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.

Walnut Creek "mobility" gripe No. 2: Where the sidewalk ends on Newell Avenue, and it shouldn't...

First, I should explain the use of the term "mobility" in both these post and the one prior.

"Mobility" was the catch-all term that arose during the city-hosted Community Conversation workshops this fall to apply to all issues that pertain to how cars, trucks, buses, bikes, and people move in around town.

Mobility.

And, so here is one of my Walnut Creek mobility gripes. It has to do with how you're strolling along Newell Avenue, or South Main Street, and you come to the southeast corner of the Newell Avenue and South Main intersection. If you want to walk east on Newell, along the south side of the avenue, between Newell and San Ramon Creek, you immediately lose the sidewalk once you come to the Terrace Shops strip mall.

If you want to walk between Newell Avenue and San Ramon Creek, you have to leave the sidewalk and pass through the mall's parking lot. This is true for anyone passing from downtown, the Kaiser medical center, and Pacific Bay Coffee Company or George's Giant Hamburger in the Terrace Shops mall towards Whole Foods and the northern entrance to Las Lomas High School.

Sure, coming to the end of the sidewalk and passing through the parking lot is not that big of deal. But there are cars coming and going and backing in and out of a bustling small mall.

And the thing is, this gap in a pedestrian walkway in a downtown commercial area runs counter to the goals of Walnut Creek's General Plan 2025. In the Plan's Chapter 5, the Transportation section, the city established some guidelines.

The plan says that the city should require "full-frontage" curb and sidewalk improvemtns in all commercial areas, and that these sidwalks should be a minimum of 10 feet wide.

The Terrace Shops were built a while back. The center has been in Walnut Creek from the time I was a kid. So, no doubt, the city government, way back then, probably didn't impose any sidewalk requirements on the original developer. In the General Plan 2025, the city says it wants to require that sidewalks be installed at the time of development. However, it acknowledges that "the burden to install as well as maintain sidewalks in most cases rests with the property owner."

Still, the General Plan makes it clear that the city hopes to correct the development mistakes of the past, and presumably that would one day include adding a sidewalk to the Newell Avenue frontage of the Terrace Shops mall. On the other hand, that's a pretty narrow parking lot. Making room for a sidewalk would take serious width away from an already narrow, crowded parking lot.