I never understood why Caltrans is so unresponsive to the taxpayers who use what they build.

While many of us Mountain View cyclists would love to see bike lanes on El Camino, with all its cross streets and curb cuts it's not a good place for a bicycle "superhighway." I think the best place for a cross-town cycle path is along the south side of Central Expressway (west of Castro) and the north side of Evelyn (east of Castro).

The thing is that a bike route doesn't have to be a "superhighway" to be quite useful. Bikes are used for more localized trips than cars, even though they might involve going from Palo Alto to Mountain View. I see no reason not to improve bike routes along El Camino Real -and- Central Expressway -and- Middlefield Road to go with the existing bike route along Foothill Expressway and Junipero Serra. It doesn't cost nearly as much as adding car capacity. Parking is already missing on some of the road which by itself makes them more amenable to bike use. There are reasons to reduce parking along El Camino Real even apart from being able to create bike routes. So, my problem with the term would be with the misuse of the term superhighway. Frankly, using highway to describe ECR as a car route has become a stretch. For cars too, typical trips are shorter than they once were.

Now Caltrans is only responsible for the Freeways and ECR. I think everyone can see why Caltrans picks ECR vs 101 or 280 to add a bike route.

What's galling is that I know for sure Caltrans let Palo Alto know this was under consideration a good while back, before 2022 even. The transportation manager saying he had no idea is like the liine about being shocked that there was gambling in the movie Casa Blanca.

What would *really* be nice is if Alma were made bikeable. A lot of what has been
done recently involves painting, and otherwise "adorning" streets that were already
bikeable... like Ross Rd. and Arastradero.

The avenues in New York City all have bike lanes. If one of the busiest cities in the U.S. can manage to share their roads with pedestrians, buses, parked cars, bicycles, and electric bicycles, El Camino Real on the Peninsula should be able to handle bike lanes. The important thing to enforce is that bikes should go the same direction as the cars. Since El Camino clearly has cars going "North" on one side and "South" on the other, that should not be a problem for the bike lanes to match. That way pedestrians and vehicles turning across bike lanes will always know which way to look.

""What Caltrans did was so surprising that nobody knew quite how to react to it," Robert Neff, a member of the committee, told this publication in an interview."

Such is the state of our "democracy". This is NOT a good thing.

"Some questioned the goals of the Caltrans project while others focused on ..."

ARE there goals for the project? Is it too much to ask for those goals to be shared with "we the people"?

"And because El Camino is under state's jurisdiction, not any individual city's, local opposition may not be enough to stop the proposal from advancing."

Nothing like mandates from The State, full of politicians who Know What Is Best for all of us. They are ANONYMOUS and UNACCOUNTABLE for their decisions. That is NOT a good thing either.

I agree with @Lenny on this one. Central Expressway/Alma seems like it could be made into a safe and even highly pleasant biking corridor, and it seems like a lot of land already exists along that area so progress could happen relatively quickly. Evelyn would also be good, but as a second choice, IMO. I think Safety comes from separating the bicycle community from the car community. Is that too radical a concept?