Nearly three years ago, I wrote about the bike lanes on McClellan Road in Cupertino, designed with safety in mind for students riding to and from Lincoln Elementary School and Monta Vista High School.
It was an ambitious project that I generally gave high marks – except for the intersection with Stelling Road. At the time, I spoke to people in Cupertino’s transportation department, who acknowledged that it would have to be modified.
It looks like they did do that by adding a curb between the main road and the right-turn lane, with a marked bike lane to the right of the curb, along with the narrow right-turn space for cars.
It is ugly, but I think it works – the dashed green paint in the open space between curbs makes it clear that right-turning cars have to cross and yield to bikes, rather than bikes having to turn through a lane of cars to go straight. I hope all of the road planners in the local area can learn from one mistake and not need to make an iteration on the next similar iteration.
Curbing the problem
I am writing about this bike lane again because of the recent uproar on Nextdoor about the fact that when a motorist scrapes the sidewalls of a car’s tires along the curbs used to separate the car and bike lanes, it blows their tires. Of course, it is easy to blame a motorist for being careless, but from the discussion on Nextdoor – as well as the fact that the curbs are liberally coated with black tire marks – it is clear this is happening to dozens, if not hundreds, of drivers. That’s a reflection on the design – the lanes are simply too narrow to line them with a curb that is lethal to tires.
What to do? The bike lane alternates sections with curbs and those with a small bump so that cars can get out of driveways. I think the curbs could be removed and replaced with these bumps that do not harm tires. There could even be a narrow rumble strip along the left side of the bump; rumble strips are common in other parts of the country, though not so much in our area.
Except where a clear path is required for a driveway, there would have to be a flexible pole every few feet. This would eliminate the tire danger and be a distinct improvement for cyclists because they could leave the lane if they find their way blocked or to prepare for a left turn. Yes, a determined driver could overrun the poles if they want to, but the same is true of a curb.
Perhaps a simpler solution is to make the curbs more visible. The curbs are light gray, and they certainly are not eye-catching. Depending on lighting and time of day, they blend in. Everywhere I have seen similar installations, the curbs are yellow, or at least the end of the curb facing oncoming traffic is. Each McClellan curb end is marked with a white reflector, which I am sure works at night, but the reflectors should be yellow so that they are eye-catching in daylight. The current reflector design also blends in with the background.
There may be debates about the best solution, but clearly doing nothing is not OK – bicycle safety should not result in dozens of blown car tires.
Misleading signs
There is one more issue that was only addressed by a couple of Nextdoor contributors – the Bubb Road and McClellan intersection includes bike “boxes” so that bikes on the cross streets can stop in the box and make a left turn after the light changes. They are clearly marked to make it clear that bikes on the cross street can use them to turn left. But
there is a sign on the light post that seems to say cyclists on McClellan can use the bike box to turn left onto Bubb or Stelling.
The box adjacent to the sign is on the wrong side of the cross street for that. I stared at that sign for a long time before it dawned on me that it must refer to the bike box on the far side of the cross street, not the one that was directly in front of me. A cyclist in position to read the sign can’t even see the bike box on the far side of the intersection.
Cyclists will have to learn the proper way to use a bike box by education, word-of-mouth or observing other cyclists – not by reading misleading and confusing signs in the intersection, and it is potentially dangerous. Those misplaced signs need to come down immediately.
Chris Hoeber is a local resident, avid cyclist and founder of a cycling club. Email questions and comments to [email protected].
