Comments for “Palo Alto Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan (BPTP) Update (ARCHIVE)”
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There is no easy and safe way to get from the Permanente Creek Trail that exits on rock street to Cubberley Community Center. It is only a 15 minute bike from my work but it requires so much biking with car traffic. A lot can be done on just the crossing on San Antonio Road and Middlefield Road to make it safer to cross.
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Need a dedicated bike land and bike parking in front of store. Customers ride in every day to the Patagonia store.
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Cars coming down Churchill Ave don't need to stop, unless someone is in the crosswalk. this really should be a four-way stop, 1. for pedestrians
2. because it's also right in front of the high school.Liked 8 times -
There should be stop signs on Churchill at the entrance to the high school. It's hard to safely make a left out of the parking lot when there's traffic.
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There's a lot of brief street parking and folks crossing Hopkins here, especially in the summer when the pool is very busy and running camps. Please add a crosswalk from the tennis court parking lot to the path to the pool. Speed humps and other safety measures on Hopkins to slow traffic and aid safe pedestrian crossing would be welcome.
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I was biking up Sand Hill Road late afternoon last week. An SUV passed a car at 50mph swerving into the shoulder on a blind curve. Cyclists use this shoulder/bike lane to reach the hills and mountains in Portola Valley and Woodside. So dangerous!
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Agree with other comment here - this intersection does not feel safe on a bike, especially southbound on Newell. Suggest dedicated left turn lanes and lights so cyclists going straight aren't navigating cars turning left concurrently. Having a dedicated left lane and a separate right/straight lane is more standard and would be safer, and probably improve traffic flow too. Also dedicated bike lane as suggested in the other comment.
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As other comments have mentioned, this stretch of Meadow is extremely unsafe when kids are arriving at school in the morning. On southwest-bound Meadow, middle schoolers ride in packs in a narrow bike lane between cars driving through and cars trying to park to drop off their kids. Every day, I see kids on bikes spilling into the car lane without checking for cars. I'd suggest turning the SW-bound parking lane into a wide bike lane with posts like at Greene or better yet completely re-envisioning this road with pedestrian and bike safety as the priority. Perhaps widen the road to make more room for additional safety measures by cutting into that unused grassy area of the park. Certainly add a crossing guard at Cowper, preferably, one who can and will instruct the middle schoolers on safety and road rules as they pass.
We also need way more bike safety education required for kids. The middle schoolers are out there on the roads but appear to have no idea what the rules of the road are. Every day, they ride too many across when it isn't safe to do so, swerving into the traffic and the "door zone" of the parked cars, they don't have their helmets buckled, they make left turns from the (curb side) bike lanes at (other) 4-way intersections, they cut across Meadow into the park without signaling, cut off and disregard the safety of pedestrians in crosswalks/sidewalks/paths, pass on the right on the bike path between Mitchell Park and Fairmeadow, stop and block the bike lane when their light at Cowper is green but they want the red so they can cross to the left into the park, etc.
I love biking my kids to school but this stretch of Meadow in particular has felt so unsafe and stressful in the mornings the last two months that I'm seriously considering switching to going by car instead of bike (and I keep my TK'er on my cargo bike! - if TK were at our neighborhood school, I'd feel comfortable having him riding his own bike to school, but I don't dream of letting him attempt this route on his own bike).
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The in-road sensor for bikes traveling southwest on Meadow does not work. Cyclists have to get on the sidewalk and push the pedestrian crosswalk button to get the light to turn, which can be unsafe/unwieldy depending on the situation.
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Bike path to Magical Bridge/Pickleball Courts needs to be better marked as bike/pedestrian only - apparently one of the navigation apps routes people up that path - I've seen cars trying to drive up it multiple times.
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Agree with great suggestion to add height to Amarillo sidewalk curb. In addition to original comment, bollards or posts or something high would have the added bonus of discouraging (already forbidden) drop-offs along that stretch. When families have their kids jump out there, the car doors can hit kids passing on bikes/scooters as the children getting out of the cars in a rush don't check for pedestrians before they open their doors; at minimum kids jumping out there creates extra congestion and general lack of safety in that corridor for everyone. High barriers would also discourage cars from (illegally) parking there - when that happens, no one can pass on the road safely.
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I 100% agree with other comment re adding stop signs at the Ross/Meadow roundabout. Please ALSO add signage instructing everyone to yield to traffic in roundabout to further help alleviate confusion about who has the right of way. I was nearly hit by a car just last week - I was in the roundabout on my bike after stopping at the stop sign and was actively continuing to signal my left turn. I had to brake hard to avoid being hit by an oncoming car that entered the roundabout despite that I had the right of way. I bike that route daily to take my child to school and there is confusion in the roundabout every day.
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People treat middlefield here like a highway and never folllow the speed limit. Consider moving the car parking closer to the street to make the street appear smaller so that cars will move slower.
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Crossing at melville and Waverley is a route to school. Feels unsafe because cars zoom by at high speeds here. This needs better bike and ped infra to cross Melville at waverly
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The intersection of middlefield and embarcadeo is lacking bike lines. Bikers need to get onto the sidewalk to feel safe.
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The intersection of high and embarcadeo feels unsafe to cross when cars zoom by, especially because you’re not sure whether the car is going into the underpass or onto Alma. This needs better ped access
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The intersection of Kellogg and middlefield is scary to cross especially for little kids. This is especially with traffic zooming by very quickly and not stopping at all. The weekends as well as weekdays
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Challenger is letting vehicles exit from this spot and have poor traffic management during pick up and drop off, causing significant traffic and hazards for bicyclists and pedestrians. Vehicles are overly aggressive trying to get in, turning while pedestrians or bicyclists are trying to cross at Middlefield
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Vehicles regularity parked illegally in the no parking section of this area. PAPD doesn’t police it often enough. Causes bicyclists to need to veer out of the bicycle lane and into vehicle traffic or sidewalk
Stronger keep out or monitoring and enforcement needed.
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The parking enabled side of East Meadow blocks visibility to see incoming traffic from Fabian Way, especially when the majority of traffic is speeding.
Need to improve visibility by limiting the parking or add mirrors across the street. Additional speed bumps could also help.
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Bicyclists regularly blow thru the posted stop sign due to their laziness and ignorance of the law.
Cars also speed down East Meadow because of the incline and end up going much faster than the limit when going down hill.
Something to control the flow of traffic, maybe a full length unavoidable bump, would be effective to slow things down since enforcement will never happen.
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When crossing from Maybell to El Camino Way, the light here does not trigger for bikes. That means a bike needs to either way for a car to come, get onto the sidewalk and push the pedestrian button, or cross illegally against the light.
Could you please create a way for bikes to trigger this light without needing to get off their bike and go on the sidewalk?
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I find it very scary to cross this intersection due to cars turning right on red that impinge on the crosswalk at high speed, before they look if pedestrians are there. This is particularly dangerous when the view is obstructed (for both pedestrians and cars) by other traffic waiting at the light.
Could we consider one of the following:
1) Could we make this no-turn-on-red if there are pedestrians that have pressed the walk button? In this case, there are guaranteed to be pedestrians crossing, so let's keep them safe by not allowing cars turning right on red to impinge on the crosswalk.
2) Could we at least move the stop-line further away from the intersection to improve visibility for both pedestrians and cars and give cars more of a chance to see pedestrians that may be crossing?Liked 14 times -
The wide sidewalk on Amarillo leading to Ohlone Elementary School has an extremely shallow rolling curb - there is barely any differentiation between road and sidewalk. Therefore, cars will often drive on the sidewalk without even realizing it.
This makes it very dangerous for young children who expect they are safe on the sidewalk and don't expect cars to be driving on it. Little children zipping around their scooters end up within inches of cars driving on the edge of the sidewalk. There are also cars that park on the sidewalk, make u-turns on the sidewalk, etc.
It's an easy fix -- please add some kinds of posts or bollards (or turn this into a vertical curb) to make a clear separation between road and sidewalk and keep kids safe on the sidewalk.
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The roundabout at E Meadow and Ross Rd is very confusing and unsafe - visibility is poor, and no one knows who has the right of way.
Specifically:
This roundabout is a 2-way stop controlled intersection, which means traffic on Ross Rd does NOT have to stop or yield. On the other hand, everyone expects that once you are inside a roundabout, you should be able to finish going around without being cut off. Therefore, when there's a car or bike going around and another car approaches on Ross Rd (with no stop or yield sign), there's confusion -- this happens all the time.Usually, the car on Ross yields despite not being required to do so. But in the less-common case when cars follow the city signage and cruise through without yielding, there are accidents or near misses. My husband witnessed 2 accidents that happened this way, and I witnessed a car that nearly hit a bike.
This is easy to fix. Please add stop signs on Ross
Rd to create symmetry in the roundabout and ensure that traffic going around the roundabout will be able to finish their traversal without being cut off.Note that this intersection is made even more complicated by crosswalks in both directions, and many bikes choose to zip across the crosswalk rather than use the roundabout. By having stop signs on Ross Rd, it will slow things down and help keep pedestrians/bikes/scooters in the crosswalks safer.
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