Is San Mateo’s experience with Humboldt Street analogous to Richmond Street?
The group Richmond Street Neighborhood Association, which opposes El Cerrito’s Complete Street design for Richmond Street, claims the contentious experiences of Humboldt Street in San Mateo and Hopkins Street in Berkeley proves public opposition to bike lanes. On their website, they “declared solidarity with other communities like ours, such as Hopkins Street in Berkeley and the North Central Neighborhood in San Mateo.” Solidarity with the Humboldt Street bike lane opponents was invoked by the Richmond Street opponents by reading a letter at the July 15 El Cerrito city council meeting from Trina Pierce, a San Mateo opponent of bike lanes.
Closer to home, trying to get bike lanes on Hopkins Street in Berkeley is still a painful memory that got national attention. Merchants around Monterey Market thought that the bike lanes would deter their customers who arrive by car. Many of those motorists who live in the hills felt they shouldn’t be deprived of parking when they drive down. Although the motorists and businesses won that battle and the bike lanes were not built, this was not a slam-dunk opposition to bike lanes. The fight between supporters and opponents was intense. As time goes on and bike travel numbers increase, the regret over lost opportunities at these locations will grow.
San Mateo installed the bike lanes several years ago to provide safer routes to three schools located on a dangerous corridor, which opponents are now trying to have removed. “Too many people are dying on the streets of San Mateo while we debate whether to remove recently installed safety infrastructure,” Michael Swire wrote in a petition supporting the bike lanes. “We ask that our scarce taxpayer dollars and staff time instead be spent looking forward, not backward.”
According to an article in the Daily Journal news outlet on the Peninsula, San Mateo is divided about the value of bicycle lanes on Humboldt Street. Again there is no “anti” consensus. Humboldt Street is in an equity priority community with some single-family houses occupied by multiple families. As defined by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, “Equity priority communities are census tracts that have a significant concentration of underserved populations, such as households with low incomes and people of color.” The fact that many residents feel that the street can’t afford to lose on-street parking is a reflection of a population density that isn’t apparent from looking at the buildings on the street. Some houses contain three families, according to Max Mautner of Move San Mateo. “San Mateo has brought this [overcrowding] upon itself based on its failure to zone multifamily housing.” Mautner described efforts to remove the bike lanes as a fool’s errand because San Mateo—which is currently operating under a $12 million budget deficit—would have to return the $1.5 million in grant money that it received for the project for bike lanes.
Close to equal numbers of San Mateo residents were for or against bike lanes on Humboldt Street, depending on whether they lived on Humboldt Street or outside that immediate neighborhood: 76% versus 70%. A supporter of bike lanes quoted in the Daily Journal article who lives on Humboldt Street said, “I know there are tons of families that do not have a car. They cannot afford a car, but they can afford a bike. … I see bikes all the time.”
How to fulfill local mobility needs requires sensitive attention to local circumstances. Richmond Street is not Humboldt Street or Hopkins Street; it’s not in an Equity Priority area and it does not have retail destinations. What we do share in common is the need to provide mobility choice for all.
Opponents to bike lanes in San Mateo are lobbying to removed them.