Photo of bank robber released

Walnut Creek are seeking the public's help in finding this man who robbed the Bank of the West on California Boulevard Wednesday morning.

Here are details from a Walnut Creek police press release:

On February 29, 2012 at about 9:30 AM the suspect entered Bank of the West on California Blvd. and demanded cash from the teller. The suspect was given an undisclosed amount of money from the teller and then fled the bank. He was last seen walking northbound on California Boulevard. No weapons were seen. Officers searched the area, but were unable to locate the subject. Anyone with information is encouraged to call WCPD at 925-943-5844.

What's going in to the corner where the trees were removed

Here you go, folks. Gayle Vassar, the city's community relations manager, kindlly tracked this down for me.

Demolition is currently underway at South California Blvd. and Olympic Blvd. (near Alma Park) to make way for a new commercial development known as Centre Place. Hall Equities Group is redeveloping the two-acre commercial site currently known as California Plaza at 1231-1275 South California Boulevard. The project will include demolition of a 14,742 square-foot portion (~75%) of the existing one-story retail building (all but KFC/Baja Fresh), and construction of two new buildings totaling 17,707 square feet with retail, bank, and office uses at the north end of the site. Building #1 is a two-story, 13,157 square foot office/bank combination designed for a single tenant with the bank component on the first level and associated offices above. Building #2 is a one-story 4,550 square foot retail/restaurant building designed for one or more tenants.

Limited, additional work will include grading and re-landscaping within the City’s adjacent Alma Park. The developer will also enlarge, re-design, and re-landscape the entire Alma Park entryway plaza at the intersection of S. California and Olympic Boulevards. The plan includes new flat work with different paving materials and all new landscaping within a larger, more open plaza at the corner and possible artwork locations. Additional improvements include a wider throat within which a more linear, wider, and ADA accessible walkway would be created from the intersection up into the park. Park entrance improvements will include the removal of several mature pine trees.

So, that answered my question, which one reader said I should have asked before I printed my original post. Well, I did. Just near the time that office hours at the city were closing ... Could I have waited? Did I violate good journalistic standards? Maybe I could have waited. Still mulling that one over. Maybe I violated journalistic standards.  Still mulling that over, too, and the question of whether certain journalistic standards have really served the public as well as claimed... Many big questions to be asking in the middle of the night.

Oh, and from the conceptual site plan, it doesn't look like the builder is going to allow the widening of California Boulevard to make room for bicyclists. However, making California Boulevard more bike-friendly, if not with a whole, actual bike lane, is supposed to be a high priority for the city's Bicycle Plan, as I reported earlier this week.

Of course, it's already been debated and approved--and supposedly covered by the Contra Costa Times. Old news, right? So why did I ever bother to bring it up?  Just Crazy that way.

Walnut Creek mobility gripe no. 4: Where the bike lane ends on California Boulevard

A reader alerted me to both this possible “gap” in thinking on Walnut Creek’s proposed Bicycle Plan, as well as a challenging gap for bicyclists trying to travel up and down California Boulevard between the BART station and Newell Avenue.

The bike lane along California Boulevard ends at Mt. Diablo Boulevard. If the bicyclist is determined to push to Newell Avenue on south to the end of California Boulevard, well good luck to the bicyclist. He or she has to compete with motorists for space, especially in those two blocks between Olympic Boulevard and Newell Avenue.

As I’ve said before, I don’t ride a bike, but I’ve been a motorist coming upon someone on a bike trying to squeeze into the right-hand lanes of traffic going in both directions on California Boulevard between Olympic and Newell.

Basically, there is no room for both a car and a bike in those right-hand lanes. Of course, I’ve been the motorist, annoyed that I have to slow way down and essentially follow behind the bicyclist. And I’ve been stuck in a slow-moving column of cars, stuck behind a much slower moving bicyclist.

It happens fairly frequently. It makes sense that, if you’re a bicyclist trying to get from one end of town to another, that you’d use the full length of California Boulevard. I’ve seen kids on bikes trying to get to and from school on California Boulevard, and what looks like adults on bikes trying to get to and from work.

According to the draft Bicycle Plan, which the city council has begun discussing, creating a “Class III” bike route in both directions from Olympic Boulevard to Newell Avenue is a high priority. A Class III bike route can basically be any city street, and doesn’t require a special bike lane. It is “usually established on low-volume local neighborhood streets,” which we know California Boulevard, leading to Plaza Escuela, Trader Joe’s, and Kaiser medical center, is not. It is recommended that Class III bike routes that serve as routes to school, for younger bicyclists, have “wider outside lane widths (fourteen to sixteen feet)."

With the current state of sidewalks and retail space on California Boulevard, between Oympic and Newell, I'm not sure how they would squeeze in any extra space in the right lanes for bicyclists.

As I wrote earlier, the city has begun discussing ways to make Walnut Creek more bike-friendly. The city has to work on this effort. It is mandated to do so by the General Plan 2025 and if it wants to become eligible to receive special state funds. Unfortunately, the draft Bicycle Plan says that many roads are not currently bicycle friendly (could we be talking this stretch of California Boulevard?), and connections to downtown, transit, and work centers are not clearly established.