Morgan Hill Infrastructure Ride Recap
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Morgan Hill city staff, Council members, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Group Members, VTA staff, Santa Clara County (SCC) Roads Department staff, and residents – this was the mix of participants at the infrastructure ride held in Morgan Hill on June 22. Isn’t that amazing?
SVBC in collaboration with Santa Clara County is doing a series of 13 educational infrastructure rides. This was the second ride in the series after our first one held on May 19 in San José during VivaCalleSJ. The Morgan Hill ride was approximately eight miles long and we stopped at several locations to discuss current bike facilities, proposed plans, and potential ideas and solutions.
The very first stop was at the Bike Hub Park in downtown Morgan Hill. Four years ago the city carried out a five-month pilot project of road diet on Monterey Road, where the city closed down one lane on each side of the road to add bike lanes. There was huge push-back from the community and council at the time and the project was never made permanent. But, the good news is, the city staff and council members are now considering to re-do it!
The ride also included the West Little Llagas Creek trail and the Butterfiled Road multi-use path, where the group discussed future extensions and how trail crossings at busy roads could be redesigned to make it safer for people walking and biking. The city staff highlighted the proposed Madrone Channel trail, which would be another Class I trail running parallel to Highway 101. The riders further discussed bike safety issues at highway interchanges. These interchanges pose critical design challenges because of the on and off ramps, increasing conflict points between people driving and people biking, and the high vehicle speeds.
Further, at Main Avenue, city engineers spoke about the new buffered bike lanes project on this street which is the city’s primary East-West connection. This project has been delayed because of land acquisition of a couple properties that fall in the right of way. Intersection improvements, safe crossings near the school premises, and pedestrian crossings at frequent intervals, were issues posed by other riders. In the end, city staff brought forth challenges they face at urban edges that abut land/roads owned by the County. Luckily, there was also an employee from the SCC Roads Department on the ride. It was helpful to have both parties share their perspective and challenges faced in struggling with such conflict points, leading to a constructive discussion.
Overall, the ride fostered great discussions, interactions between all the stakeholders, sharing of new ideas, and observations, all while biking through the city. Our intent was to facilitate a peer to peer sharing opportunity for the city and this ride left Morgan Hill stakeholders inspired to push for an improved community, environment, and economy by getting more people to ride bikes for everyday use.
Once again, we would like to thank all those who carved out time on a Saturday morning for joining us on the ride and a special thanks to Morgan Hill Public Services Director, Chris Ghione for all his planning and management to make the ride a huge success!