|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A project to add bike lanes in a part of Mountain View that is slated to gain hundreds of new homes looks like it will be put on hold for years, if not indefinitely.
The City Council directed city staff last week to shelve a plan that would put in bike lanes on Terra Bella Avenue after Council member Lucas Ramirez raised concerns that the lanes were being used as “a pretext for getting rid of the RVs.”
Terra Bella Avenue lies just south of U.S. Highway 101 in an area with a lot of office and industrial buildings. It is one of a handful of streets in Mountain View that is not covered by city ordinances prohibiting RV parking. Because it is wide and has no bike lanes, RVs can park for 72 hours before being required to relocate. Putting in bike lanes would trigger the city’s oversized vehicle ban, effectively pushing RVs off of the street.
Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour confirmed at the April 14 meeting that oversized vehicles, including inhabited RVs, had drawn the ire of surrounding businesses, with many property owners participating in city outreach meetings about the “potential use and need for bike lanes” in the area.
“There are a number of large property owners and businesses on Terra Bella that have contacted the city with concern about traffic safety, the circulation for their employees coming to and leaving their sites,” Seymour said.
Last October, the city posted a survey to gather public input on a proposal to add bike lanes to Terra Bella Avenue. The survey noted that the project was still in the early stages and not yet funded for design or construction. Respondents were also encouraged to participate in a city advisory committee meeting at the end of October to share comments about the project. But city records show that meeting was canceled.
At last week’s council meeting, Public Works Director Jennifer Ng said that the Terra Bella bike lane project had already been “put to the side” due to staff constraints, even though the city had hired a consultant for it.
Currently, Mountain View has three vacant transportation positions, with just two planners left on the payroll to manage a large number of transportation projects, according to city staff.
The dearth of transportation staff concerned Ramirez, who pushed to eliminate the Terra Bella bike lane project, citing a need to focus on higher priority areas like Miramonte Avenue, Moffett Boulevard, Shoreline Boulevard and Middlefield Road.
“We’ve really struggled with transportation planning in part because we don’t have enough people,” Ramirez said. “We have two of five, and I think our attempt to try and get all of the things through has not worked because we don’t have the capacity to do it.”
But it was not just the lack of staff that prompted Ramirez to speak out against the bike lanes. He also noted the broader implications of what it would mean for people living in vehicles.
“I’m a little sad that we said the quiet part out loud that the bike lane is the pretext for getting rid of the RVs,” he said.
Mayor Emily Ann Ramos and council member Alison Hicks expressed support for axing the project, although Ramos noted that she was open to a discussion about deferring it instead.
“It feels kind of weird to kill a bikeway,” Ramos said.
While agreeing that the city had higher priority projects, Council member Chris Clark argued against eliminating the Terra Bella bike lane project entirely. That area is slated for major residential growth, with plans for a 108-unit affordable housing development at 1020 Terra Bella Ave. and a 303-unit housing project at 1001 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Clark said he would like to see bike lanes that could connect future residents to other parts of the city. He also voiced concerns that the RVs would be a traffic safety hazard for people living in the area, once the housing projects got built.
“I would not want to be a resident there who is strongly encouraged to bike, walk through all those things,” Clark said. “I can’t do that on what ends up being a very busy street, especially a couple of times a day with lines of RVs where you’re forced to just go with traffic.”
Similarly, Council member Pat Showalter expressed concerns about eliminating the project, agreeing with Clark that the bike lanes would be a good resource for future residents. She also noted that some work had already been done on the project, making it more feasible for staff to keep going once they had the capacity to do so.
“From our point of view, nobody’s clamoring for it, and yet on the other hand, if work has started, that’s important,” she said.
Ultimately, the council directed city staff to hold off on the Terra Bella bike lane project without specifying how long to keep it on the backburner, instead leaving it to staff’s discretion.
“I think we should just defer to the judgment of the public works staff about when to provide resources to it,” Showalter said. “I don’t think we need to do that from the dais.”
The city lets developers build apts with minimum parking and assumes people will bike.
And then they kill plans to build bike lanes to support planned apts.
Good job!
1001 N. Shoreline is already 2/3 complete with the Avelle Apartments (200 units). The 100 condos seem to be on hold. An additional 200 units of affordable housing have already been approved on Terra Bella, and 38 townhomes were recently approved on San Leandro Ave, with another townhome project being planned for San Raphael Ave. A new park is also planned for San Raphael Ave. And still some council members want to prioritize a handful of people living in vehicles?
Good comment
A bike lane to nowhere? Doesn’t Terra Bella end at a soundwall, requiring back-tracking through a neighborhood to get past 85? How can that ever become a path through the city.
A bike lane is needed there.
If the lanes are not put in, bike riders will be run over in the future.
If someone gets run over it is because the city council made that choice and accepts responsibility for it.