Sunny City of Santa Clara Infrastructure Ride Recap
City of Santa Clara city staff, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee Members, VTA staff, Santa Clara County Public health staff and residents joined together for a bicycle infrastructure ride held by the City of Santa Clara and SVBC on a warm and sunny Aug. 16.
SVBC in collaboration with Santa Clara County is doing a series of 13 educational infrastructure rides. This was the fourth ride in the series after previous rides in San Jose, Morgan Hill, and Mountain View. The Santa Clara ride was an approximately thirteen miles long figure-eight loop during which we stopped at several locations to discuss current bike facilities, proposed plans, and potential ideas and solutions. Santa Clara approved its Bicycle Master Plan Update 2018 on Sept. 17.
Our trip began and ended at the Santa Clara Central Library on Homestead Rd. Riding east on Homestead to Pomeroy Ave. was probably the highest stress segment of the tour. There are striped bike lanes on Homestead Rd., but it is a busy four-lane road. We turned North on Pomeroy where Santa Clara installed its first green paint infrastructure. It is also the beginning of the San Tomas Aquino route which we traversed much of that day.
Pomeroy led us north to Calabazas Blvd., where Santa Clara has implemented an innovative Class II bike route. Calabazas Creek is in the middle of the road, effectively creating two one-way streets on either side of the creek. The city did a lane re-purposing on both sides of the creek creating buffered Class II bike lanes along the creekside instead of on outside the righthand lane. It makes sense to do this here because having the bike lane to the left of traffic avoided crossings all the driveways which existed on the right side of the street. It is also the first place where Santa Clara implemented bike boxes. Bike boxes allow people on bicycles to get in front of the cars when turning left at intersections. In future plans, Santa Clara wants to create a Class I trail or Class IV protected bikeway along much of the length of Calabazas Creek.
From Calabazas, we used Cabrillo Ave to traverse onto the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail (STACT). The STACT is one of the crown jewels for urban bicycling in our region. It provides a class I multi-use trail all the way from Homestead Rd. to San Francisco Bay Trail. It uses underpasses to avoid many cross streets. We exited STACT at Mission Blvd. and traveled west past Mission College where Santa Clara has installed its most recent striped bike lanes. We biked past Mission College, then turned north again and followed the rustic Calabazas Creek trail north to Tasman Dr.
At Tasman, city staff enlightened us about the improvements, including buffered bike lanes, planned along the Tasman Corridor. From Levi Stadium, we went south on STACT. We stopped at the STACT/Monroe St intersection to discuss some possible improvements to this troublesome corner. Too often car drivers are not seeing the new traffic signal here for the bicycle crossing and sometimes run the light. From there, we enjoyed the recently completed multi-use path STACT between El Camino Real all the way to Homestead Rd and our starting point.
Everyone enjoyed the ride and learning about recent and future infrastructure improvements in Santa Clara. The ride fostered great discussions, interactions between all the stakeholders, sharing of new ideas, and observations, all while biking through the city. This ride left Santa Clara stakeholders better informed and inspired to push for an improved community, environment, and economy in Santa Clara by getting more people to ride bikes for everyday use.
Once again, we thank all those who carved out time on a Friday morning for joining us on the ride and a special thanks to City of Santa Clara Transportation planner, Marshall Johnson for all his planning and management to make the ride a huge success!