San Mateo council gives unanimous direction to advance revised Delaware Street protected bike lanes

San Mateo City Councilors on Sept. 2 unanimously directed staff to proceed with a revised design for the South Delaware Street Safe Routes to School Corridor bike-lane improvements and to prepare the project for bidding and award.

The project covers Delaware Street from Nineteenth Avenue to where the street becomes Pacific Boulevard and would install about 0.7 miles of protected (Class 4) bike lanes and 0.3 miles of bike-boulevard treatments. Sang Hee Cho, associate engineer in the city’s Public Works Department, called the plan a “carefully balanced project” that aims to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians while retaining most vehicle capacity and limiting parking impacts. “We believe that these improvements aim to create a more sustainable, equitable, and active San Mateo,” Cho said in his presentation.

Council and staff described the revised design as the outcome of roughly a year of community outreach, targeted meetings with nearby residents, and coordination with outside agencies including Consolidated Fire, the Police Department and SamTrans. Staff reported the agencies raised no objections to the revised design for emergency access. The design change most debated during outreach kept four vehicle lanes through one segment (Bermuda Drive to Saratoga Drive) to preserve driveway access and event-center traffic flow while shifting protected bike facilities curbside in several places.

Why it matters: Delaware Street is the only continuous north–south city-controlled corridor east of U.S. 101 that runs from the northern city boundary to Pacific Boulevard and connects schools, Caltrain stations, the county event center…