The long-awaited repavement of El Camino Real through Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto begins in September – including the addition of protected bike lanes.

The multi-jurisdictional Grand Boulevard Initiative envisions El Camino Real as a place for residents to work, live, shop and play, creating links between communities that promote walking and transit and an improved and meaningful quality of life. It envisions a transportation corridor that provides for all modes, including bicyclists. Ensuring that all people can safely and comfortably make use of the corridor is key in this goal.

Making El Camino Real safe for those walking and biking has been a long-standing priority for the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. It is really exciting to know we’re so close to seeing green paint on the ground! And that is just the beginning of more bicycle facilities to come on this important corridor.

The following table outlines the planned El Camino Real bike improvements that are part of Cities Bicycle and Pedestrian Plans. Caltrans - the state agency that has ownership of the El Camino Real right-of-way has some repavement and safety projects planned for the El Camino Real corridor in the near future. The table includes tentative timelines for these projects. Caltrans will likely implement the proposed bicycle improvements as a part of their projects. If things move as scheduled, most of El Camino Real from Daly City to San Jose will have bike lanes before the end of this decade!

Schedule of planned work

More about the Mountain View-Los Altos-Palo Alto El Camino Real repavement project and its status

Caltrans has a repavement project planned for El Camino Real stretching through the cities of Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto.

Plans for this project originally included bike lanes only for the cities of Mountain View and Los Altos and not for the City of Palo Alto. When this project was reviewed by the agency under a “Bicycle accident monitoring program,” it triggered safety thresholds for bicyclists in the Palo Alto stretch and the project team was forced back to the drawing board. The project team came up with a new proposal that includes removal of parking to accommodate protected bike lanes on most of the stretch along with high visibility crosswalks for pedestrians at interactions, yaay!

SVBC in collaboration with its Palo Alto Local Team and the city’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee has provided further comments recommending the agency have additional improvements at the intersections to increase safety of bicyclists and pedestrians and to make sure the bike lanes are protected for the entire stretch outside of driveways and intersections. Read SVBC’s comments here.

The project team is currently collecting feedback on these preliminary plans from various stakeholders. The agency will further forward this proposal to the City Manager’s office for their final approval. We look forward to the decision makers in the City of Palo Alto to approve these key improvements.

El Camino Real is so dangerous – a multi-lane road with high speed vehicles. Why promote it for bikes?

El Camino Real is the only non-freeway road that connects from Daly City to San José, connecting downtowns, Caltrain, BART, and residences. This, as well as the concentration of housing and businesses along this corridor, make it THE essential North-South route for motor vehicles (its main use today), but for bicyclists and pedestrians as well.

At the same time, El Camino Real is a high-injury corridor - while it amounts to less than 1% of streets in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, it saw close to 10% of the collisions involving cyclists and pedestrians in the last 5 years. The year 2022 alone saw close to 15% of all roadway crashes on El Camino Real alone. By making El Camino Real safer for those walking and biking, it can be made safer for all roadway users.

You can read more about safety concerns on El Camino Real in this presentation.

Why not parallel routes - while they are safer?

This is what a parallel route looks like. Our members created this route back in 2007 – this shows how complicated it is, even with very knowledgeable people working on it. While many segments of the parallel routes have bike lanes and bicycling conditions along this route are a significant improvement over those on El Camino Real, there are problems with this approach:

It is not practical for all purposes and there is hence a lot of existing biking on El Camino Real even today! We are often told that nobody is going to bike on El Camino Real and that no one does – but both of those assumptions are wrong - One of the largest reasons for adding better bike facilities is that people who bike are already using it and there is a huge need for safety improvements.
El Camino Real boasts several destinations
That idea relegates people traveling by bike to a less desirable route, making it less likely for people to bike, thus making it impossible for communities to meet their future mode share goals
People don’t know about parallel routes

What can you do?

El Camino Real bike lanes come with the compromise of removal of parking. At the same time, most businesses on El Camino Real have off-street parking and the on-street parking can easily be absorbed within a block of the corridor. But, whenever there is any discussion about removal of parking - that becomes a contentious issue and is followed by a lot of pushback.

There needs to be education and awareness around movement of people biking should be prioritized over vehicle storage. And for businesses who think they’re losing parking and hence will lose customers, there needs to be education that bikes are actually good for business! And this is exactly where you can help - If you hear about an El Camino Real bike lane project in your city, show-up to speak in support. Write a letter to your city council to state why this is important to you. Share awareness about this among your friends and families.

Every small step in this direction will help us achieve the vision of El Camino Real as a grand boulevard in the true sense of the term.

Join SVBC’s El Camino Real team to stay updated.

If you have any questions, please email Sandhya@bikesiliconvalley.org