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The Atherton City Council approved a contract with transportation firm Alta Planning + Design to refresh its Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan during its meeting on Jan. 15. The work will include evaluation of bike lane development on well-traveled routes like Atherton and Watkins avenues. The plan update is expected to take 18 months.
The city’s current bicycle and pedestrian master plan was originally approved in November 2014, and envisions bike paths along Middlefield Road, Atherton Avenue, Selby Lane, Elena Avenue and other routes throughout the town. Alta led the development of the town’s first Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan.
In 2023, a San Mateo County Grand Jury recommended that all bicycle master plans within the county that are more than five years old be updated to ensure safe routes throughout the area. That prompted Atherton to begin the update process for its 10-year-old plan.
The plan update is projected to cost the town $225,000, but the council approved an extra $25,000 for contingency purposes. Atherton received a $100,000 Transportation Development Act grant from the state Metropolitan Transportation Commission to help fund the new plan.
The council also opted to defer the installation of a bike path on Selby Lane on the recommendation of the town’s Transportation, Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Committee until after the master plan has been updated. According to a town staff report, there is a “lack of community support for the project as envisioned.” The plans for the Selby Lane bike project currently propose widening the roadway on the street by approximately 4 feet on either side to allow for the installation of bike lanes along the road, which is often used by children biking to and from the Adelante Selby Spanish Immersion School.
Ivana Rodriguez, Redwood City’s Safe Routes to School Program specialist, told the council that the Safe Routes to School program has had to donate helmets to many of the students biking and scootering to Adelante to ensure that they remain safe along the Selby Lane route. (Although in Atherton, the Spanish immersion school is part of the Redwood City Elementary School District.)
The master plan will include additional outreach to gauge bicycle and pedestrian needs along the Selby Lane route, according to the staff report.
The council requested that the consultant also consider using modeling software to learn more about future projected traffic patterns when drafting the updated plan due to the many roadway changes that are slated to come to the area. Those changes include Atherton’s roundabout at the intersection of Alameda de las Pulgas and Atherton Avenue and the additional cars from the SRI Parkline project that will be built in Menlo Park.
The council emphasized the importance of comprehensive public outreach for the master plan update, and any bike and pedestrian upgrade projects that are spawned out of the update.
“It’s extremely important for any specific area within Atherton … where there’s a recommended change, that the people who live in that area be fully notified,” said Council member Rick DeGolia. “We now know that notification of residents doesn’t mean that residents recognize that they’ve been notified, and it often takes us several times to contact them.”
The council asked that the consultants incorporate extra public outreach efforts to ensure that Atherton residents understand the benefits of bike and pedestrian projects.
“We keep hearing from residents that traffic is a problem, school drop off is a problem, we have climate action plan goals … we have drainage problems,” said Vice Mayor Stacy Miles Holland. “You know what fixes all of that? All of the green infrastructure that comes when we add a bike lane. … Property values go up when you have a bike lane, your traffic goes down.”
