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Mountain View’s redesign of California Street is garnering mixed reviews, with residents split over the move to reduce driving lanes and parking to make way for new protected bike lanes.
Work on the roughly $6 million pilot project began in March 2025. The city removed one driving lane in each direction on California Street from Showers Drive to South Shoreline Boulevard and installed parking-protected bike lanes on either side of the road. Mountain View also added crosswalks in the middle of some blocks and removed 63 of the road’s previous 275 parking spots to create clearer sight lines at driveways and near intersections.
California Street is identified as a high injury corridor in Mountain View’s 2024 Vision Zero Action Plan. According to Terry Barton, who sits on the city’s Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee, a string of three fatalities between 2010 and 2012 intensified calls to make the street safer.
“The reaction was, ‘Hey, we had three people in a short amount of time killed, something needed to be done,’” Barton said. “And it’s clear, the traffic volumes and the street design didn’t agree in terms of having four wide lanes that induced high levels of speed.”
However, not everyone views the pilot project as an improvement. Multiple California Street residents told the Voice that the reduction in parking spaces has made it harder to find a spot on an already busy street. Some residents report that the traffic has worsened, with fewer and narrower lanes forcing drivers to slow down, and particular problems arising when a lane is blocked by slow moving vehicles or car accidents.
For Lisa Hirsch, who lives in an apartment on California Street and has a disabled parking placard, the parking-protected bike lanes have posed a particular problem. The new setup, in which cars park between the bike lane and vehicle lane, has worsened visibility for cars entering and exiting driveways, Hirsch said.
“My life and my family are at risk every time we need to leave our apartment,” Hirsch said via text message. “The streets need to go back the way it was.”
Evaluating California Street changes
Now that construction on the pilot project is complete, Barton wants quantitative feedback, including speed data, collision data and bicycle and pedestrian counts. Barton told the Voice that he’s heard stories about the benefits and drawbacks of the changes, but that data will help identify pain points and usage rates.
According to city spokesperson Lenka Wright, Mountain View is monitoring the pilot project and adjusting some of the street’s features, including moving some rubber posts that are near intersections. The city also plans to “improve sight visibility,” Wright wrote in an email.
As a pilot project, Mountain View used installation methods that can be rearranged or reversed.
The city has already been collecting data on how people are using California Street, and plans to gather community input later this summer, Wright said. City staff intend to present their findings to the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee by early 2027.
When the safety features were first proposed, California Street resident Ariel Ranker said she was enthusiastic about the potential for better bike infrastructure. Although she doesn’t bike herself, Ranker regularly uses the new high visibility crosswalks.
However, she echoed safety concerns around pulling in and out of driveways, emphasizing that the design makes it hard to see cyclists in the bike lane.
“I always feel like I’m potentially a couple seconds away from being in a car accident in the high traffic times of day,” Ranker said.
Bruce England, who co-leads the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition’s Mountain View team, sees the pilot project as being beneficial overall, especially for pedestrians and less experienced cyclists. The narrower driving lanes and other new safety features are succeeding in slowing cars down, England said, though he added that some tweaks could be made, as people still sometimes park in the bike lanes.
While there may be more cars than bikers on the road, England pointed out that increasing housing density means parking will be a continually worsening problem, regardless of the street’s designs. England also sees the project as a “spot fix,” given California Street feeds into other roads that don’t have as many safety protections for cyclists and pedestrians.
“It’s tied and linked to all of these other projects and how we move around Mountain View as a whole,” England said. “We can look at just California Street, it is its own project, but the way it ties in with the other parts of town is just as important.”
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Guest Opinion: After tree deaths, Mountain View must adopt a herbicide moratoriumNovember 1, 2026 7:44 am
There are many problems with California Street new bike lane design and implementation:
1) the bike lanes are so uneven and bumpy. The worst bike lanes are paved. The contractors didn’t finish the job well.
2) the new lane plan is causing traffic jam and air pollution along the street.
3) some property owners are abusing the street by leaving their trash bins on the street 24×7, and sometimes the trash bins are in the middle of bike lanes
4)
There’s only one real fix A dedicated, sidewalk level two way bike lane. But because the apartments are overstuffed (2 families in a 2BR apt, sometimes 3), there just isn’t enough parking as an apartment will generate 4-6 cars. This is the future of Mountain View as we build more housing without parking…..that’s nowhere near public transport.
Or the people in the apartment will switch to biking on the new protected bike lane that is right outside their door and save money on gas and car maintenance.
Also, that stretch of California Street is near high-quality public transport; it is two blocks from El Camino, where the #22 and #522 run every ~ 15 mins, and within a mile of either San Antonio or Downtown Caltrain stations. One mile on a bike (in the new protected lane) is 5 minutes, and you don’t have to search for parking.
I’ve been using the bike lanes on California St. more and more (now several times a week), and I’m seeing more other bicyclists as well. Especially with school being out, I often see parents biking with their kids.
Being able to bike as opposed to drive when I am going to get groceries or to the park helps my health and mood. I do appreciate that it takes some care on behalf of everyone, including bicyclists and drivers, to navigate driveways and intersections. But being out on a bike and seeing others enjoying it too makes me happy and I hope that whatever the final design is, it allows people of all ages and abilities to bike on California St.
As a walker, I can tell you that cars do not stop at the walking crosswalks, even with all the yellow lights flashing. Also, as a commuter and resident who lives off California Street, I can tell you that the traffic on the street is an absolute nightmare now.
I’m all for protecting cyclists, but the fact is that most of us have to drive to get to work. Also, as mentioned above it is more dangerous because drivers can’t see getting out of driveways due to the parked cars blocking the view.
Please reconsider this, Mountain View!
$6 million of Mountain View taxpayer money. 63 parking spots gone in one of the densest apartment corridors in the city. Approved on the consent calendar — no real vote, no real debate, no input from the people who actually live here between Rengstorff and Mariposa. The people quoted in this article praising the project are members of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition — the same group that by their own records mobilized their membership to respond to the city’s survey on this project before it was approved. They cited three pedestrian deaths to justify it. Public records show only two occurred on California Street. And the city’s own Vision Zero crash data from 2014-2019 doesn’t even flag California Street as a top priority corridor — El Camino, Shoreline, and Central Expressway are far worse. Meanwhile residents can’t see past the cars parked in the bike buffer when pulling out of their own driveways. Want to know how the May 28, 2024 approval vote went? Try finding the minutes and video on the city’s Legistar page. They’re not there.
So incompetently completed with so much public funds wasted, you would swear it was overseen by Devon Conley at MVWSD.
Nothing quite like a line of cars being held hostage on a Main Street by a sole driver going 25 mph in a 40.
Not a fan. Driving is more precarious, as the lanes are narrow, and an opening car door is hazardous. Parallel parkers and/or delivery trucks completely stop traffic. Visibility is a problem too.
The city placed planter boxes and other obstacles right in the street. They could have simply reduced the speed from 35 mph. Instead, they dumped countless millions in to this project. I live off California Ave. The traffic is already so heavy that you have to wait more than one light cycle to turn onto Cal. Ave. from San Antonio. They are building more apartments with no parking, in an attempt to solve the traffic issue. No parking spaces = no traffic problem, right?
I agree. Picture the mess in a few years when the demolition of Kohl’s is completed and a school is put in its place, can you imagine the 8am and 3pm traffic… my feeling is that they wont turn back the clock on this because it means someone in city council or the planning department would have to concede that they pushed a bad idea costing taxpayers or property owners millions.
I live on California Street and bike to work, and my daughter bikes to high school. While the California Street design is certainly better than having no bike infrastructure, it should not become the model for the rest of the city.
The protected lane works reasonably well for many casual riders, especially during daylight hours. But its design creates serious visibility hazards, an unfortunate outcome for a project intended to save lives.
The parked cars that create a sense of protection also block sightlines between drivers and cyclists. Since the project was completed, I have personally seen more car collisions on California Street than I did before. I hope the city is carefully tracking collision data and comparing it with conditions before the redesign.
The danger is especially pronounced at night, when drivers turning into driveways may not see cyclists approaching behind parked cars. The same visibility problem affects children on smaller bicycles and riders on recumbent bikes, who sit lower and may be hidden even during the day.
There have been improvements. The city and residents have done a better job than I expected of keeping the lanes clear, although they remain dirtier than traditional bike lanes. The recently installed posts near driveways have also improved visibility for people entering and leaving apartment buildings.
California Street residents deserve particular recognition. They have endured reduced parking, greater difficulty entering and exiting their driveways, daily stress, and, in some cases, vehicle damage from collisions. Their quality of life has been diminished in an effort to improve safety for the broader community.
Because this is a pilot project, I hope the city allows it to end rather than expanding it elsewhere. Mountain View should instead invest in simpler, more attractive, and more consistent bike lanes throughout the city. For the cost of this visually cluttered and, in some places, ironically hazardous design, the city could install green-painted lanes and raised roadway delineators across far more streets, especially Middlefield Road.
Examples of equally safe (better visibility), less aggressively designed, cheaper raised bike lane delineators can be found here:
https://www.barcoproducts.com/bike-lane-safety
Great idea, that is so much better than having those white plastic straws they put in the ground that just creates clutter and a visual eye sore. By the way, is anyone watering the plants in those plant boxes or are they just another obstacle designed to take up valuable real estate.
If the concern was bike and pedestrian safety, could they have instead paid the salary for 2-3 full time crossing guards for 10-20 yrs for 6 Million???
SWest, wrt crossing guards:
1. How would crossing guards help with bike safety?
2. How would 2-3 crossing guards cover the 12 intersections between Shoreline and San Antonio?
3. Crossing guards are not superheroes with bodies of steel. A simple search for “crossing guard killed” will find many many articles in which crossing guards have been killed or maimed on the job. Or you could find a summary at a US News article titled “Crossing Guards Face Life-Threatening Dangers on the Job”
A fairly decent ‘holier than thou, feel good ‘ plan that was not thought out well and without public consent.
No right turns allowed unless you are the first vehicle ar the junction.
Valuable parking spaces eliminated
When it all of the street was reconfigured, I stood at the corner of Rengstorff and California every other days for a few hours on each day and barely saw any cyclists using the lanes.
A total waste of good money that could have gone to better use.
Pollution has gone up, and gets worse when diesel trucks have to water the plants in the blue bins.
My comments aren’t against those who love bikes. I respect their opinion and wish more folks would use them at least to get in shape.
To the city council, please think before you act. 🙏
Mountain View has a huge problem with a super-tiny bike enthusiast community (less than dozens of people) making life worse for thousands of MV residents who must use cars to live/work. First the town totally ruined Castro Downtown by closing off traffic from Central, causing many stores to see reduced customer volume and thus close down permanently. Now Shoreline and California Street are daily traffic jam nightmares. Mountain View residents need to replace the city council because it is over-run by impractical car-haters who are objectively making life worse for thousands of residents, with hellish daily traffic jams and even fewer parking spaces.
I live right off California Street and my family and I walk, bike, and drive along and across California Street. Personally, I really have not noticed any big change in the vehicle traffic congestion. I do feel like the speed of the vehicles has naturally slowed down, so we are less likely to have collision fatalities, which was one of the primary objectives of the street redesign. Hope that the city will maintain the road diet and continue to tune the elements to improve thibgs
The traffic backup and lack of parking is an absolute nightmare now. We have lived on California Street at Rengstorff for 16 years and this is the worst traffic has ever been. We cannot turn left out of our driveway at any peak time because of the traffic backup. The inconsiderate drivers who refuse to use their turn signals before using the center turn lane as a traffic lane create a major collision hazard. The narrow lanes make driving precarious, as many others have noted you cannot see cyclists in the bike lane because of the parked cars, and the reduction of parking spaces means an inordinate number of cars parking illegally, making visibility even worse. The school drop off is the worst because you can’t get past the Escuela intersection without sitting through the light cycle at least twice and cars actively blocking the intersection. Don’t even get me started on the noise with impatient drivers honking at the California/Rengstroff intersection at all hours, not to mention the idling as cars are backed up from Rengstroff to Ortega waiting to get through the Rengstorff light.
All this money spent on a change that caters to a select few. It’s a way for the City to say it’s bike friendly and cares about safety without looking at the impact to residents. If MVPD actually patrolled California Street at peak times and issued tickets instead of just speeding through at 50mph on their way someplace else, maybe we’d see an improvement. Apparently quality of life doesn’t matter unless you can afford to live in Cuesta or Waverly or Carmelita.