Committee reviews Mountain View draft Active Transportation Plan as residents press for stronger protected bikeways

The Council Transportation Committee reviewed the draft Mountain View Active Transportation Plan on June 16 and heard sustained public support for stronger, curb-level protection on the city’s busiest corridors, along with calls for clearer implementation steps and more attention to pedestrian comfort.

Staff said the draft — organized into four chapters covering vision and process, existing conditions, recommended policies and projects, and implementation — grew from outreach that produced more than 600 individual comments and a mapped “heat” dataset used in project scoring. The draft identifies roughly 100 candidate projects and 23 priority corridors using scoring tied to five guiding principles: mobility and connectivity, safety and comfort, access and equity, sustainability and biodiversity, and action-orientation.

The plan presents near-term, lower-cost resurfacing options that can add striping and paint-only safety features, and longer-term reconstruction options that allow curb realignment, protected bikeways and green infrastructure. Staff emphasized that several major arterials under county or state jurisdiction — including Central Expressway and El Camino Real — require ongoing coordination with Caltrans and Santa Clara County to implement improvements.

Multiple residents and technical advocates urged the committee to adopt clearer standards and stronger separation. "I’m seeing what I’m going to call tragedies waiting to happen because of a vagueness in the definition of segregated or separated bike lanes," said Gary Burr during non‑agenda public comment. April Webster, who identified herself as a member of several regional bicycle advisory committees, said state-of‑the‑art facilities require more than paint and flex‑posts: "those bike lanes and the type of separation... stronger separation... is what you need to see to have a real modality shift." Several commenters also urged institutionalizing implementation triggers — for example, using street resurfacing or repaving cycles as opportunities for 'quick build' safety upgrades — and for the plan to treat shade and tree canopy as core comfort infrastructure.

Committee members pressed for clarifications in several technical areas: how the heat map translates absolute comment counts into priority scores; how Safe Routes to School recommendations will be reflected (staff said the Safe Routes program will be brought separately for adoption next fiscal year); and where sidewalk widening is appropriate versus where it would conflict with existing trees, front yards or parking. Staff said the plan uses a five‑foot minimum sidewalk standard as a baseline but that project‑level validation during design will re‑assess widths and impacts.

On design standards, several committee members and commenters urged the city to align more closely with NACTO and Caltrans District guidance. Staff said project cut sheets and engineering templates will be refined in final design and that both low‑cost resurfacing and grant‑funded reconstruction remain viable implementation paths.

Next steps: staff will revise the draft through June and July, provide an updated packet to the Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the Council Transportation Committee in August, and return the final plan to City Council for adoption in September. The public engagement record and the scored project lists will be preserved and used to support future grant applications and phased implementation.