Palo Alto shifts gears, approves El Camino bike lanes

Parking spaces will make way for bike lanes along El Camino Real next year after the Palo Alto City Council voted on June 18 to approve an ambitious proposal that has split local merchants and energized area cyclists.

The bike project that the council backed with a 5-1 vote, with Lydia Kou dissenting and Greg Tanaka absent, differs in some way from the one that members saw and rejected on April 1. It now includes wider bike lanes, narrower vehicle lanes and additional barriers separating the two in various stretches of the corridor.

It also now includes restrictions on right turns on red lights along El Camino at 17 locations, with a focus on areas close to schools. The list of El Camino crossings that will now have right-turn restrictions includes Arastradero Road, Stanford Avenue, Page Mill Road, Churchill Avenue, Matadero Avenue and Los Robles Avenue, among others.

These revisions followed months of negotiations between the state Department of Transportation, which is spearheading the project, city staff and a council committee composed of Vice Mayor Ed Lauing and Council member Pat Burt. Both were unimpressed with the earlier plans that Caltrans presented in April. Both enthusiastically supported the revised ones, with the recently added safety measures.

The council also acknowledged that its ability to reshape the project is limited. El Camino Real, also known as Route 82, is a state highway and, as such, is within Caltrans’ jurisdiction. While Caltrans has requested that the city approve a resolution authorizing the removal of parking, the agency has the authority to modify El Camino even without the council’s support, according to City Attorney Molly Stump.

“City approval is not required for them to make changes to the street and, as a legal matter, they do have the authority to design and redesign the street over the city’s objections,” Stump said at the June 18 hearing.

For Caltrans, the bike lanes are a component of a broader $30.9 million project to repave a stretch of El Camino. The bike lanes were added last year as a safety measure to address what Caltrans described as a pattern of collisions along the Palo Alto stretch of El Camino. Its data showed 33 collisions involving bicyclists between 2016 and 2020, with 32 injuries and one fatality.

Not everyone, however, bought the idea that El Camino bike lanes would improve safety. Many residents and some bike advocates posited that encouraging cyclists to ride along a busy, six-lane road would create more problems than it would solve.

Council member Pat Burt, who frequently bikes, was among the skeptics. At the April 1 hearing, he proposed refining the Caltrans plan to make it more consistent with a “safe system” approach, which seeks to minimize conflicts between different modes of transportation. Since then, he and Vice Mayor Ed Lauing worked with the city, Caltrans and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority staff to add various safety features to the plan.

“We didn’t have a great deal of leverage, and yet we have a drastically improved outcome as a result of the council’s initiative on this,” Burt said at the June 18 hearing.

Lauing said the collaboration entailed numerous meetings as a long workshop at City Hall in which staff virtually walked every block of the El Camino corridor. Caltrans, he noted, made it clear immediately that the decision to put bike lanes and remove parking was “unchangeable.”

“The core of discussions was to focus on the areas where we had complete common agreement and that is on safety,” Lauing said. “And I’d say that it worked very well.”

The revised plans also won rave reviews from a key constituency: parents of students. The Palo Alto Council of PTAs endorsed the latest approach and urged the council to approve the new safety features, most notably the restrictions on right turns around school corridors. Lara Anthony, who chairs the PTA council’s Safe Routes to School Committee, spoke in favor of the bike lane proposal. She noted that without restrictions on right turns on red lights, drivers often look left to find a gap in traffic and then make the right turn without checking to see whether there are pedestrians or cyclists in the crosswalk.

Ken Kershner, a bike advocate with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, also lauded the safety improvements, including the removal of parking.

“The most critical safety enhancement is removing parking to establish clear sight lines, addressing broadside crashes at intersections, driveways and bus stops,” Kershner said.

Others saw the removal of parking as potentially disastrous. Galen Fletcher, owner of Sundance Steak House, argued that the move could be devastating to his business unless the council takes additional action to ensure his employees and his guests have a way to park. With the project advancing, Fletcher said, he is at a risk of joining the dozens of businesses on El Camino that are out of business.

“There needs to be concessions made so we can all coexist with a balanced approach that works for everyone,” Fletcher said.

Tony Lee, who owns the Stanford Coin Wash laundromat on El Camino, similarly said that he depends on El Camino parking to stay in business. The project, he said, could have a detrimental effect on his life.

“Removing the parking along El Camino Real would not only kill my business but also negatively impact the lives of our customers, who rely on my services and of course my livelihood as a small business owner who gives so much to the city,” Lee said.

Gregg Hood, owner of Bike Connections, also spoke out against the proposal. Prior to the council discussion, he had visited nearly two dozen El Camino businesses. He submitted to the council petitions from 22 establishments, including owners of Lux Eyewear, New Mozart School of Music, Innovation Endeavors and Jack in the Box. The business owners asserted that they were not notified of the bike plan, which they argued will have a “catastrophic effect” on their businesses, employees and customers.

Council member Lydia Kou similarly opposed the bike lane plan. She questioned the need for installing bike lanes on El Camino and argued that removing parking would undermine the business community. She called the proposed plan “overengineered” and voted against it.

“We do want to separate bicyclists, but is El Camino, a state highway, the best place to be doing this?” Kou said.

Most council members, however, shared Mayor Greer Stone’s assessment that the new bike lane is a huge improvement over what was proposed or not. Stone noted that other cities along the corridor, including Mountain View, Los Altos and Menlo Park, are similarly slated to get El Camino bike lanes, which makes the construction of the Palo Alto segment particularly critical.

To address concerns from businesses, the council also agreed as part of its vote to explore longer term safety improvements, including redesigns of bus stops to eliminate conflicts with bike lanes. City staff also plans to reach out to businesses and residents in and around Evergreen Park, Mayfield and Southgate to discuss changes to their residential parking programs so that businesses along El Camino could get passes for their employees to park in the neighborhoods.

“We can either have a seat on the table and improve these designs … or we can bury our head in the sand and Caltrans is going to move ahead with this project regardless,” Stone said. “It’s better that we work together to make these improvements that will ultimately serve our community.”