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Sunnyvale staff to use cameras and anonymized phone data to study on‑street parking for Borregas Avenue separated bikeway
Summary
City staff and consultants told the Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission (Jan. 15) they will conduct a late‑February parking and movement study on Borregas Avenue to test feasibility of a proposed two‑way class‑4 separated bikeway and to measure the impacts of removing on‑street parking; outreach and privacy protections were emphasized.
City transportation staff told the Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission on Jan. 15 that a planned parking study will measure whether the city can convert existing on‑street parking on Borregas Avenue into a two‑way class‑4 separated bikeway without unduly harming parking access for area users.
Jose Palma, the city’s active transportation planner, said the study — funded through a developer planning application and carried out with consultants — will examine parking use, parking turnover and pedestrian and bicycle movements on Borregas between Moffett Park Drive and Caspian Drive. "We will be receiving input on biking and parking concerns, data collection, and other concerns that you might have related to this area," Palma said during the presentation.
Consultant Brian Shaw described the planned methods. Shaw said teams will deploy temporary, ground‑mounted video cameras to collect hourly counts Tuesday–Thursday and Saturday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., build heat maps and produce turning‑movement figures for pedestrians and vehicles. "These cameras will ... capture the cars, and they will capture the movements of the people as they're within the field of vision of the cameras," Shaw said. He added the footage will be analyzed after collection and that the vendor is contractually required to provide anonymized outputs rather than identifiable video.
Staff will also pilot aggregated cell‑phone location data to supplement camera counts, Shaw said. He described phone data as a complementary, novel data source the team would use to "flavor" the camera findings, not to replace them.
The consultants reported an existing on‑street inventory for the Borregas corridor of about 92 parallel spaces on Borregas plus roughly 72 on adjacent side streets (about 164 on‑street spaces in total) and an estimated 6,600 off‑street surface parking spaces in the broader area. Consultants estimated two garages in the area could hold "arguably 500 to 1,000 spaces," and noted most off‑street parking is in surface lots countable by satellite imagery.
Commissioners and members of the public asked whether the study would account for state law AB 413, which limits parking near crosswalks. Vice Chair Beagle noted that some spaces targeted for removal may already be prohibited by AB 413; staff said they will include required removals in the analysis.
Several residents and advocates spoke in support of removing on‑street parking to create a protected bikeway, while others urged staff to consult post‑office employees and nearby businesses that could depend on curbside access. Commissioners requested that the report back include hourly use charts, typical‑day (average) presentations as well as peak‑case data, and that staff consider visible public information (a-frame signs or a QR code linking to the project page) during temporary camera deployment to explain the study’s purpose.
Next steps: staff said camera counts are tentatively scheduled for late February (weather permitting) and a public survey and follow‑up meeting are planned for early spring. The study will return to BPAC and later to City Council with findings and staff recommendations.
