Bike lanes in North Central still an issue

Longtime resident Trina Pierce has been pushing the city to reevaluate whether to keep the bike lanes, claiming it has significantly burdened both seniors and young adults, many of whom have service jobs that require them to work until midnight or 1 a.m.

“It’s very hard for people to walk four to five blocks when they have little children and groceries. For us to be inconvenienced 24/7 for just a few bikers is not right when we live here,” Pierce said. “We used to have a bus that went down Humboldt Street, but there aren’t any buses anymore, so that means people have to walk up to Delaware [Street] or walk to the train station.”

Pierce said many residents have long felt ignored, not just over the bike lanes but over many issues, including investment in recreational facilities, like the Martin Luther King Center, or other necessary infrastructure.

“We haven’t been listened to in so many years,” Pierce said.

She added the community has been asking for other safety measures like more stop signs and street lights to no avail.

Community meeting

On Wednesday, Dec. 4, the city held a community meeting to solicit feedback from residents on bike lane use. While staff presented several options to potentially increase parking supply, such as leasing nearby parking lots like at the Department of Motor Vehicles, both Pierce and longtime resident Kevin Simpson said the city had already committed to doing that two years prior but never followed through.

“When they started this bike lane, they kept saying that we could park at the DMV or the Armory and then they said the courthouse,” Pierce said. “So [residents] feel like they were lied to.”

Simpson, who has lived on Humboldt Street for 16 years, said it’s unfortunate that groups of residents seem to be pitted against one another — those who want bike lanes and those who don’t — saying the real issue is that the city hasn’t done a good enough job of assessing potential alternatives, like a permit program or better enforcement when nonresidents and oversized or abandoned vehicles remain on the street for too long.

“A lot of parking is taken up irresponsibly by people who don’t live here, who park commercial vehicles on the street. … There is very little enforcement,” he said. “There is someone on my block who has three adults in their house and they have eight cars. They have a two-car garage they don’t use. A parking permit program would go towards giving some equity to people who have no parking versus other people who are storing vehicles on the street for free.”

The city and state agencies, that own the parking lot at the Superior Courthouse and DMV, could not come to an agreement on lease terms, Public Works Director Matt Fabrry noted, though he added the city could revisit the option again in the near future. Permit programs may also cause equity concerns, as there tends to be a higher number of individuals per household compared to other neighborhoods, many times for financial reasons, he said.

How many are using the bike lane?

According to staff, about 212 bikes were counted during a one-day survey during peak times along eight intersections on Humboldt Street — though Simpson said he feels that number is higher.

“Since this has been put in, I have never once been out in front of my house where I haven’t seen multiple people in both bike lanes going different directions,” he said.

The city used about $900,000 in federal grant funding to install the bike lanes, and the city could be on the hook for repaying the money back if it decides to move ahead with reverting the lane to parking spaces.

Simpson said not only would the money be better suited to other community needs, but getting rid of a project like this only two years after implementation could put the city at the back of the line for future grant funds.

“What granting agency will give the city money for future projects when the city, after two years, buckled and ripped out the bike lanes? I wouldn’t give any more money to San Mateo,” he said.

But another longtime resident, Joanne Bennett, said the city should have never installed them in the first place, given the pushback from the community. Like many residents and bike advocates, there is not a strong consensus on how often the bike lanes are used. Some, like Simpson, say their block on Humboldt Street sees significant traffic while others, like Bennett, said they’re not used enough to warrant the removal of more than 200 parking spots.

“We’ve got landscapers and house cleaners. They’re working class people. They’re not going to ride a bike to go landscape somebody’s house,” she said.

Alternatives

Several potential alternatives were touted at the Dec. 4 meeting, some of them focused on removing the designated bike lanes but implementing calming measures, like speed bumps, to make it safer for bikers. Simpson said those should be completed regardless of whether the bike lanes stay or go.

Between June 30, 2020, and June 30, 2024, roughly 80 collisions occurred in the North Central area, about 20% involving pedestrians or cyclists, according to data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System. June 2020 to June 2022 saw about the same number of bike and pedestrian accidents as 2022-24. However, the share of bike and pedestrian collisions to total collisions was higher during the former period than the latter.

Bicycle advocates

Transit and bike advocates, like Mike Swire, said the city and county can’t reach their climate action goals without incentivizing nonvehicle travel or even making it safe for them to share roads with cars.

“Elected leaders keep making decisions that focus on making it as easy as possible for people to drive, and that has a negative influence in communities like North Central,” he said.

Others have noted that the area’s historic lack of representation and investment in programs and infrastructure has been further emphasized due to the bike lane initiative.

“It was a well-known fact that North Central had parking issues before this. The city knew the history of the parking issue, and then, on top of that, they eliminated 200-plus parking spaces,” Bennett said. “They haven’t done that anywhere else in San Mateo.”