Palo Alto Lane Reduction Projects

The City of Palo Alto, California has pursued several lane reduction projects since adopting a new Comprehensive Plan in 1998, with some success. The streets on which lane reductions have been proposed include a variety of street types, including major arterial roads with heavy commuter and school traffic, a downtown street through a downtown business district, and a street located in a suburban business park. All of the projects have meet with varying levels of community opposition, depending on the project's location and its goals. They offer many lessons for how to best plan for, promote, and implement various types of lane reduction projects.
Setting
Palo Alto has a diverse, wealthy, highly-educated, and growing population of 64,403 residents (as of the 2010 census). Its founding in 1894 as a railroad town to support the nearby newly-founded Stanford University has greatly influenced the city's current road system. Construction of the Stanford Research Park and Stanford Shopping Center in the early 1950s resulted in several 4-lane arterial streets to serve high volumes of vehicle traffic entering and exiting the city daily.
Palo Alto's two downtown business districts, University Ave and California Ave, are each served by a transit station on the Caltrain passenger rail line, which connects the city to San Francisco and San Jose. These transit stations, an extensive network of bike lanes and paths, and sidewalks are available along most streets. Palo Alto residents use non-automotive means of transportation to work at higher rates than a typical American suburban community, with 9% working at home, 7.5% bicycling to work, 6% walking to work, and 4.5% taking transit to work.
Many Palo Alto children walk or bicycle to school due to a successful decade-long Safe Routes to School program. The percentages of public school children who walk or bicycle to school are 48% for elementary schools, 35 - 55% for middle schools, and 35 - 40% for high schools.
Purpose
The Transportation Element of Palo Alto's 1998 Comprehensive Plan contained several goals and policies designed to create a more sustainable transportation system. Among these were
* Policy T-25 When constructing or modifying roadways, plan for usage of the roadway space by all users, including motor vehicles, transit vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
* Policy T-28 Make effective use of the traffic-carrying ability of Palo Alto’s major street network without compromising the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists also using this network.
* Policy T-30 Reduce the impacts of through-traffic on residential areas by designating certain streets as residential arterials. The goals of this policy were slower speeds, safer conditions for bicycles and pedestrians, and aesthetic improvements without reducing traffic capacity or diverting traffic onto local neighborhood streets.
* Policy T-31 Evaluate smoothing and slowing traffic flow by reducing through traffic lanes and trading the area for improved turning lanes, landscaping, and bicycle lanes.
Program T-41 designated Middlefield Rd, University Ave, Embarcadero Rd, Charleston Rd, and Arastadero Rd as residential arterials. The city's Residential Arterial Traffic Calming Project was created to achieve the goals established in Policy T-30. Lane reductions were one of the physical changes considered as part of this project.
Embarcadero Road
The Embarcadero Road Traffic Calming Study was authorized by the City Council as the first phase of the project in 1998. Joe Kott, hired as Chief Transportation Official the same year, made the Embarcadero Rd project a high priority for the Transportation Division. The project was managed by City Traffic Engineer Ashok Aggarwal.
A 22-member advisory group that included city residents, commissioners, and Fire, Police, and Public Works staff provided input to the Transportation Division and design consultant throughout the development of a plan to reduce speeding and improve the safety and aesthetics of Embarcadero Rd without affecting existing traffic patterns or volumes.
Two public meetings were also held to solicit preferred design alternatives for the street. The public's preferred choice was to reduce the number of vehicle travel lanes from four to two, and install a tree-lined median and bicycle lanes for most of the length of the street. The city did not include the median and bicycle lanes in the plan's design for the section of Embarcadero Rd near Middlefield Rd due to existing high traffic volumes at that intersection.
A Base Plan and Master Plan were prepared to specify the short-term and long-term changes that would be made to the street. These plans were approved by the city's Planning and Transportation Commission on November 8, 2000 and Arastadero Rd in 2010, and Deer Creek Rd in 2011.
California Avenue
A current Palo Alto project aims to revitalize the downtown commercial district centered on California Avenue between El Camino Real and the Caltrain Station by reducing the number of vehicle travel lanes from four to two and installing new crosswalks, sidewalk curb extensions, planting areas, and bicycle parking racks.

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