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A new city manager is coming in. It’s time for residents to get a few wishes granted.
Melissa Stevenson Diaz found seven council members who granted her all her wishes. The residents did get the People’s Budget in return, but that was a bust. What did the seven council members and the city ultimately receive in return?
When the city manager made her case for several controversial 10% raises, she compared herself to Mountain View’s city manager. The backdrop of resident disapproval prompts us to consider what Redwood City lacks relative to what Mountain View’s city manager has achieved.
Three Wishes To City Manager
These ‘wishes’ aren’t out of the blue. These are projects already promised in the General Plan (2010), several SRTS plans (e.g., 2014), the RWC Moves Plan (2018), the 2009 Climate Action Plan, and again when Stevenson Diaz deferred the 2019 Climate Action Plan. These ‘wishes’ have been around for quite a while.
While Mountain View has moved forward with its plans, our local Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), Redwood City Together, and the City Council have used these projects multiple times to pat each other on the back.
And yet, the disapproving residents are still waiting for …
Project 1: Safe-Routes-To-School
Project 2: Turn Hetch Hetchy into neighborhood parks with bike paths suitable for children
Project 3: Finish at least one Peninsula Bikeway, either Middlefield Road or Alameda de Las Pulgas (ADLP)
Since Redwood City and Melissa Stevenson Diaz have not been able to advance these projects over the past 10 years of her tenure, we are reminding the new city manager, Patrick Heisinger, that these requests remain.
Wish No. 1: Safe-Routes-To-School
Redwood City has approximately 20 schools, but none have access to high-quality bike lanes. Some have weird Share-The-Road experiments with fancy names like Bicycle Boulevards or Slow Streets. None of these would qualify as ‘Safe-Route’ by any objective measure. Mountain View, on the other hand, has pressed forward with several Class I & II bikeway projects around schools.
It becomes clearer when we compare a bikeway in Mountain View with one in Redwood City.
Mixing small children – riding 5 mph – just doesn’t match with 6,000 lbs. monster trucks using the same lane. Especially not during nighttime, or dusk, or dawn, or rain, or snow, or blinding sun, or weird shadows. And even if the weather is perfect, there is still the riding-right-behind-the-exhaust-pipe issue. If your child doesn’t have asthma now, riding this every morning might change that.
One of the most polluted areas for a child is inside a car, sitting behind another car. One of the healthiest environments is on a bicycle and in a bike lane.
Therefore – and in the name of all children – we wish our city manager could get that done, some Safe-Routes-To-School.
Wish No. 2: Hetch Hetchy Easement
There is a great alternative to sitting in air polluted car lanes called the Hetch Hetchy easements. They primarily serve as conduits for the water pipelines that bring water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to the Bay Area. SFPUC owns many miles of valuable, but often unused land. That space could be used for parks, trails, paths, and Safe-Routes-To-School.
Don’t get me wrong, SFPUC can be somewhat territorial about its easements. They can be quite selective about what they allow. When Melissa Stevenson Diaz and her staff were asked about the topic, they simply stated that their request was refused. Maybe the city manager in Mountain View asked more nicely or negotiated better. Because Mountain View managed to put a much needed little neighborhood park on it that also connects two different neighborhoods via the Hetch Hetchy Trail. Simple and brilliant use of unused space and still suitable for Safe-Routes-To-School as well.
Redwood City on the other hand has probably the biggest chunk of urban water pipeline easements of any city in this county. And our city manager didn’t get anything done? This is weird as some other organizations in Redwood City managed to put parking lots on that easement. There is more parking further down and even tennis courts. But somehow our city manager couldn’t convince SFPUC that we need the space for children riding bicycles to school? Weird, right?
But it gets weirder. Redwood City and SFPUC, both signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to bring the Bay2Sea Trail onto that same Hetch Hetchy easement.
Mountain View’s city manager had no such LOI, but still they got it done.
Therefore – and in the name of all children – we wish our city manager could take the LOI and shove it … right back to SFPUC’s offices and tell them about the much needed bike paths.
The Grand Boulevard Initiative
San Mateo transportation plans proposed bike lanes on El Camino Real more than 50 years ago. Local officials (San Mateo Democrats) have been failing ever since to make this happen.
Then, over 15 years ago, cities along the Peninsula agreed again that they needed to take action on El Camino Real. They just didn’t know exactly what, so a huge project was needed. But in the end, the only thing they did was give their project a cool name: The Grand Boulevard Initiative (GBI) and, of course, a website where politicians could take credit long before anything had been achieved.
These city managers wasted millions of dollars of meager bike funding on studies, outreach, simulations, drawings, and slideshows. Then each city waited a few years and did the old rinse-and-repeat: more studies, more outreach, and more bike funding. Whenever any resident would get suspicious about where all that bike funding really went, these city managers would just say things like “It’s not us, its Caltrans”, “We tried our best”, or “The Dog Ate My Homework”. Naturally, the GBI website is now defunct because there is currently no special bike funding available.
But this is a Caltrans project so we therefore wish Caltrans the stamina to push something through they have been promising to do since 2008 (AB1359).
Wish No. 3: The Peninsula Bikeway
The Grand Boulevard Initiative was clearly a hoax and a bust. Another group of cities tried something else instead. They invented The Peninsula Bikeway project to connect Mountain View to Redwood City along various streets parallel to El Camino Real. Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Atherton completed theirs by putting bike lanes along Middlefield Road (class 2). Redwood City was supposed to continue Middlefield Road through downtown and towards Old County Road. Melissa Stevenson Diaz and senior traffic engineer Jessica Manzi did not want to do that; they suggested sticking with the GBI instead. The advantage of that was that they could keep blaming Caltrans for the lack of those lanes.
Long (and messy) story short … after several years of real effort, Mountain View finished its part of the Peninsula Bikeway and worked with Caltrans to add bike lanes to El Camino Real.
While Mountain View completed both projects, Melissa Stevenson Diaz and her team did not begin either the Grand Boulevard Initiative or the Peninsula Bikeway. Instead, the city manager bought herself something nice – or as she called it, a “Protected Bike Lane Sweeper“.
Therefore – and in the name of all bike commuters – we wish our new city manager would finally create those protected bike lanes along Middlefield Road.
Final Thoughts
It’s up to new city manager Patrick Heisinger to finish the projects his predecessor never started. The residents strongly hope Patrick Heisinger isn’t too serious about communicating as Stevenson Diaz was. As a New Year’s resolution, Patrick Heisinger could write down these three projects and start to better communicate real progress
More Information
- RWCPulse: Redwood City manager, attorney to see retroactive pay raises of 10%
- RWCPulse: Redwood City increases city manager, attorney salaries
- POST: The Bay to Sea Trail
- RWC: City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz Announces December 2025 Retirement
- RWCPulse: Residents share what they want in Redwood City’s next city manager
- RWCPulse: City Manager announces Retirement
- RWCPulse: Heisinger officialized as new Redwood City manager
- RWCPulse: Remembering the People’s Budget
- RWCPulse: R.I.P. People’s Budget
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.
