Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition along with our partner, the city of Milpitas hosted a ‘virtual’ bike ride to tour interesting infrastructure changes and challenges in the city of Milpitas on Thursday, Sep 17.   Kevin Riley, Milpitas Metro Manager, and Jessica Garner, Milpitas Planning Manager shared over eight exciting opportunities that Milpitas is working on now or will tackle in the future.

Our Virtual ride was divided into two project areas of Milpitas, the southern Metro district and the Midtown district which are connected by Milpitas Blvd.

The ride started at the Milpitas Transit Center (labeled Transit Ctr Ped OC on the map) which is the heart of the future Milpitas Metro Specific Plan area. It includes Milpitas Great Mall, the Milpitas BART station, and many nearby development projects. The first two projects were pedestrian overcrossing to reconnect walking and biking options across Montague Expressway in two locations. The third is a new bridge across Penitencia Creek (labeled Planned Creek Bridge), helping connect areas southwest of the transit center to it. In this new “Tango Park” area, the city is studying multiple options for improving connectivity and well as adding new parks. We finished our tour in the Metro Area by hearing about many options Milpitas is considering as the Great Mall property re-develops.

Jessica then took us on a tour of the Mid-town area and the challenges Milpitas is facing in this much older part of town. She started by highlighting challenges at city hall (labeled City Hall) where two major arterials, Milpitas and Calaveras Boulevards, meet in a wide and fast intersection. Next was the three-way intersection of Serra Way and Main Street where the City of Milpitas would like a much better E-W bicycle connection along Serra Way. The final stop was a Serra Center, an out-of-date shopping area bordering on Calaveras Blvd. to the north.

You may access the presentation here.

Finally, a big thank you to Kevin Riley and Jessica Garner for being our ride leaders for planning and educating us during this ride. Thanks also to the City of Milpitas for caring enough to enable us to do this tour. If you have questions about any of the project discussed, please reach out to them.

Kevin Riley, Metro Manager, kriley@ci.milpitas.ca.gov 408.608.9990

Jessica Garner, Planning Manager, jgarner@ci.milpitas.ca.gov 408.586.3284

SVBC in collaboration with Santa Clara County is doing a series of educational infrastructure rides. This was the ninth ride in the series after previous rides in San Jose, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and Tasman across for cities. This was the 2nd virtual ride.

Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition plans to continue organizing virtual rides until we are allowed to host group rides in person again.