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Mountain View is taking steps to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety on Middlefield Road, a major thoroughfare that has been identified as a high risk corridor for vehicle collisions.
The Council Transportation Committee weighed in on proposed upgrades to the corridor Tuesday evening, backing a city staff recommendation to put in protected bike lanes, high visibility crosswalks and modified curb ramps. They also supported a proposal to prohibit vehicle parking in existing bike lanes, which is currently allowed at certain times.
A community request to put in a “road diet” that would reduce the number of driving lanes on Middlefield Road, however, did not gain the committee’s support – a notable departure from other projects in the city. In the past few years, road diets have been planned for Miramonte Avenue, Moffett Boulevard, and El Monte Avenue and implemented on California Street.
“We still need those major corridors to get people from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills to 101,” Council member John McAlister said, expressing general opposition to road diets at the May 5 meeting. “They need to be able to keep moving.”
In Mountain View, Middlefield Road covers about 3.6 miles and is the only city-owned street that runs continuously between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. Currently, the corridor is a four-lane street with two vehicle lanes in each direction. Bike lanes run the full length of the road and on-street parking is allowed between Moffett Boulevard and Whisman Road on weekends and on weekdays between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m.
The Middlefield improvement project covers only a portion of the road, roughly 1.6 miles from Moffett Boulevard to Bernardo Avenue near the Sunnyvale border. The city is planning to put in protected bike lanes along the entire segment, requiring the removal of on-street parking, according to the staff report.
The proposal drew support from Council members Alison Hicks and Ellen Kamei, who encouraged city staff to take out the on-street parking as quickly as possible to improve bicycle safety. They also voiced support for reducing the driving speeds on Middlefield Road. The legal limit is 35 mph, but drivers often go faster. Hicks noted this was partly a function of the street design and advocated for reducing the width of vehicle lane and adding buffers and green elements.
“You get the impression this is kind of like a freeway and I should be going 40 or 50 (mph) and honestly, that is the feeling I get when I’m there,” Hicks said. “I want to give people the feeling that they should be going slow.”
Other improvements to Middlefield Road include repaving and putting in high-visibility crosswalks, accessible pedestrian signal buttons and curb ramp upgrades at intersections. At the Tyrella Avenue intersection, the city plans to install a pedestrian-activated flashing beacon.
No road diet, for now
On the whole, the Council Transportation Committee supported the concept design for Middlefield Road, including a city staff recommendation to not pursue a road diet.
The staff report described Middlefield Road as a highly trafficked corridor that would experience a high amount of backups at intersections if a road diet was introduced. The report also noted that a road diet would push drivers onto other streets, causing backups elsewhere in the city, potentially hindering emergency response services.
Public commenters urged the committee to consider the positive impacts of vehicle lane reallocations, noting that a road diet, or even just narrowing the lanes, would help slow down speeding drivers.
“What other things can we do that maybe isn’t a full road diet of removing a lane, but instead making the lanes narrower where it is safe to do so?” said Valerie Fenwick, a former bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee member.
Some commenters also questioned why a road diet was not evaluated earlier in the concept design process. Part of the reason city staff are not evaluating the option of a road diet further is because it could potentially impact a grant funding deadline. The Santa Clara County Valley Transportation Agency awarded the city roughly $2.4 million for the project, and delays could cause the city to lose the funding, according to staff.
Community members from local advocacy groups, like the Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning and GreenSpacesMV, expressed dismay about the timing issue, urging the city to incorporate more foresight earlier on in future design processes. They also encouraged city staff to consult with VTA about extending the funding deadline.
“Our main concern is not simply whether a road diet is chosen,” members wrote in a letter to the city. “It is whether Mountain View’s project development process supports lane reallocations – including lane narrowing and road diets – early enough to deliver green complete streets.”
Council member McAlister was not swayed, however, and argued that road diets and more bicycle lanes were not the best use of the city’s limited resources.
“We still have a silent majority out there that I sort of represent,” he said. “I need to get from point A to point B, and I want to get there efficiently and safely. I don’t see a large percentage of the city (bicycling).”
Community members pushed back on this view, arguing that more people would use the bike lanes on Middlefield Road if they were safer to use.
“The traffic count on this road is not very high but that’s because biking in that bike lane sucks,” said a Middlefield Road resident. “It’s dangerous to use this lane because there’s always cars parked in it, and always people popping out of driveways. You’re not going to know the actual natural traffic level in that bike lane until normal people feel safe biking.”
We have some very safe bikeways that have been built, that are rarely used. Steven’s creek carry’s less than 100 people an hour at its peak. Across sunnyvale and Palo Alto, the bikeways are not used. The build it and they will come argument has lost steam with me. We are not Paris or Stanford’s campus and never will be.