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Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
We covered the 2002 San Mateo County Grand Jury report already, and we know that Redwood City went into hibernation mode for 20 long years. Therefore, important homework wasn't done, and no progress has been made. It appears that Redwood City may have room for improvement in prioritizing the physical health, mental well-being, and overall quality of life of its residents.
But the city manager and her marketing team are clearly very interested in making residents think they care. And they even got themselves an award to prove their commitment to the cause. Apparently, Redwood City received a BRONZE medal on their application to Bicycle Friendly America, a program started by The League of American Bicyclists (LAB).
To participate, a city is allowed to fill out its own report, The League would then award the city either platinum, gold, silver, or bronze status. On their application for the 2016 award season, Redwood City had to answer the following questions:
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Arterial and Major Collector Streets with Bike Lanes: 40%
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Total Bicycle Network Mileage to Total Road Network Mileage: 30%
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Public Education Outreach: VERY GOOD
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Share of Transportation Budget Spent on Bicycling: 8%
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Bike Month and Bike to Work Events: GOOD
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Active Bicycle Advocacy Group: YES
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Active Bicycle Advisory Committee: QUARTERLY
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Bicycle-Friendly Laws & Ordinances: FEW
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Bike Plan is Current and is Being Implemented: YES
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Bike Program Staff to Population: 1 per 34,414
If true, these answers would be very commendable indeed. It would have put Redwood City almost in the category of SILVER. The problem with this approach, however, is that it is open to cheating. The League doesn't really seem to have the means to check for accuracy. Luckily, We the People do have those means, so let's check for the accuracy of Redwood City's application:
40% of Redwood City's arterial and major collector streets have bike lanes
To make that claim stick, we would expect bike lanes on Middlefield Road, Alameda de Las Pulgas, Jefferson Ave, Whipple Ave, Roosevelt Ave, Redwood Ave, and many, many more, technically even on Woodside Road and El Camino Real – two state highways. This claim does not match reality. The maps look way too empty. There are no dark blue lines at all, and the light blue lines are far apart, completely disconnected, and often fairly useless.
30% of all Redwood City's roads also have bike lanes
We only have to look around schools to see that hardly any Redwood City street has real bike lanes. No bike lanes are leading into Red Morton Park. There are no bike lanes leading through the downtown area. No bike lanes within the city's TODs and 'family friendly neighborhoods'. In other words, with bike lanes on 30% of all streets and 40% of all busy streets, the city's Bicycle Mode Share (BMS) wouldn't be 2%. It would be 10-20%. RWC would be one of the safest cycling cities in San Mateo County and not the worst.
Very Good Public Education Outreach
Palo Alto claims to be a Gold city, and they do have a very strong Safe-Routes-To-School (SRTS) program, which provides traffic education to children. Palo Alto's SRTS program is working closely with the transportation manager. Redwood City has neither a real SRTS program, nor what they have is far removed from the city manager. So I'm not really sure what they count as 'education' or 'outreach' here to give themselves a "VERY GOOD" rating. Even Redwood City's own 'Bicycle and Pedestrian' website is a collection of outdated information and empty links.
The share of the Transportation Budget is 8%
Now, that would be outstanding if it was true. But the city that apparently has money to spend $500M on Woodside Interchange, $2B on Grade Separation, $120M on Ferry Service, $20M on Blomquist Extension Bridge, $6M on Hopkins Traffic Calming, etc., always tells cyclists they won't be getting bike lanes because there is no money. Bicycle advocates would be very happy to take that 8%, especially since one mile of bike lane costs just $10,000 in paint, and the rest is just political will.
Active Bicycle Advisory Committee
That is the easiest to disprove. While the 2002 Grand Jury recommended each city have a Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC), Redwood City never made that a priority. The closest they were to this topic was something called the Complete Streets Advisory Committee (CSAC), which was only created because of two reasons: grant money and grant money. As soon as nobody paid attention anymore, CSAC was discontinued and replaced by something called the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC). Group size was increased to 7 people, and city council members handpicked candidates who showed very openly their car-centric interest. An independent BAC and a council-picked TAC are two very different things.
Bike Plan is Current and is Being Implemented
Redwood City must have invented time travel. The 2018 Transportation Plan called RWCMoves introduces projects #23 – a "stand-alone Bicycle Master Plan" – and project #25 – a "a stand-alone Pedestrian Master Plan". Those plans might have come in 2022 – 20 years after schedule – when the city published a plan called WalkBikeThrive – not exactly 'stand alone' though. Nobody knows what Bike Plan the city was following before 2022. The 2022 plan only adds more 'sharrows', which are unsuitable for All-Ages-and-Abilities (AAA) and, therefore, violate Vision Zero and Transportation Equity goals.
Bike Program Staff to Population
The 2002 Grand Jury report did recommend Redwood City to hire at least one dedicated bicycle person. This report would suggest the city manager had even two people dedicated to bicycle programs. If these two people ever existed, they must be long gone by now. Since that 2016 report, no bicycle lanes have been added to Redwood City's overall bike lane network. A dedicated bicycle person, let alone two, would have certainly noticed that. So, we would have an independent Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) or a real Safe-Routes-To-School (SRTS) project.
How much do other cities lie on their resumes?
How would we determine if they did? Another bicycle advocacy group named PeopleForBikes can help us out. They don't use a city's input; they create a more objective Bicycle Network Analysis or BNA score to evaluate cities on a scale from 0-100. Currently, The Hague is leading the Big Cities with a BNA score of 89, while Leuven leads the category of Midsize Cities with a BNA score of 85. How do local cities compare to those evaluations provided by LAB and PeopleForBikes?
Actually, not that good:
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Davis – LAB=Platinum and BNA=77
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San Francisco – Gold and 63
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Palo Alto – Gold and 52
source: redwoodcity.org -
Menlo Park – Gold and 41
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Oakland – Gold and 39
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Santa Cruz – Gold and 26
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Fremont – Silver and 21
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San Jose – Silver and 28
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San Mateo – Bronze and 38
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Redwood City – Bronze and 40
Only Davis and San Francisco seem to be honest in their self-reporting. Davis is the only Platinum city in California, and San Francisco seems to deserve its Gold status. The rest of these cities are fibbing hard on their resumes. To make themselves look like they are great bicycle cities, they are stretching the truth without even blushing. While some cities like Fremont or Santa Cruz have made strides and are probably better than their current score would indicate, others are quite overrated on this list. The 52 and 41 should get Palo Alto and Menlo Park, maybe into the category Silver. Bronze would probably be more correct. Oakland and San Jose still have lots of work to do to achieve Gold. Redwood City – thanks to Redwood Shores – is usually overrated on these kinds of charts, and San Mateo, San Carlos, and South San Francisco shouldn't receive Bronze status either.
To make the numbers work, all these cities must be adding their various "Share The Road" experiments into the statistics. But the San Mateo County policy of putting 'sharrows' on every street sure doesn't cut it with the PeopleForBikes or anybody else for that matter.
More Information:
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Redwood City's Bronze status with The League (LAB)
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Redwood City's score with PeopleForBikes
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Sharrows, the bicycle infrastructure that doesn’t work and nobody wants
