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We don’t always have to go to The Netherlands, Copenhagen or Paris to see Best Practice at work. We can also just learn from good old California.

Davis and Palo Alto are two California cities of similar size (ca. 66.000); both are built around their proud Universities; both like the image and branding of being the ‘Bicycle Capital.’

But according to Highlander rules: There Can Only Be One!

So, let’s compare the plans:

  • Old Davisville brought the Bike Lane to America in 1967.
  • 10 years after the introduction of bike lanes, Bike Mode Share (BMS) in Davis went from 10% to 28%.
  • Palo Alto, on the other hand, started the Big Bikeway Bluff
  • After inventing “Bike Boulevards,” BMS in Palo Alto went down
  • Palo Alto went from 10% BMS in 1980 to 5.8% in 1990.
  • Davis was the first in the U.S. to install bike-only traffic signals.
  • Palo Alto was the first in the Bay Area to ban e-bikes from Class 1 bike paths
  • Davis has a BNA Network Score of 77 and can compete with the leading European Cities.
  • Palo Alto scores a measly 52 and can’t even compete in California anymore
  • One is named the only Platinum City in America. The other has to bend the truth even to achieve “Gold” (League of American Cyclists, LAC)

We cannot blame Palo Alto for putting a tree into their city logo – that seems just natural if your city is named after a tall tree (“El Palo Alto“). But we can give Davis extra praise for featuring the high-wheel bicycle. We can point out that Palo Alto seems to have difficulty attracting new cyclists. We can also compare how both cities protect the cyclists they have.

Safety-Quote about Palo Alto and their “Bicycle Boulevards”

According to statistics – collected through CHP-SWITRS – Palo Alto North Downtown is the most dangerous area for cyclists in Silicon Valley:

“We analyzed 14,718 bicycle crashes, where 141 bicyclists were killed and another 1,461 were injured. We identified 25 areas throughout Silicon Valley where a high volume of bicyclists were struck within close proximity of one another. Six of the areas that we identified were located in Palo Alto, including three of the top ten.” – “Downtown Palo Alto was the site of the most bike crashes and the most injuries.“

When the only feature to provide safety for people on bicycles is a small green sign honoring the name of a former Palo Alto Councilmember, it’s not that surprising to see that this area causes more harm than good.

Safety-Quote about Davis and their Bike Lanes

“Davis created the first bike lanes in postwar America. After 1967, transportation was oriented toward the bicycle.” – “Anecdotal stories are common about adults of all ages who hadn’t ridden a bike since childhood until they moved to Davis. By contrast, other U.S. bicycle-oriented cities have populations of deliberate bicyclists – people who achieve a modest level of skill, ride well-maintained bikes, and often wear helmets. Davis is more like Amsterdam, where typical bicyclists ride single-speed bikes with baskets, wear street clothes and shun helmets.”

Davis seems to agree with many non-Commonwealth countries that bike helmets make no difference. Whereas Palo Alto still asks their pedestrians and cyclists to dress like clowns.

Both cities are winning awards

There are three major organizations rating US cities in terms of their bike-friendliness. One is the International Copenhagenize Index – the last time they featured a US city was in 2011. The second one is the League of American Cyclists (LAC), but that one might be less useful. Cities are self-reporting with little to no fact-checking – so even cities like Redwood City or San Mateo can get Bronze status. The most trustable score might be the Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) created by PeopleForBikes. Davis is the highest-rated US city (BNA=77) in the mid-size category, just before Berkeley, CA (72) and Boulder, CO. With a BNA score of 52, Palo Alto is far behind and only ranks 14 in California.

“Infrastructure eats Culture for Breakfast”

Palo Alto has by far the best Safe-Routes-To-School program on the Peninsula. I am not sure there is a better one in the Bay Area or even California. They have dedicated staff at the city level and within the schools, which helped create a great culture around this topic. There is also a great bicycle culture around Stanford. But having so much ‘culture’ makes Palo Alto’s Bike Mode Share (BMS) of 8.5% look even worse. It means that over the last 30 years, Palo Alto has been incapable of translating that great culture to the people that need it most: the middle-aged and older group.

The reason is obvious to most bicycle advocates: Infrastructure eats Culture for Breakfast … and Palo Alto is faking the culture and skimping out on infrastructure.

Palo Alto Infrastructure for people using bicycles

  • 15 miles of Class I bike paths (many restricted to e-bikes now)
  • 33 miles of Class II bike lanes (often time-restricted and turning to parking in the evening)
  • 8 miles of Class III “Bicycle Boulevards” (with no real bicycle facilities)
  • Undercrossing at Homer, California, Palo Alto Station, University Ave, Adobe Creek, Embarcadero Rd

Davis Infrastructure

  • 63 miles of Class I Bikeways
  • 102 miles of Class II Bikeways
  • 4 miles of Class IIb Bikeways
  • only 1 mile of Class IV Protected Bikeway
  • only 1 mile of Class III “Bicycle Boulevard”
  • 75% of roads have a posted speed limit of 25 mph.
  • 169 miles in the road network. 140 miles of roads at 25 mph or less. 21 miles of roads between 25 mph and 35 mph. 8 miles of roads over 35 mph.  
  • 4,300 bike racks within the City and over 2,000 bike racks downtown.
  • 25 grade-separated crossings in Davis. Four overpasses and twenty-one underpass crossings. We used grade-separated crossings to move people on bikes and pedestrians over and under barriers like railroad tracks, busy roads, and the freeway.

I’d like to give Palo Alto’s Safe-Routes-To-School Program (SRTS) the edge just because they put so much effort into it. But if you support this top program with only 33 miles of Class II (often time-restricted) bike lanes, you are throwing away a lot of potentials. This also shows in the awards. While Palo Alto celebrates their Gold status, the BNA score punishes their reliance on “Bicycle Boulevards” and “Shared Road Experiments”.
And Davis, who put their money into real bicycle infrastructure, beats Palo Alto basically on all accounts.

And in the latest development. For a city that “is building upon this history and demand for bicycling and walking to solidify its status as one of the most bicycle-friendly communities in California, if not the country,” Palo Alto seems rather perplexed that Caltrans is taking them seriously now.

Post.Scriptum.

Maybe Palo Alto’s culture isn’t real. The latest sign that Palo Alto isn’t serious about BMS was the e-bike ban on a long stretch of the SF Bay Trail. In fact, it puts Palo Alto’s whole “sustainability” image into question. If city leadership really believed in transportation equity, climate change, sustainability, and electrification, the very last thing you do is ban e-bikes – the Future of Transportation. And for people who don’t know the area, e-bikes are now banned because of “the environment”, “noise”, “wetland preservation” right next to a private airport where lead aviation fuel is served and a golf course, where golf carts are allowed to damage the habitat.

More Information

This Palo Alto “Bicycle Boulevard” has plenty of garage parking nearby and still can’t make room for two solid bike lanes. Are ‘squatters and rankers’ really that much more important than safety for people on bicycles?

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.

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