We sent each candidate the following questions. We received responses from Chris Clark, Nicholas Hargis and IdaRose Sylvester and have published their answers on our website. We hope that hearing about these topics in the candidates' own words will help you make a more informed choice in November.
1. Do you walk or bike in Mt. View? If so, where? And what has the experience been like for you?
2. Which areas of Mt. View do you consider to be safe and comfortable for biking and walking, and which areas do you think need improvement?
3. How specifically would you improve those areas that you think need improvement?
4. How should Mt. View implement its Vision Zero Action Plan, adopted by the City Council on September 10, to eliminate fatal traffic collisions in the city?
5. What should be done to make it safe for children to bike and walk to school in all Mt. View neighborhoods?
There are five candidates vying for three seats on the Mountain View City Council this November. Mountain View Streets for All was interested in hearing each candidate's ideas for how to improve street safety and encourage active transportation in our community as well as understand what kind of advocate they would be for these causes.
We sent each candidate the following questions. We received responses from Alison Hicks, Ellen Kamei, and Lucas Ramirez and have published their answers on our website. We hope that hearing about these topics in the candidates' own words will help you make a more informed choice in November.
Good times were had last Saturday at the first Mountain View Streets for All Summer Mixer! It was a lovely afternoon for snacks and lively conversation. The MVSA team really enjoyed reuniting with friends we haven't seen in person for a while and also meeting new friends who share the same vision for encouraging bicycling and walking in our community.
Thanks to City Councilmembers Pat Showalter and Alison Hicks for mixing with us! It was great hearing your points of view and about your support for our mission. And thank you Jennifer for opening your home to us and hosting such a fun event. What a great way to re-engergize our new group.
Bike to Wherever Days continue! Our wonderful Mountain View City staff hosted a Bike Rodeo in Rengstorff Park on Saturday. The participants who brought their bikes and helmets got riding safety tips from a licensed bicycling instructor, a helmet fitting, a bike safety check, and honed their biking skills on the rodeo course. What a great day!
We at Mountain View Streets believe everyone, particularly our youngest citizens, would benefit from this kind of hands on education to learn biking life skills. If you agree, join us to advocate for making biking education a mandatory part of our local school curriculum.
I hope you checked out our downtown energizer station on Bike to Wherever Day! Even if you didn't manage to swipe the coffee cake and fruit, you can still Pledge To Ridetoget a BTWD bag and win prizes!
Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the 13-year who was tragically struck while riding his bike to Graham Middle School on Thursday morning.
Mayor Ramirez shared this in his weekly message to the community:
Dear Friends,
As you have likely heard, our community has suffered a tragic and horrific loss. On March 17, a 13-year-old student at Graham Middle School was killed in a fatal collision with a truck at the intersection of El Camino Real and Grant Road. A fundraiser to benefit the family of the student is available here.
Urgent and significant bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements are necessary to reduce and prevent future injuries and fatalities. The City of Mountain View, in partnership with Caltrans, is planning pedestrian and bicycle improvements on El Camino Real, which are scheduled to be constructed as part of the repaving project next year. More information about this project can be found on the City website.
Additionally, the City is developing an integrated Vision Zero Action Plan and Local Road Safety Plan. This Plan is focused on eliminating fatal traffic crashes that affect all transportation modes including motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders. Through the action plan, the City will analyze historic crash data, compile proven countermeasures, identify and prioritize projects, and recommend safety projects for implementation.
Local Road Safety Plan Community Meeting Join us for a virtual community meeting on the integrated Vision Zero Action Plan and Local Road Safety Plan at 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 24th, 2022 (new time).
Words cannot express how saddened we are at this loss. Safe Mountain View was organized around the goal of changing Mountain View’s roads to be safe enough for kids. We clearly have a long way to go.
It was great to see so many families join us for the 3rd Annual Mountain View Family Bike Ride on Saturday! 149 riders joined us, our biggest Family Bike Ride crowd yet.
We gathered in Eagle Park at 10am under a beautiful blue sky. After signing-in, riders socialized, chatted with Nate Baird our Mountain View Bike Coordinator, and explored the family activities including bike decorating, face painting, helmet fitting, and bike tune-ups.
Before the ride Cherie Walkowiak and John Scarboro gave a short safety talk demonstrating hand signals, providing instructions for how to ride safely in "bike bus" groups during the ride, and introduced our Ride Guides (modeling the latest in helmet fashions designed by our very own Jessica Hirschfelder) who would help direct the group through the route.
The route
With John setting the pace as our Ride Leader, we set off! We followed the route through the Shoreline West neighborhood and Mariposa Park and then back through Downtown to connect to Stevens Creek Trail and Landels School before making our way back to Eagle Park. Altogether the route was 3.6 miles. Our faithful Ride Sweep Dick Kiser brought up the rear. Back at Eagle Park, volunteer Jennifer Sumant furiously scooped out the free ice cream cones to meet the demand of our hungry riders! Some families picnicked on the grass while the young riders lined up to grind their own smoothie on Safe Moves' bike blender!
Thanks so much to Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition for providing insurance for the event, Baskin Robbins for donating ice cream, Cognition Cyclery for providing tune-ups, Maylyn Co the Injury Prevention Coordinator from Stanford Health Care for helmet fitting, and Safe Moves for bringing the bike blender.
The 2017 Family Bike Ride was brought to you by Great Streets Mountain View and Safe Mountain View, two local non-profit organizations dedicated to making biking and walking safer and more pleasant in our community. We hope the Family Bike Ride promotes enthusiasm for biking and raises awareness of how the community can get involved with promoting the safety and comfort of our biking environment.
Consider telling your city council members about your interest in biking with your family and the importance of safe streets for people of all ages. You have power at the local level and your voice counts. This is a positive thing and you may even find making your city better is fun. If you would like to stay informed about the plans for cycling improvements as well our future rides and events, please subscribe to our Newsletter or follow us on Facebook. If you'd like to get directly involved now, you can email Mountain View City Council at citycouncil@mountainview.gov. We can all do our part to make the future better!
Last night, the City of Mountain View hosted a public meeting to review the results of the Latham Ave / Church Street Bicycle Boulevard Feasibility Study. After many years of discussion by city council, city staff, BPAC (Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee) and local bicycling advocates it’s very exciting to see some positive momentum in the creation of the bike boulevard. At the meeting, the city’s consultants from Nelson-Nygaard presented the results of the study and the initial plans to an audience of about 40 residents.
A bicycle boulevard is a street with low automobile volume that is designed to give bicycle traffic priority. (A nearby example is Bryant Street in Palo Alto). At the meeting, Alex Sweet, a consultant from Nelson/Nygaard who worked on the feasibility study, shared some of the key design elements employed in bicycle boulevards to create a low-stress and relaxed environment for bicyclists including pavement markings, wayfaring signs, and automobile traffic calming and diversion.
As explained during the meeting by Greg Unangst, long-time resident and BPAC member, the Latham/Church corridor is ideal for a bicycle boulevard because it is one the few uninterrupted North-South corridors in Mountain View and it is a good bicycling alternative to El Camino Real being only one block away. Also, there are possibilities to connect the southern end to the Stevens Creek Trail.
Alex shared the initial concepts for the bicycle boulevard which incorporated many design elements including speed bumps, pavement markings, wayfaring signs, raised intersections, refuge islands, additional stop signs on cross streets and auto traffic diverters at Shoreline and Ortega.
As next steps, the feasibility study will be presented to the BPAC and then to City Council for comments and prioritization as part of the Capital Improvement Plans.
Great Streets Mountain View has long held a vision of Escuela Avenue as a complete street which welcomes pedestrians and bicyclists and an important part of a broader bicyclist-friendly network of streets spanning our city. Escuela Avenue is home to two schools (Castro Elementary and Mistral Dual Immersion) and many families find getting to school along Escuela, with its crowded streetscape and lack of sightlines, a stressful and treacherous experience. Many have expressed that they would bike to school but are afraid to do so because it isn’t safe. It’s imperative to create a safer environment for students and their families who walk to school (245 students each day, 45% of enrollment) and encourage more students to bicycle (only 20 each day, 3% of enrollment). [Source: Vehicle Emissions Reductions Based at Schools (VERBS) Dec 2015 ]
Last night the City conducted a Community Meeting to share the details of the Escuela Avenue project to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. About 30 members of the public attended the meeting including neighborhood residents, parents of children who attend the Mistral and Castro schools, bike commuters, and MVWSD Superintendent Dr. Ayindé Rudolf.
The project introduces bulbouts at Latham Ave, Gamel Way, and Mt. Vernon Ct. Bulbouts extend the sidewalk, reducing the crossing distance and give pedestrians who are crossing and vehicle drivers better visibility of each other. In addition, the project includes raised crosswalks to improve visibility and calm vehicle speeds and the installation of 6-foot bicycle lanes on both sides of the street.
To accommodate the bulbouts and the bike lanes, the car lanes need to be narrowed from 12 feet to 10 feet and the parking on the east side of the street adjacent to Castro and Mistral school would need to be removed to shift over the vehicle lanes losing a total of 22 parking spaces.
During the meeting, the City officials encouraged questions and comments about the project. Attendees expressed very diverse points of view. Several neighborhood residents described an acute lack of parking in the neighborhood and described situations where they had to park blocks away from home at night, including the World Market parking lot, because they could not find open spaces. Also several parents of students mentioned that they were very much in favor of the project because the current environment was uncomfortable and dangerous and these changes would enable them to start cycling to school.
The project, which was approved in concept by the City Council as part of the California/Escuela/Shoreline Complete Streets Study is slated to be paid for by the developers of a new apartment building at 394 Ortega Ave as a community benefit to the City. On September 20th, 6pm, the City Council will be voting on whether to select this project as a community benefit. If you would like to see Escuela bike lanes and pedestrian improvements, please show your support by:
Below are conceptional drawings of the project presented at the meeting:
UPDATE 1/8/2017: At the City Council Meeting on 9/20/2016, the City Staff recommended the construction of the crosswalk enhancements and to forgo the bike lanes and bulbouts as part of the community benefit for the project at 394 Ortega Ave. The City Staff cited the concern of neighborhood residents about losing parking spaces to make room due for the bike lanes. The raised crosswalks on Escuela will be constructed as part of the development project (outside of community benefits). And the City Council unanimously approved moving forward with the development project (with environmental study and development review permit) with no restriction on the public benefit funds so they could be used to fund Escuela Improvements or another community benefit inside or outside of the San Antonio area in the future. In general, the City Council members expressed their strong support for safe routes to school and bike lanes on Escuela. However, they were concerned that the proposed design was still not safe enough for elementary school students and about the constrained parking for neighborhood residents as well as parents during dropoff and pickup. They generally supported reworking and improving the Escuela bike lanes plan and City Staff said that the next window of opportunity was to assign for the CIP for the Fiscal Year.
Great Streets Mountain View and Safe Mountain View met with Sgt. Saul Jaeger (@SgtJaeger) and Ofc. Chris Goff of the Mountain View Police Department today to learn more about traffic enforcement in Mountain View. We learned that Mountain View has 5 officers in the Traffic unit (out of about 95 total sworn-in officers) and they are recognizable about town because they are riding motorcycles. Also, we learned that all serious injury accidents (when someone goes to the hospital) are investigated and reported. In the case of fatalities, MPVD will close down the scene to conduct a 3D scan of the area and study the incident by trying to recreate the event from all perspectives. All traffic-related injuries are reported to the California Highway Patrol and data is publicly available through the SWITRS system.
We also had a chance to share our ideas for adopting Vision Zero in Mountain View as well as our proposals for making California Street and Shoreline Boulevard safer for cyclists and pedestrians. Thanks for Sgt. Saul and Ofc. Chris for spending the time to talk to us and give us your thoughts on our proposals. And special thanks to Pat Moore of Safe Mountain View for organizing and hosting the meeting!
Jennifer talks to Sgt. Jaeger about the plans for lane reconfiguration of Castro Street in front of Graham Middle School.
Greg shares ideas for how to get Mountain View to adopt Vision Zero, an initiative with the goal of no traffic deaths
Sgt Jaeger and Ofc. Goff talk about how traffic collisions are investigated and reported by MVPD
