline.
Even years from now if development ever picks up again in North Shoreline, we may conclude what we already know: Current demand (and likely future demand) is already being met by those two routes.
So the Stevens creek trail 1/4 mile away is not good enough for the bikes or people to use ?
It’s farther than 1/4 mile, and no, it’s not good enough.
0.45 miles to be precise. At almost identical distance is the Permanente Creek trail, west of Shoreline. Are both not good enough? It’s about 2 extra minutes at moderate biking speed.
It seems like the decision to shelve the Bike and Pedestrian Bridge had already been made over a year ago when the Council also shelved the reversible bus lane project; this was based on lower than projected traffic and the bridge funds having been reallocated to other projects.
The consent item action taking by the Council was to formally close the Bridge project (which involves proper documentation of the project in case conditions change and the project is revived).