Mountain View Infrastructure Ride Recap

Click here to see more pictures.The 9th Annual Silicon Valley Bike Summit was hosted by the City of Mountain View and included several new activities this year, one of which was a bike ride tour of the City of Mountain View. The Bike Summit was held on August 1 at the Mountain View Community Center. JUMP Bikes was the presenting sponsor.The day of the Bike Summit had two breakout sessions and each breakout session included the option of a bike ride. The ride was led by Nate Baird (Bike/Ped Planner, City of Mountain View Department of Public Works), who lead participants around the city, showing off new and proposed infrastructure planned by the city. The ride was approximately 5-miles long and each ride had 20-25 participants.The ride covered different types of bike/ped infrastructure ranging from Class 1 trails, Class IV protected bike lanes, buffered bike lanes, and shared paths. We rode through downtown Mountain View, Steven’s Creek Trail, and residential and commercial areas while Nate briefed us about different types of infrastructure at each of these locations with respective challenges faced. We also had two speakers from the City of Mountain View, Darwin Galang, Assistant Traffic Engineer, and Dawn Cameron, Assistant Public Works Director. These speakers discussed proposed projects like improvements on Castro Street, the bike/ped underpass at Mountain View Caltrain station railway crossing, and more.Nate also informed the participants about efforts the City of Mountain View is taking in order to expand its bike/ped network. One of the interesting things the city is doing is making use of existing parks and open spaces to increase the bike/ped network which also helps reduce the travel distance for those biking and walking.The ride also passed through the pop-up bike lane on California Street. The City of Mountain View, SVBC, Google, and CrossRoad Labs partnered to create this pop-up bike lane which was about a mile long with protected bike lanes and intersections along with left turning boxes. This pop-up was open for about 24 hours and previews some potential improvements coming to California Street in the coming years.Lastly, thanks to JUMP, we had electric bikes for the enthusiastic riders who were unable to bring their bikes to the Bike Summit. Participants enjoyed the ride and appreciated seeing first-hand bike infrastructure and learning from the experts. It was a great way to engage the participants, interact, observe and learn as the group biked on streets in the city of Mountain View.