Speed feedback signs are security theater

City of Fremont will spend another $150,000 on radar speed feedback signs:

Veloso said the new signs — which flash car’s mph back to drivers and display a white strobe when speeding is detected — will be installed on “high-speed” arterial streets where the city has seen the highest numbers of “severe injury and fatal collisions.”

A staff report indicates some of those streets will include Niles Boulevard, near where a woman was killed in a hit-and-run in late November, as well as other spots on Fremont Boulevard, Paseo Padre Parkway, where a couple of signs are already posted, and Thornton Avenue, among others.

Since the city began implementing its Vision Zero plan in 2016, staff says major crashes through November 2019 are down 46 percent on roads with speed limits above 40 mph compared to 2013 to 2015 numbers. However, the numbers of fatalities from collisions are mixed, hitting a low of four deaths each in 2016 and 2018 to a high of 10 in 2017 and seven in 2019.

The problem in Fremont is that the posted speed limit on major arterials is 35 mph and higher. So even if all drivers were to comply with the speed limit, the road would still be too dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.

Fremont Blvd near the Warm Springs BART station, where a cyclist was killed. Posted speed limit is 45 mph.

 

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The aparkment building

The good news is that more infill development is going up near BART. The bad news: it is extremely auto-centric:

Fremont has approved a plan to build 275 market-rate apartments on a vacant plot at the corner of Walnut Avenue and Liberty Street, a move meant to boost the city’s longtime effort to develop the area into a bustling downtown.

The apartment complex at 3515 Walnut Ave. will feature 2,245 square feet of ground floor retail and a six-story parking garage, according to a city staff report.

The Los Gatos arm of national developer Fore Property Co. is behind the project, which will include 59 studios, 125 one-bedroom units and 91 two-bedroom units ranging in size from 556 to 1,429 square-feet, wrapped around the parking garage on a 2.84-acre lot.

A 6-story parking garage for just 275 housing units. If you are wondering what that looks like, it will be similar to this ‘aparkment’ next door:

Garage parking spaces require 160-200 sq-ft. Those 556 sq-ft studios could have been designed as 700+ sq-ft one-bedrooms — if not for the mandated parking. Here is the surrounding neighborhood, which hardly lacks parking:

 

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Lack of infrastructure endangers pedestrians at Warm Springs BART

Warm Springs is what BART calls an “automobile-access” station. No expense was spared in building new roads and highways for convenient car access. It has a huge parking lot, tricked out with solar panels and other “green” features.

The pedestrian access on the other hand…

The photo above is Warm Springs Blvd, at the east entrance to the station. Those signals are totally new, and provide car access to the station. But as you can see, they lack pedestrian signals, and there are no crosswalks. The signals only permit cars to cross, not pedestrians. A pedestrian crossing the street (say to the business park on the other side), has no easy way to do it. The nearest intersection with ped signals is at Grimmer Blvd  — a half-mile detour just to cross the street. And in any case, there is no sidewalk on the other side of Warm Springs Blvd, even though the road was completely re-built. So the detour would involve walking out in the roadway.

The other roads in the station neighborhood are no better. Fremont Blvd, along the west side of the station, lacks sidewalks on both sides of the street. The speed limit is 45 mph (with actual speeds much higher), so you can imagine what that is like for pedestrians:

And here is Grimmer Blvd, along the north side of the station, which also lacks basic pedestrian accommodation:

North of the station, Warm Springs Blvd changes name to Osgood Rd. But it has the same crappy pedestrian access. Pedestrians must get by on a weed-choked dirt path:

These terrible conditions are not due to any lack of time or money. The Warm Springs station went through 10+ years of design and construction. During that time, vast sums were spent “improving” roads and freeway interchanges around the station, but not a single thing done for pedestrian access. From almost every direction, it is impossible to safely walk to the station.

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Dangerous double-right turn in Fremont

Over the past year, Fremont has been busy striping new and improved bike lanes. Many of the projects are quite good, in particular the road-diet on Paseo Padre, and buffered bike lanes to the BART station. But then, they went and did this monstrosity:

Before this right-hook bike-lane went in, the street had just a single right-turn lane. So the new configuration just made things much more dangerous.

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Update on Fremont Safe-Routes-to-School project

Fremont Public Works informs me that there are no plans to remove bike lanes at the Grimmer/Blacow intersection:

The project will extend the bike lanes to the intersection crosswalk lines and install new bike detection loops and bike detection legends at all approaches.

While certainly good news, this does not change the fact that a Safe-Routes-to-School grant was used mainly for an automobile LOS improvement project.

The primary safety issue at the intersection isn’t the right-turn slip lane, but the ludicrously high traffic speeds. Blacow and Grimmer were both designed to encourage dangerous speeding. Just ask Leon and Marilyn Goheen, whose property borders Grimmer Blvd. On eight separate occasions, cars have gone flying off “dead man’s curve” and landed in their back yard.

If you want to make Grimmer Blvd safer for students, bulb-outs aren’t going to cut it. And adding automobile capacity makes it worse.

 

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Fremont uses Safe-Routes-to-School grant to remove bike lanes, widen intersection

Safe-Routes-to-School (SRTS) grants are supposed to improve bike and pedestrian access to schools. The city of Fremont has discovered a new way to use this funding source: to widen intersections and remove bike lanes. Cyclists biking past Irvington high school now have to contend with this:

You can see where the bike lane used to be. It was removed to make way for an additional left-turn lane. Cyclists now have to “share” the lane with 40+ mph traffic through a heavily used intersection. The Grimmer Blvd bike lane is a key part of the south Fremont Bike Plan, providing a connection to the new Warm Springs BART station. As well, pedestrians at the Grimmer/Blacow intersection will now have to cross 2 additional travel lanes.

Incredibly, this was all made possible by a California SRTS grant, which provided the bulk of the funding of the intersection “improvement” project. Fremont cleverly split the project up so that the SRTS grant paid for the expensive new signal and sidewalk changes, while the the new left turn lane was paid with non-SRTS funds.

Council gave the project a CEQA negative declaration (i.e. exempt from environmental review) because it would have “minor” impacts. The Staff Report to Council makes no mention of the bike lane removal. This raises the troubling question as to whether Fremont City Council or Caltrans was aware of the bike lane removal in approving the project.

 

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TOD under construction at Fremont BART

Here is a photo of new transit-oriented development under construction at the Fremont BART station. This is a prime location, directly outside the West entrance.

Yes, it is a parking garage, of course. That is how we do TOD in the Bay Area.

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Fremont plans lots of parking around Warm Springs BART station

Plans are taking shape for the area around the new Warm Springs BART station. As typical for suburban BART stations, the plans entail large amounts of parking:

To give the neighborhood an urban-look, the parking garages are placed inside or below buildings:

For each residential unit within 1/4 mile of the BART station (i.e. 5-minute walk), Fremont’s zoning code requires 1.5 parking spaces . Beyond the 1/4-mile threshold, the requirement increases to 2 parking spaces. These parking requirements apply even to the affordable housing.

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Another BART “Milestone”

It is amazing how the highway lobby gets their hands on all the money. When a BART extension project took tracks over Mission Blvd in Fremont, the highway lobby used the opportunity for a massive $150 million road widening:

This monster freeway interchange lies just south of the new Warm Springs BART station. The entire station area has been surrounded by a moat of highways and freeway interchanges.

Even though there have been various bike plans for the south Fremont area, none of it has been built (unless you count riding on the shoulder of a high speed arterial). So good luck using the new BART station to generate walkable, bikeable TOD development that was promised. And anyone dumb enough to try biking through there will suffer the consequences.

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Nimitz Freeway Pet Cemetery

Did you know the Nimitz Freeway had a pet cemetery?

Each day, tens of thousands of commuters drive right by it without even realizing it. Plonked underneath the new Mission Blvd interchange, it is just yards away from the zooming traffic.

Situated on a spit of land between I880 and a nondescript Fremont office park, it is the most unlikely of places for Fluffy’s final resting place. But how did it get there?

The dates on the tombstones are from the 1970s, and earlier. The only possible explanation: this was once a bucolic location, with peaceful views of Mission Peak. Back then, this neighborhood was largely undeveloped. Then along came the highway and the sprawl.

It is hard to describe the surreal location. The din of traffic zooming around and above the graves of pets who passed on decades ago. Definitely not a location to “Rest in Peace”.

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