Category: Parking

  • Neighborhood siege and YIMBY bigotry

    Here at the Voice, we go the extra mile for our readers or, in this case, the extra 1.7 miles. That is how far 606 S. Delaware in San Mateo is from my house. Having read the DJ news piece noted in the anniversary post, John Horgan’s column and Dana Yates’ opinion piece, I wanted to see the house and the neighborhood for myself. Horgan called the proposed 5-story, 20-unit project “absurd”. He notes

    There, on South Delaware Street not far from downtown, a plan is afoot that simply boggles the mind. A property owner has proposed constructing a five-story minitower that would include 20 studio apartments. The structure, if approved by city authorities, would be markedly out of character for the neighborhood.

    But that’s not the most striking aspect of the plan. According to a revealing report in the Daily Journal last week, the bold project would not have a single on-site parking space, not one. Nada. Nil. Zilch.

    My trip to San Mateo was late on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I found a section of quaint single-story, small bungalow style homes and no open parking spaces on the block. Think back to this post about the San Jose parking fiasco. “Parking is a necessity” should not be a surprise to anyone, but the Delaware St. project has no on-site parking! There is some odd arrangement to have eight spaces (not 15 or 20) in a “nearby garage”, but I didn’t see it on the east side of the Caltrain tracks where this neighborhood is located. I just keep thinking about people lugging groceries especially with all the talk about senior housing.

    But the rising angst isn’t just a San Mateo or Burlingame thing. Anyone following the EssEff Marina Safeway project has seen concern about size and density morph into bigoted accusations of bigotry. Note the Comicle’s Laura Waxmann piece about a photo of a community meeting:

    When I snapped the photo Thursday night, it looked like many community meetings I had covered before: a crowd of hundreds of neighbors packed into a Marina District warehouse to discuss a large housing development they opposed, the proposal to reimagine a waterfront Safeway into 848 apartments rising as high as 22 stories. I didn’t expect the image to take on a life of its own. Many (readers) were incensed or incited by one detail: Almost everyone in the room was older, with graying hair and faces that had seen decades of life. Two days later, the post had nearly 10 million views. Yet others called out what they described as a “YIMBY bigotry” toward older San Franciscans that the photo had unleashed.

    Waxmann didn’t call out people in the meeting being “white” but plenty of other commenters have and the YIMBY bigotry is rife in the opinion pieces and letters to the editor both at the Comicle and elsewhere. Comicle hack Joe Garofoli even dredges up the old race restrictions in deeds that were invalidated 80 years ago. One letter-writer says

    NIMBYs do not get to decide who lives here. If they like their city, they should want more people to be able to live here.

    No sorry. Let’s put the soft YIMBY bigotry away. People aren’t trying to influence WHO gets to live here–just some common sense about HOW MANY get to live here. Dana Yates’ column about why we are losing faith in local government gets to the source of the angst, but the bottom line is lack of action at the local, county and state levels. The priorities seem wrong and it could be too late by the time they figure it out. Remember Ben Franklin’s quote “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water”. Here’s the photo of the orange house on Delaware that has kicked over the hornet’s nest.

  • Parking: On the clock or not?

    A guy pulls into a parking space on Broadway. It’s at one end of a block with an odd number of spaces so it has one of the new meters that does not have a A and B side like the one shown below. He hops out with some change but first checks the time remaining. It’s a little difficult to see because it’s a sunny day, but he gets lucky– there’s 1:35 left on the meter which should be enough. He sets the alarm on his phone to 1:30 for a five-minute buffer and goes about his business. Business takes about an hour. Returning to his car, he checks his phone, cancels the alarm and decides to check the time on the meter. The meter shows an hour left, not 35 minutes! Guys scratches head, wonders if a) some Good Samaritan walked by and kicked in a quarter or two or b) it’s all messed up and he will get a ticket in the mail…..

  • Parking Ah-ha: It’s a necessity

    The Merc is highlighting a 23-story apartment building with less than one parking space for every three units. Guess what? It’s a problem

    The Fay apartment tower in downtown San Jose was built to draw residents back to the city, a sleek high-rise with rooftop views and luxury amenities. But two years later, the building is 60% vacant, and city officials say one key reason stands out: not enough parking. Two years after it opened with fewer than one parking spot for every three apartments, The Fay has plunged into foreclosure.

    The Fay’s parking problems provide an early test of a 2022 statewide law that erased parking requirements on housing developments within a half mile of a major public transit stop. But those policies are colliding with California’s deep-rooted car culture — and in pockets around the Bay Area, the signs of pushback are starting to show.

    I love it when they talk about our “car culture” like it’s some Happy Days muscle car cruise night memory or a low-rider meet up. Or drag racing up at Ocean Beach before they closed the formerly Great Highway. But cars are intrinsic to everyday life if you need things like groceries, trips to the vet, Home Depot, etc etc etc.

    Across the Bay Area, tenants living in housing projects with limited parking are finding themselves running up parking fines and doing battle with neighbors over street parking. At some affordable housing projects, where parking requirements were eased as early as 2015, the frustration is mounting. “I have 20 parking violations,” said Candy Sandoval, a custodian and single mother of four who lives at Quetzal Gardens low-income housing in East San Jose, “plus my car was vandalized because of parking on the street.”

    Her fellow tenants are so exasperated without enough parking — there are 42 spots to accommodate 70 apartments — some of them park in silent protest directly in front of the building, smack in the middle of a designated bus stop.

    I’ll bet you would stump Google and ChatGPT is you asked, “how does a single mother of four manage without a car?” This little charade is creeping into B’game as well. The latest example is a proposal at 2 Park Rd. where Crosby N Gray is located. While not nearly as bad as The Fay or Quetzal Gardens, it’s proposed to have 140 spaces for 144 “units”. One really needs to consider the number of bedrooms and the number of units to understand real parking needs. Will we have to rename it No Park Rd.?

  • California Dr: From bad to worse

    Now that the El Camino Real project, The Little Big Dig, is in full swing things have gone from bad to worse on the reroute path–California Dr. It was unpopular two years ago as we noted here. But now with the additional volume it’s downright frustrating. The bike lane seldom has even one biker on it. Turning left out of Floribunda or Douglas has become perilous due to the steadier flow of traffic. The cars parked alongside the bike lane all seem to know how to protect their mirrors and doors by parking as close to the bollards as possible. And the mostly empty middle turn lane beckons to drivers like the sirens of Greek mythology calling sailors to the rocks.

    I know it’s hopeless, but I can’t help but wish things would just Go Back To The Way They Were on California. In the meantime, if you must park on the Caltrain side, do as the locals do. Squeeze in.

  • Broadway Dining Meter? Eat faster.

    The Parking category here at the Voice is the repository for weird maneuvers, usually by drivers. But the City is not immune from having its weird moves get memorialized as well. Popular restaurants often require diners to be in and out in some time limit–often 90 minutes– so the restaurant can turn the tables at a profitable pace. It’s polite and often loosely enforced– no fine for staying 95 or 100 minutes. Perhaps just a nudge by the server. One wonders if this new form of Dining Meter at Cafe Figaro’s parklet on B’way will be as flexible? Can Figaro issue tickets to slow diners?

    I get why the City might have either a) left the old meter knowing investing in a new blue one would be a waste of money, or b) just taken the meter out altogether allowing staff easier access to the parklet tables. Installing a never-to-be-used new meter is odd. Could Cafe Figaro eventually give up its parklet? Sure, but that would be the time to refresh the meter. Otherwise, this looks like an expensive dog leash station.

    Enjoy the free parking around town with all the headless meter stanchions.

  • Town Square: Postal bliss

    About 300 community members came together under a clear blue sky last week for the ribbon-cutting at our new Town Square. It’s a long story which you can revisit via the Post Office category here from the groundbreaking in 2021 all the way back to 2012. I thought Mayor Michael Brownrigg delivered an outstanding speech and Michael kindly gave me his detailed notes to excerpt here. Here are some very lightly edited highlights of that speech.

    The history of Burlingame last 50 years is history of parking lots: buying and leveling our bowling alley, the old City Hall, and others to build parking lots to compete with malls. 15 years ago, with our downtown sagging, we realized it was not parking, it was vitality and activity that mattered. And those parking lots – bought as a way to enhance Burlingame — now looked a lot like underutilized assets.

    In 2008/9, in the heart of the Great Recession, our city leaders challenged our community, let’s reimagine our downtown. Over the course of a couple of years and many, many meetings, a vision arose. It was the product of robust input from groups like Citizens for a Better Burlingame and the downtown BID, Planning Commission, community leaders, etc.

    We now see so many fruits from that 2010 Downtown Plan: affordable housing, creative and efficient parking, expanding energy and retail over to Howard, enhancing Burlingame Avenue with wide sidewalks and more pedestrian amenities. And today, the cherry on top, our new Town Square.

    There are so many people to thank. Neighbors like the Salmas and the Karps and the owners of Yves De Lorme, who have consistently leaned in. Other business owners like Janet and Carl Martin who worked hard to make Safeway a better project way back when and who care deeply about the entire fabric of our downtown. Safeway was the first salvo by Burlingame in terms of imagining a more pedestrian friendly, community oriented and vital downtown. And a shout out to Stanley Lo, who helped control the Post Office site after it was put on the market and then helped sell the site to a group of people who could honor the history and imagine the future, and to Dave Hopkins, a co-conspirator at Sares Regis without whose courage this project might never have materialized.

    Michael Brownrigg

    Burlingame Mayor (2026)

    On the occasion of the opening of the Town Square, April 2, 2026

    As I said, this is just an excerpt, and he thanked many more people before turning the podium over several other speakers. Hopefully this Instagram video will load properly for a taste of the proceedings. The story about moving the Post Office over the downtown culvert and then back is one for the ages and I can’t wait for the restaurant that is the last remaining bit of the project.

    Michael told me last week that he would use last night’s city council meeting to publicly affirm what we have been hearing for a sometime–that he would not seek re-election this time around. He leaves quite a service legacy having been appointed to the Planning Commission in 2001 and joining the city council in 2009. As we have seen with other long-serving commissioners and council members, their institutional knowledge is incredibly valuable in subsequent projects. And they still get button-holed in the grocery aisle long after they are out of office. Congrats, sir.

  • Parking shenanigans: Compact camper

    Let’s end 2025 with one of our (least?) favorite observations around town. Parking shenanigans. We see all sorts of odd behavior from drivers and parking lot designers (like EV only spaces with no chargers). Cars parked across four motorcycle spaces and cars parked with there is no space at all. Cars parked backwards in angled spaces. But the most abused concept in parking is the “compact” space. I thought the Ram 2500 would be tough to beat, but the new crown goes to an iNDiE camper at Safeway. You see the special compact version of a Ford F-150 all the time, but a compact camper? The new champ! Happy New Year all. We’ll be back with more in 2026.

  • El Camino: Drop the green flag, go time

    Caltrans came out in force yesterday to host the groundbreaking ceremony for the long awaited El Camino Renewal Project, aka the Little Big Dig. A larger than usual contingent of local pols showed up to issue lots and lots of kudos for all involved. Pertinent promises made included “this will take three years, give or take” and “there will be some inconveniences”. Readers come to the Voice to get the take they can’t get anywhere else and there was a really fun incident during the speechifying yesterday. After Josh Becker and Diane Papan spoke and just before “the most important person on the project”, Michael Brownrigg, was introduced, a full-size semi tractor trailer pulled up next to the city lot H, hit the air brakes and the driver hopped out to do a delivery to Walgreens–cutting southbound traffic down to one lane. They do this all the time and so does Amazon, FedEx, UPS, etc. as we noted here.

    But not yesterday. A BPD officer who was at the event immediately went over and told the driver to move. I was reminded of Gavin Newsom cleaning up the streets of EssEff for the APAC conference and Chinese premier Xi Jinping. With some effort, the truck managed to pull into the city lot between Walgreen’s and Safeway where it blocked access to half the lot for about a half hour. I had visions of things to come. Knowing Michael, I’m sure he wasn’t too comfortable with his intro but as the incoming mayor at last night’s council rotation, he will be the point person for 2026 either way. Caltrans followed up with an email today that noted something new:

    Caltrans will begin construction on the El Camino Real Roadway Renewal Project as early as January 5, 2026, in the vicinity of Dufferin Avenue and Rosedale Avenue.

    The initial work will consist of tree removals on the northbound side of El Camino Real in Burlingame requiring full closures of the road. One to two blocks of El Camino Real may be closed at a time. Detour information will also be emailed in the coming weeks, and detour signage will be in place for affected blocks. Residents and businesses will continue to have access to their properties during construction.  In addition to tree removals, drainage work will be performed along the southbound side of the road.

    We’ve been told for months they would start at the tree work at the south end and PG&E at the north end, but things have apparently changed. Caltrans will be keeping us up to speed at elcaminoproject.com. Here are some pics of yesterday’s dropping of the green starting flag. Will the checkered flag wave on January 5, 2029?

    I’m thinking the Little Big Dig might be what pushes me over the line to buy an e-bike.

  • Parking Enforcement: Time for some AI

    My travels over the Thanksgiving holiday took me to a city that uses the centralized kiosks to take your money and log in your license plate but not require the receipt to be displayed on the dash. You key in your license plate number, and it checks to see if it is a valid plate. How it does that for plates from all over the country is a bit of a mystery as well as not error-proof from the citizen’s perspective. This city enforces parking until 9 pm downtown and it’s now dark by 5pm so I got to do this in semi-darkness. I mis-keyed the plate by one digit–a 2 instead of a 3. Someone must have that plate since it “validated” me. My bad.

    When I returned to find a ticket on my windshield even though I still had 20 minutes on the payment, it took me a few minutes to figure out why. Here’s where the AI comes in. When the officer scans my plate and comes up empty a little bit of AI could suggest that a plate in that zone that matches six of the seven numbers is probably not a parking scofflaw. That would be a worthwhile AI feature.

    Luckily, I printed the receipt even though it wasn’t needed to be displayed so I have some hope of getting the ticket expunged. If I didn’t have the receipt I would be out of luck and $45. We shall see.

  • ECR: T-minus Two Months and Counting

    Caltrans stopped by the city council meeting on Monday to tell everyone that the Little Big Dig project to improve El Camino Real is on track to start at the end of December or early January. You would not be wrong to ask, “If you are within two months of starting a $130 million dollar project that will disrupt a whole city for at least four years, shouldn’t you have a firm start date?” The plan, described here, is to start at the south end, working up the northbound side, then turning around at Millbrae and working down the southbound side. PG&E in the meantime will be starting on the north end and working its way down the southbound side burying the power lines and whatever else is hanging off the poles. That will take an indeterminate but long time. We got a tiny taste of it here.

    Stage 1 (about 2,000 feet long) will remove the first 136 trees which are marked by a medallion. Tree removal needs a “full closure” of that section of the state highway which opens up a set of questions that mostly went unasked by council or were answered superficially by staff and Caltrans. How police, fire, and ambulances get rerouted is the top concern. The response is essentially “we will be in contact with them”–check out slide 13–and you will see I will be on the leading (bleeding?) edge of these questions. How Recology picks up the garbage and recycling and how delivery services get to residences and businesses is another. SamTrans will also have to squeeze through. We should probably institute a no-left-turn zone for each stage and ensure BPD has a good overtime budget for the next four years.

    I’m still hoping the city or Caltrans will alert people to the doomed trees with some marker or ribbon larger than the little metal tags that are attached now. It’s gonna be a shock beyond just the street closures. The official response is “we are planting twice as many trees as we are taking out”. They’re just 10% as tall.

    Stages 2 through 6 are queued up much the same way, taking us through the Fall of 2029. That’s not a typo. Neither is this caveat in the slide deck “Timeline subject to change, contingent on PG&E undergrounding coordination and other key challenges“. That is going to put quite a magnifying glass on the general contractor, Teichert Construction, who councilwoman Donna Colson noted is a woman-owned company led by a someone she grew up with in Sacramento. As Bill Murray said in Caddyshack about his relationship with the Dalai Lama, “So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.” At least we know who to call and Donna noted she expects 100’s of calls. What is the biggest voicemail box you can buy? Public works director Syed Murtuza chose his retirement date wisely as the ribbon-cutting will also be his farewell.

    Council talked about public notice, banners, traffic advisory email lists, project website, social media posts on X, Facebook et al, and snail mailed notices. Prepare for incoming. In the meantime, see if your favorite Eucalyptus has one of these.

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