Category: Streets of Burlingame

  • Have Mercy on the Neighbors

    Mercy, Mercy, Mercy was a surprise hit for saxophonist Cannonball Adderley in 1967. 60 years later, I think Mercy will go to #1 on the Burlingame Top 100 in 2027. What follows came in as a comment on the Democracy Dies in Daylight post about the city council candidate forum, but it’s too important and so detailed that I am making it a fresh post. I don’t know Valerie Teele, but I know people who do. Here is her complete, unedited comment with some added bolding by me and one correction as noted:

    My husband and I were in attendance at the Candidate Forum because this election really matters for district 3. I encourage everyone in the district, especially those that live around Mercy, to watch and listen by clicking the link. Now that the gym is done, Mercy is moving forward with its next phase of construction. They are about to submit (or have just submitted) for two 4 story, senior resident apartment buildings (80 units) (Ed Note: the proposal is for 160 units) and an assisted living facility to be built on the land that is called “the meadow”. This is the area down to the left of the student parking lot. This property is ill suited (that’s putting it mildly) for such a project. There are only 3 means of egress to the entirety of the Mercy property: tucked back in the corner where Hoover curves into Columbus, the gates at the intersection of Hoover and Adeline and the gates at the end of Alvarado. It is not an area that is convenient for seniors to access shopping nor services, which have been prime considerations for the 1400 units Burlingame has either built or are in development. Other projects by Mercy Housing have been on campuses that have wide open multi-lane access. This proposal simply does not make sense.

    I live on Alvarado and we have the overwhelming majority of the traffic to and from the Mercy property for school and events. Our street was not built for two way traffic with cars parked on either side of the street. It is frequent gridlock in the mornings for school drop off and again at pick up. Our family’s vehicles were sideswiped twice already since classes resumed and that now brings the total to 9. Our family is not unique with this problem. We will now see what will result from the gym being open until 10pm during the week and for both school use and public rentals until 11 on the weekends. If the proposed project is built, our street will have dramatically increased traffic at all times. Residents of the apartments, 3 shifts of employees at the nursing home, visitors, delivery and maintenance vehicles….they will ALL use our residential street.

    Getting back to the Candidates Forum, listen to how the question I posed was answered. It’s at the 39:45 minute mark.

    The current Planning Commission and Council are all inexplicably advocates of letting Mercy, a tax exempt, nonprofit religious institution, build whatever they want and do whatever they want. I can already tell from Mr. Stevenson’s answer how he will vote on the Mercy project despite the concerns of the TAX PAYING residents whom they are supposed to represent. I simply do not understand this. It’s easy to vote for something when your street or your district isn’t affected. Ms. Faber says several times that a district representative should represent all of Burlingame. I have not found that to be the case. Judging from her answer to the question, “there’s nothing we can do because housing mandates are determined by the state” (paraphrasing) , I fear she will fall in line with the rest of the officials and allow Mercy to further exacerbate a problem that could have terrible consequences for the many children and pedestrians who walk and bike on Alvarado and the adjacent streets.

    I’m not sure that Jen Faber (and others in various venues) saying there isn’t much we can do given the state housing mandates is correct here. Scott Weiner’s abusive Senate Bill SB79 has a half-mile impact zone around mass transit stops where higher density and the onerous “Builder’s Remedy” apply. Unless there is some gamesmanship with a lightly used SamTrans bus stop somewhere up the hill, the Mercy property doesn’t appear to get SB79 treatment. All of the other concerns so eloquently stated need to be addressed in full, in public with public comment.

    What I would really like to see from our city leaders is support and involvement with the 501c3 Our Neighborhood Voices. We are far from the only California city chafing under Sacramento’s harness.

  • Leno’s Law – Part 2?

    The Gavinor signed “Leno’s Law” yesterday as advocated by Jay Leno himself on behalf of classic car owners in California. It absolves cars from 1976 to 1980 from smog checks starting in 2028. The non-inspection years grow to include up thru 1985 by 2033. That’s all well and good. These cars on the road are mostly classics that don’t get a lot of miles driven to begin with. But I have been thinking about the other end of the market for years now. When was the last time you had a car from after 2005 or 2010 fail a smog inspection? I have a couple and cannot remember it ever happening. I won’t say which B’game inspection station is my usual one, but I asked the guy how often 15-20 year old cars fail? He kind of looked away and then muttered “not very often”. And it turns out most of the failures come after the battery has been replaced and the computer hiccups. Kind of like losing your preset radio stations. So what do you say, Sacramento? Isn’t it time to improve “affordability” and save people (and the DMV) time? Pick a year–even 2020 model year and cut us some slack.

  • Gas Prices: A counterintuitive finding

    The travel intensive bookends to the summer — Memorial Day and Labor Day — find the press focussing on gas prices; and rightly so. We see the big numbers on every gas station sign and the pump reminds us constantly. My folks searched for the cheapest gas back in the ’60s and especially the ’70s during the OPEC oil crisis. And it feels like we are paying a lot these days, but I recently saw a data-driven view that bursts that bubble. From Gemini:

    The inflation-adjusted national average price of gasoline since the 1973 OPEC oil crisis fluctuates between $3.00 and $4.00 per gallon, indicating that when evaluated against the long-term purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, real fuel costs have remained remarkably stable. Despite sharp increases in the absolute numerical price at the pump over the last 50+ years, historical data tracking adjusted for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows that regular gasoline rarely strays from a long-run historical average of approximately $3.61 per gallon.

    Direct Comparison: Selected Historical vs. Modern Gas Prices

    Era / YearNominal Pump Price (Per Gallon)Inflation-Adjusted Price (In Modern USD)Economic Context
    Early 1973 (Pre-Crisis)$0.39$2.85Stable domestic production
    1974 (Post-Embargo)$0.53$3.60Initial OPEC shock wave
    1981 (Historic High)$1.38$5.18Iranian Revolution energy gap
    1998 (Historic Low)$1.06$1.98Asian Financial Crisis crude glut
    2008 (Commodity Peak)$3.27$4.77China economic boom & speculation
    2020 (Pandemic Low)$2.07$2.61Global COVID-19 lockowns
    Current (Sept 2026)$4.21$4.21Middle East conflict fluctuations

    Nationally, we are at the upper end of the long-run normal range, but tack on the California gas tax premium (just raised again by 2.2 cents on July 1st) and the costs of our oh-so-special blend plus refineries closing and the pain increases. But it’s still not enough to make me buy tires with inferior traction, lesser water/snow shedding and longer stopping times. Sorry, Gavin. Not gonna do it to.

  • Floppy Signs: Visual clutter

    While pedestrians need to keep their heads on a swivel, B’game drivers must real-time process all sorts of confusing clutter around town as installed by the city. The intersection of Chapin and Primrose is the classic example with incorrect and poorly maintained signage that I don’t believe adds anything to pedestrian safety. In fact, the distracting clutter and a code-disallowed floppy sign may make the intersection more dangerous. They also aren’t doing anything for some vehicles paint jobs. I bet tractor trailer drivers don’t even realize they have ploughed over these signs–or don’t care.

    It turns out the front one with the STOP symbol is explicitly not allowed and crossed out in the code! Maybe Sacramento could pass a law against selling them in California?

    There’s nothing like almost rear ending someone who stops because they see a stop sign even when no one is in the crosswalk. I see that happen at Howard and Costa Rica a couple times a month when a pedestrian isn’t intending to cross right away and some driver decides to stop anyway because of the floppy sign.

  • Walking B’game: Your head on a swivel

    Pedestrian safety certainly isn’t improving in B’game or elsewhere on the Peninsula. I walk a lot to and from the Avenew and on B’way. You will see unsafe maneuvers all the time. But let’s put some numbers to my gut feel about it. A couple weeks ago, BPD ran a four-hour enhanced morning enforcement near Christie’s and the train station. I heard from multiple sources that it was like “shooting fish in a barrel”. Per BPD

    Approximately 16 citations were issued during our four-hour operation focused on pedestrian right-of-way violations.

    Doing the math, that is a citation every 15 minutes. And that is with enforcement being visible as the ticket gets written thus warning the next guy! Keep your head on a swivel. I think we need a couple more officers and a little less overhead elsewhere.

  • Eucs: Blinded by the light

    Luckily, I was on foot when I took this picture at around 7pm, but my head was on a swivel as it usually is around Safeway. My understanding is that some of the big Eucs that are still standing are housing nesting birds. When they leave, so will the Eucs. Southbound drivers are going to miss them in the morning, and northbound in the evening, when they are gone. I do wish the contractors would get on with the stump grinding instead of letting the corpses just sit there. In fact, I wish they would just get on with every aspect of the project. After the initial surge of activity things have slowed down dramatically.

  • History Lesson: The origins of Flag Day

    Here at the Voice, we have long noted the presence or absence of the Stars and Stripes around town. Whether it be when the Boy Scouts plant dozens on B’way or someone forgets to raise a flag on an important day. But where did the date of June 14th come from? That is today’s history lesson courtesy of ChatGPT:

    On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress voted to establish the Continental Army. This occurred nearly a year before the Declaration of Independence. The decision came in response to the battles of Battles of Lexington and Concord, where colonial militia forces had already begun fighting British troops. The next day, June 15, 1775, Congress selected George Washington as commander-in-chief.

    The 1775 date is why the big 250th anniversary military parade happened last year. It commemorated the founding of the Continental Army. But that’s not the whole story:

    On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress passed the first official Flag Resolution:

    “Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

    Notably, the resolution did not specify the arrangement of the stars. The familiar “Betsy Ross circle” design became popular later, but there is little contemporary evidence proving that Betsy Ross designed the first national flag.

    So that 250th anniversary will happen next June 14th. The day was formalized over the years:

    • In the late 1800s, schools and patriotic organizations began celebrating June 14 as Flag Day.
    • Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation in 1916 establishing June 14 as Flag Day nationally.
    • In 1949, Harry S. Truman signed legislation officially designating June 14 as National Flag Day.

    This year’s Flag Day will be at least as high profile as last year and as Paul Harvey used to say “”and now you know the rest of the story”.

    Until recently, the Old Post Office flagpole had been barren, but things are looking up lately.

  • How we will remember April 2026

    The month started with a prank and ends with sorrowful tear.

  • 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.

  • SamTrans: Asleep at the wheel

    This is not another April Fool’s prank post. On April Fool’s Day, SamTrans figured out they should do something to avoid delays on El Camino during the Little Big Dig. Per the DJ

    In response, during an April 1 SamTrans board meeting, staff recommended a detour along California Drive for the project’s duration, as well as splitting the ECR line at Millbrae into a northern segment running to the Daly City BART station and a southern segment running down to Palo Alto, according to the presentation.

    One has to wonder exactly where the SamTrans board and operations managers have been for the last year or two? There has been a steadily increasing drumbeat of alerts, reroute maps, Caltrans emails and news reports, but these people don’t figure out they need to do something different until three and a half months after the ground-breaking ceremony?

    Maybe they should get out and actually take the bus once in a while or ask a driver or two. Drivers would have told them about scenes like this that I took three weeks ago.

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