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The standard transportation paradigm often refers to The Six E’s of Safe Transportation: Engineering, Evaluation, Enforcement, Education, Encouragement, and then either Equity or Empathy, depending on who you ask. This is especially common in discussions about Safe Routes to School (SRTS) or Safe Routes to Transit (SR2T).
How Professionals work
Last week, I added an example of how professionals work in general. You start with engineering and then use evaluation, and then you go back to engineering for improvements. And if done correctly, you don’t retract, you don’t give in, you don’t give up, you keep adding on.
The Town of Woodside’s public works department started with just paint, but scofflaws rendered that solution useless. So, they added a row of bollards. When those proved too weak for 4,000-lb machinery, the Town of Woodside upgraded to strong bollards. Feel free to try your luck on those. Within a few years, the bike lane on Alameda de Las Pulgas has improved quite a bit.
For the record, we are discussing only the short southbound stretch where the Woodside Circulation Committee is in charge. All the stretches in Redwood City’s Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) jurisdiction… crickets.
However, we do see one problem with protected bike lanes in general. Keeping them clean can become a chore.
The People’s Budget
This might be my favorite – as in most entertaining – project of the last few years.
In 2022, the city adopted the progressive idea of Participatory Budgeting (PB), which is also often referred to as The People’s Budget. Apparently, some 3,000 cities worldwide have participated in the participatory budgeting project. There have been some nice success stories over the years.
I believe Mayor Giselle Hale was leading the cause in Redwood City. The plan was to suggest projects first and then vote on them in a second round. In the third stage, the city would decide which and how many projects can be achieved with the One Million Dollars.
Projects suggested by The People
People were asked to suggest projects, and the city then sorted them into different categories:
- TRANSPORTATION
- JOBS & ECONOMIC MOBILITY FOR ADULTS & TEENS
- HOUSING & HOME IMPROVEMENTS
- HOUSEHOLD SKILLS & TOOLS
- COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES & COMMUNICATION
- BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEUR SUPPORT (ALL BILINGUAL ENGLISH/SPANISH)
- PUBLIC SAFETY
- MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT
- KIDS & TEENS ACTIVITIES AND CLASSES
- SCHOOL SUPPORT
- ROADS AND SIDEWALKS
- PUBLIC ART
- HOMELESSNESS SERVICES & BASIC NEEDS
- OUTDOORS AND RECREATION SPACE
- GREEN ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY
There were too many projects to discuss here. Many of these projects sounded like projects that city managers in other cities have already prioritized and even implemented (e.g. ADA relevant improvements or anything Safe-Routes-To-School).
There were several projects, which were budgeted and voted on by the city council, but never implemented (e.g., various traffic calming projects or bike lanes on El Camino Real). Let’s just say the projects were very mixed.
… and the winners are
According to city hall, the winners were:
- Free showers for unhoused community members ($250,000)
- Add funds to City Housing team budget ($250,000)
- 10-week youth peer mentorship program for drug and alcohol prevention ($40,000)
- El Camino Real bike lanes (3 blocks) ($460,000)
The project that started in 2022 was finally completed by November 2024. And as usual, the city took its extremely sweet time with those bike lanes. They finally arrived in 2025. Never mind – all’s well if it ends well, right?
The People did not ask for a Protected Bike Lane Sweeper
But did it end well? Let’s briefly forget about the other projects and take our sweet time with those bike lanes. Almost half of the funds ($460,000) was going to the long, in fact very long awaited El Camino Real Protected Bike Lanes project aka The Grand Boulevard Initiative.
“During the planning process staff determined that current City-owned street-sweeping vehicles would be too large to access the curbs along the project area once the protected bike lanes are in place. To mitigate this impact, staff set aside a portion of the funding designated in the People’s Budget for this project to purchase a compact sweeper that can enter narrower lanes and prevent the buildup of debris in the bike lanes. Staff recommends approval and authorization for the City Manager or their designee to execute the purchase of one Madvac LS175 Litter Vacuum Sweeper from Exprolink, Inc. of Quebec, Canada in the amount of $167,537.40.“
The People have spoken but were not heard. They wanted a Protected Bike Lane and apparently got a Protected Bike Lane Sweeper instead.
- So let’s ignore for a moment that all budgets are essentially ‘People’s Budgets’.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that $460k would cover 2 miles of bike lanes, but city staff did only 0.2 miles.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that the 0.2 mile are only northbound lanes.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that this particular stretch is right next to the “Franklin Bike Boulevard” – city hall’s preferred solution for Sequoia Station.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that the 0.2 mile of bike lane is in basically the most useless location possible.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that $170k of the $460k for bike lanes went to a “Protected Bike Lane Sweeper”.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that you could sweep 0.2 miles of protected bike lanes almost quicker by hand than using a sweeper.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that the $170k Canadian bike lane sweeper was quite expensive even before tariffs became a thing.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that the $170k Canadian “Protected Bike Lane Sweeper” was bought 1.5 years before the project was implemented.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that by buying the sweeper 1.5 years before it was even needed means it’s probably already out of warranty.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) celebrated this project as great achievement.
- Let’s ignore for a moment that the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) endorsed the project and the purchase of the “Protected Bike Lane Sweeper” as well.
… can anyone explain why an extremely expensive, possibly out-of-warranty, narrow protected bike lane sweeper is needed here, when a large Amazon delivery truck fits just fine?
Post.Scriptum.
And just as a reference for our city staff on what a Protected Bike Lane would really look like, I would again point to the project done by the Town of Woodside. If city staff ever wants to test their “Protected Bike Lane Sweeper” on a real-life, non-imaginary protected bike lane, maybe they could lend the occasional hand on Alameda de Las Pulgas.
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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.
