FREMONT — On the same night Fremont accepted an award for its Vision Zero program to reduce injuries and deaths from crashes on its roads, the City Council rejected a plan to remove a traffic lane from part of a major street to slow drivers’ speeds and add a wide bike lane.
Instead, the council voted to keep two lanes of traffic in both directions on a portion of Paseo Padre Parkway while narrowing one lane of traffic and a parking lane in each direction, and adding four-foot wide bike lanes, which Fremont’s director of public works said earlier this year don’t live up to the city’s ideals for safety.
The council vote on removing lanes, known as a “road diet,” failed by a count of 5-2, with only Councilmembers Jenny Kassan and Teresa Keng supporting it. The council’s vote to narrow the lanes also passed 5-2, with Mayor Lily Mei, Vice Mayor Yang Shao, Councilmembers Teresa Cox, Raj Salwan, and Rick Jones in favor of it.
The decision upset bike safety advocates and some residents along the street who said cars speed by their homes too often to feel safe, while it pleased other residents in the area who largely were concerned reducing traffic lanes could lead to further congestion.
The changes will be made along a roughly one-mile stretch of Paseo Padre Parkway between Driscoll Road and Washington Boulevard, which has no bike lane and is lined with many homes with driveways fronting the street.
Councilmembers who supported the narrowing plan said the city should hold off from considering a road diet until the pandemic has less impact on traffic patterns.
Some expressed concern that as the pandemic wanes, Paseo could see backups stemming from its connection at Washington Boulevard, near a popular Interstate 680 entrance. Though a freeway widening project was completed last fall to help alleviate congestion, some councilmembers were still wary of its possible return.
“Safety is our top concern…but I really think we should think about not making drastic changes anymore and just pause it, and reschedule it for six months out to see how things are,” Cox said at the council meeting on Sept. 14.
The road diet plan was originally floated in 2019, city staff reports said, but it was deferred at that time until after the highway widening project was completed, over concerns it could increase congestion at that time. Now, it has been deferred again.
Jones, a former police officer who said he had worked speeding enforcement on the stretch of Paseo, echoed comments from residents who want to see studies done on the potential for traffic backup after the pandemic.
“I think it’s a reasonable solution to provide this interim bike lane,” Jones said. “I am perfectly in favor of multimodal transportation, but we’ve got to realize multimodal also includes vehicles. And predominantly in Fremont, that’s how most people get around.”
Hans Larsen, Fremont’s public works director and one of the architects of its Vision Zero program, said at a July meeting that he didn’t think the four-foot bike lane could be added safely to the stretch of Paseo without removing a traffic lane.
“My sense is that we would not be able to maintain two lanes and get what we would consider a safer tract of bike lane in there. You’re essentially putting folks in a narrow bike lane next to parked cars where you have doors opening up,” Larsen said in July.
At the Sept. 14 meeting, based on council feedback in July, Larsen presented the proposal to narrow the lines and add the four-foot bike lane.
He said his staff generally aims for bike lanes of six or seven feet wide, with painted “buffer” zones to make biking more accessible. He said a four-foot lane is a “minimum” standard, but noted that in an area with no bike lane, “adding a narrow one is better than having nothing.”
Kassan said she favors the road diet because even with narrowed lanes, cars will still be able to speed through above the 35 mph limit.
“A lot of time and effort was put into that original plan. I don’t know exactly why all the sudden the council decided not to do that,” she said.
Dave Campbell, the advocacy director for Bike East Bay, called the four-foot bike lane “horrible” for safety.
“Because it’s four feet and you’re probably a foot or two to your right from a parked car and a door opening…or you’re next to potentially that 40, 50, 60 mph car that’s now in a 10-foot lane right next to you,” he said in an interview Friday.
Campbell also said Fremont has generally been a “star city” for traffic safety, with examples like its separated and protected bike lanes near the city center, but this recent decision could make it harder to convince other cities to prioritize safety over driver convenience.
The city has also made repeated investments in providing better connected bike path networks and redesigning intersections to improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.
“Here we have our Vision Zero leading city with this gimme of a decision to make, and they can’t even make it,” he said.
Joanne Miller, a resident who lives along Paseo, said “the speeding is terrible,” and was in favor of the road diet.
“Trying to back out of our driveways is a mess. I mean you take your life in your hands,” she said.
“You cannot see the cars coming until they’re practically on you because they drive so fast,” and because of some shrubbery in the median, she said.
Another resident who lives nearby, Ray Storms, said “It’s a complex issue, I admit, and I agree the speeding has to stop,” but he was opposed to a lane reduction.
“When you break that down to one lane,” he said getting to the freeway “will take forever.”
Vinnie Bacon, a former city councilmember, said at the meeting the council’s opposition to the road diet “baffled” him.
“You just received an award for your Vision Zero work,” he said. “So here staff is proceeding with a Vision Zero improvement to complete Paseo Padre and the council suddenly decides to abandon a Vision Zero project for no good reason.”
