|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
We are still fact‑checking City Hall’s “On Track to Improve Transportation and Mobility” projects from 2019.
On Track to Improve Transportation and Mobility
In November 2019, City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz and her PR team sent out marketing materials to residents under the theme “On Track to Improve Transportation and Mobility“.
“Several efforts are underway to make it easier to get around Redwood City and the region.“ [RWC]
The city manager wanted to promote seven major projects and initiatives that her team seemed to be part of.
Top Four Projects
- Caltrain Business Plan (regional)
- Caltrain Electrification Project (regional)
- California High-Speed Rail (state-wide)
- Dumbarton Transportation Project (regional)
In part one of this blog post, we focused on her top four projects. All could be classified as regional projects, each featuring the railroad corridor. Only one of those really came to fruition and could be called a success story. However, none of these projects improved local transportation.
Bottom Three Projects
- Broadway Streetcar Study (local)
- Downtown Transit Center (regional)
- Sequoia Station Redevelopment (regional)
The top four projects were all regional, and the bottom three aren’t much of an improvement in that regard. It’s still about creating and connecting railroad networks. There is only one project here that could somewhat be counted towards “local mobility,” and that would be the Broadway Streetcar Study.
The Broadway Streetcar Study
For starters, the Bay Area features some 25-30 transit agencies – and plenty of those feature different rail-track networks. We need fewer incompatible rail networks – not more.
But this project wasn’t really an effort to improve local mobility; it was merely a study. And studies aren’t projects. “Studies,” “surveys,” or “outreach” are often just ways to apply for grants and funding that magically end up in the General Fund.
Whenever we see new streetcar projects popping up these days, people should become suspicious, because……. new Streetcar project usually have one of two objectives:
- Be the counter project that gives city councils a reason to approve Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) of something they really shouldn’t.
- A common grift: rerouting more precious transit funding into other buckets.
Best-case scenario: this project was somewhat symbolic – used as an EIR fig leaf – and wasted only a small amount of transit funding.
Worst case scenario: this project was real, and the city did plan to waste a lot of transit funding.
It never occurred to me that this was intended to ever become a real, solid project. It followed the Dumbarton Railroad Story trajectory too closely. Once the development projects behind the EIR were all approved, the Broadway Streetcar project got smaller and smaller until it eventually disappeared.
Sequoia Station Redevelopment
Like the Broadway Streetcar project, this project is also dead now.
But unlike the Broadway Streetcar project, this project was meant to be.
The council seemed very serious about the retail and office parts of the project, but paid little to almost no attention to the housing and transportation parts. For example, in the beginning, the plans for the Sequoia Station showed some enticing features. It centered on a transit hub and featured extensive bus infrastructure and bike lanes to address the last-mile problem. The project showed some willingness to address the required reduction of vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
But first, the transit hub moved north. Then City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz and Senior Transportation Manager Jessica Manzi removed the bike lanes from the design with no explanation. Instead, weird features like “bicycle boulevards”, “slow streets”, or “walkable bikeways” started showing up. None of these would be suitable for a downtown area or any street with 3,000–5,000 vehicles per day. And for this development, the projections pointed even higher.
Downtown Transit Center
When the Sequoia Station Development died, talk about the Downtown Transit Center also stopped. Which is weird since the Transit Center was only project-adjacent and not really part of the TOD anymore. On the other hand, it wasn’t a city project either. It’s a project of the San Mateo Transit District (SamTrans), which owns the space and has jurisdiction here. Then again, they don’t seem to have much about it on their website either.
Officially, the city moved this project into Redwood City’s greater Downtown General Plan.
Summary
In summary, only one of the seven projects improved regional mobility somewhat. After Caltrain’s electrification project was finished, Caltrain increased speed and service. That certainly made it easier for Redwood City residents to get from Sequoia Station to SF Giants games near Fourth and King, SJ Sharks games near Diridon Station, and everything in between.
But did the electrification project make it better or worse for residents to get around Redwood City?
Some could argue that more Caltrain service made driving on US-101 and I-280 better as people switched from driving to transit. But if a majority of those new riders are driving to Sequoia Station, then Caltrain Electrification has made local transportation worse. Congestion increased within the town.
Regional projects that don’t consider the Last-Mile Problem bring regional problems onto local streets.
Fast Forward – Jefferson Avenue
Only one project on the city manager’s list actually improved mobility, and that wasn’t even a Redwood City project.
None of the city manager’s local projects was built. No bike lanes leading from various neighborhoods towards Sequoia Station were real infrastructure. No bike lanes came to El Camino Real; none to Jefferson Ave.; James Ave and Brewster haven’t received the promised cycle tracks.
In those five years since 2019, Redwood City never addressed the last-mile problem, and traffic has worsened as a result.
But it’s 2026, and Redwood City is finally addressing one last-mile solution. Jefferson Avenue is Redwood City’s major east-west connector (sort of), connecting Canada College, Stulsaft Park, Red Morton Park, and several schools and hospitals to Sequoia Station, Downtown, and eventually the SF Bay Trail. Part of it was planned under the old leadership. Once Melissa Stevenson Diaz and her team took over, the project stalled at the status “pilot”. Plans for the next stage don’t even connect to the Grand Boulevard Initiative. Patrick Heisinger also seems to leave out the Equity Focus Areas along El Camino Real.
With just one project, the new city manager could do something for the last-mile and equity issues – and yet the project plan very deliberately refuses to do so.
Final Thoughts
The big question is, will the new city manager, Patrick Heisinger and his transportation director, Tanisha Werner, be able to address the last-mile problem this time around? After 10 years of no improvement in local mobility, the residents deserve more than a marketing pamphlet with one semi-successful project… or as the great Elvis would put it to our city council:
𝄞 A little less conversation, a little more action, please
𝄞 All this aggravation ain’t satisfactionin’ me
𝄞 A little more bite and a little less bark
𝄞 A little less fight and a little more spark
𝄞 Shut your mouth and open up your heart and satisfy us …
𝄞 Satisfy us
Let’s see if the city council can finally satisfy us.
To be continued …
More Information
- RWCPulse: Three Wishes to new City Manager
- RWCPulse: A New Hope leading the Transportation Department
- RWCPulse: Sequoia Transit Oriented Development (TOD)
- RWCPulse: The Dumbarton Corridor Story
- RWCPulse: City Hall flunks three simple equity litmus tests
- A little less Conversation – A little more Action please
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.
