Category: Streets of Burlingame

  • Pedestrian Safety: A Twofer

    I was meaning to write this post even before I saw the article in today’s SF Comicle about Ayden Fang’s parents filing suit over his tragic passing on Donnelly Ave. We covered it here back in August of last year.

    Yesterday I was nearly hit while crossing in a crosswalk–twice. Twice in one day! A twofer. And neither incident happened at the most dangerous intersection in my neighborhood, but rather at other, less busy spots. One driver had her right turn signal on as I was crossing at the opposite corner and magically decided to go straight–straight at me. After I stopped mid-street and waved my arms and yelled, I got the hands-clasped-in-prayer move. It was in front of St. Catherine’s after all.

    The second incident happened in front of Ike’s while it was still light out thanks to Daylight Savings Time. I have no idea what this driver was looking at, but it wasn’t me. Again, with the waving arms and yelling, but not even a clasped-hand motion this time. We really, really need more cops on the street beat writing tickets. Moments later another driver pulls a three-point turn in the middle of Primrose in front of a BPD cruiser–and the cop just kept on going. Now maybe they had something more urgent to deal with right then. I hope so.

    The Fang lawsuit notes “The lawsuit argued that the city has a history of ignoring pedestrian safety, noting that the pedestrian fatality rate is three to four times higher than the per-capita national annual average.” I’ll be curious to examine that statistic and whether it includes incidents like the malicious plowing down of some local kids, but either way we have a problem. And it is likely to be an expensive problem.

  • Transit Taxes: Beware the head fakes

    If it were not so sad, it would be humorous to follow the discussion at the SF Comicle about the forthcoming transit taxes for BART, et al and the SMART train up in Marin. The catalyst was a letter to the editor titled “If we’re willing to pay billions to maintain highways, why not fund BART?” I’m betting the author knows a half-dozen reasons why, but is playing the faux equity game to push the new taxes. Y’all come to this blog to see the onion get peeled, so let’s assess the “community value” of our “highways” and our city streets, such as they are, compared to BART, VTA, SMART, Caltrain, etc.

    Which bits of infrastructure enable police response? Fire response? Ambulance response? Utility (electric, gas, phone, internet) response? I am always impressed when the Safeway 18-wheeler makes the sweeping right turn at Howard, maneuvers the extra-long trailer into the parking lot and manages to back the thing into the loading dock. If you have never seen it, you’re missing out. And if we don’t see it every couple of days we will be missing out. Let’s not forget the Walgreen’s semi that got shoo’ed away from the big El Camino Project groundbreaking because it was noisy and inconvenient to the proceedings. You want your antibiotic? It ain’t coming on Caltrain or BART.

    Is a commuter rail line a good thing? Sure. Should it cover its costs at the fare box? No. But let’s dispense with the faux argument that transit can hold a candle to the streets and freeways that keep this whole show on the road. I’m not saying vote “no” on the tax–yet, but San Mateo County appears to be the tail that isn’t wagging the dog once again as the monies flow elsewhere.

  • Broadway: Gas Leak Lawsuit

    I was pretty sure a lawsuit would be filed over the extended closure of businesses on and around B’way. I didn’t see the merchants being represented by one of the top 25 plaintiff law firms in the country, but offering local merchants support is meritorious. From the DJ piece

    A class action lawsuit on behalf of merchants in Burlingame’s Broadway area has been filed against the owner and operator of A&A Gas & Mart, who were previously named as responsible parties in a gasoline leak that caused days of power outages and road closures in the business district. 

    Burlingame law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy chose to move forward with the suit, filed Feb. 23, to seek an undetermined amount of damages for businesses that lost customers, revenue and inventory as a result of those outages and closures, attorney Nanci Nishimura, who is representing the plaintiffs, said.

    The merchants mentioned range from Maverick Jack’s at the old train station to Bonne Sante at the other end of B’way. The total number is more than 100.

    In a real twist of fate, the A&A Gas website’s “About us” page shows the B’way station! They appear to have four of their six locations on the Peninsula. We’re not talking Shell or Chevron here so expect some sort of settlement as they realize what they are up against. In the meantime, Broadway is lovely shopping and dining district and there has been a lot of free parking as the city deinstalls the old parking meters and waits to install the fancy new ones.

  • Transportation Monies: $187.1M

    I wanted to dig a little deeper into the DJ story about $200M going for road upgrades this past week. Whenever I see this sort of number being trumpeted as a standalone factoid, I get curious about the entirety of the picture. On the surface it sounds like a lot of money, but there are about 750,000 people on the county. The DMV doesn’t make it easy to figure out how many licensed drivers there are in the county, but 70% isn’t a bad guess. Call it 525K. The actual budget number from the TA press release last June was $187.1M for a per driver capita expenditure of $356 per fiscal year. Given the cost of any noticeable road improvement, $187.1M won’t go far.

    Not that I want more taxes like Measures A and W that fill this fund or higher gas taxes, but just the Broadway grade separation is $500-600M and climbing by the year. And the TA’s funding included bicycle and pedestrian improvements as well. As a state, we don’t fare well on national rankings:

    California’s road condition rankings vary by study but generally place it poorly, often in the bottom 10 to 15 states, with reports citing significant percentages of roads in poor condition, ranking low in pavement quality for urban/rural interstates and arterials

    It didn’t used to be this way. When I got here in 1981, the roads were awesome compared to New England roads. As they should be. What went wrong? The state is certainly spending a ton of money on something–the tale of the tape is

    California’s state budget has significantly increased under Governor Newsom, growing from around $200 billion in 2019 to proposed levels near $350 billion for 2026-27.

    Bringing some salaries at places like the TA back to earth and making the EV drivers to pay their “fair share” would be a good start. Let’s hope the next governor can rein in the top line spending while reallocating more to infrastructure like roads, reservoirs otherwise things will only get worse out on the asphalt.

  • PG&E: Unhappy New Year

    It’s been a rough start to the New Year for PG&E customers from EssEff to B’game and now to San Mateo. Fire in the city caused major problems including for the huge Waymo fleet. Here in B’game the multi-day outage on and around Broadway and California was especially tough for businesses and even more so if they happened to have perishable inventory. The news, like this report from ABC7, keep calling the leak into the utility vault a “petroleum product”. I suppose it could be diesel (does A&A sell diesel), but most likely it’s gas. ABC7 reported:

    Even though PG&E provided generators for those impacted, businesses were told they had to hire a private electrician to do checks before the utility company would hook them up. “To be able to certify that it’s okay to turn on the power and use the generators so we don’t have explosions,” said John Kevranian of the Broadway Burlingame Business Improvement District.

    That sounds odd and not very customer centric. If that is different skill set than PG&E electricians, then shouldn’t PG&E have hired a commercial electrician on the customers’ behalf? (kudos to John for stepping back in after his BID term ended to keep everyone up to date with many texts, etc).

    And of course, all of this happened right as the Little Big Dig started halving the capacity on El Camino and thinking vehicles could reroute to California. As one of our regular, shrewd commenters pointed out on the Drop the Green Flag post, post-holiday rainy season wasn’t the best time to start taking down massive trees and figuring out power line routes.

    ABC7 noted “PG&E is still working to extract all of the petroleum product from the vaults and identify where it’s coming from. They say it’s not something they use with their equipment.” Transformers use heavy oil as an insulator, but this isn’t that. Eventually we will find out if A&A gas was up to date and up to code on the tanks. Note that the station at the other end of B’way did theirs a couple years ago. And both the Chevron (finished) and the Shell stations on Peninsula are doing the same. The Google machine spit out this timely tidbit:

    Older, single-walled tanks face strict deadlines for upgrades or permanent closure (e.g., by Dec 31, 2025, for many systems) due to corrosion risks.

    Here’s a pic of the big generators that got people back online. Reports are they are just as noisy as the folks in the Richmond district reported. Caterpillar stock is up 75% in the last 12 months……

  • A Wet Merry Christmas to All

    After a dramatic Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with gusts to 70 mph and intermittent downpours with SFO in “reverse operations” so takeoff go right over B’game, here is the 2pm view of my favorite flooding spot on ECR.

    The SamTrans driver knows to change lanes as do most of the other drivers–until it gets dark in a couple of hours. Be safe out there everyone. Only three more years to go until this is fixed……

  • No Mo Waymo: Power outage chaos

    Social media is brimming with photos, videos and commentary about the on-going power outage in EssEff from a sub-station fire. It peaked at about 130,000 customers and the last 20,000 or so might get power back tomorrow morning (that would be two days of no power). Aside from all the other inconveniences and possible dangerous situations, we can now add confused and disabled Waymo’s to the list. Per the Comicle:

    Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service remained suspended Sunday morning after a sweeping power outage knocked out traffic signals across large swaths of San Francisco.

    On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them. Waymo halted service citywide around 8 p.m. Saturday.

    The outage started “late Saturday morning” but Alphabet didn’t take the robotaxis fully out of service until 8 p.m. even though the software can’t treat a missing traffic light as a four-way stop. And some cellular internet service was affected which Waymo needs to work. Go figure.

    I took my first Waymo ride three months ago with a couple non-dangerous wrinkles as noted here. But we have very erratic PG&E power in town. Just this morning I got a Citizen app notice of two outages in the B’game-H’borough area. There was a major outage about a week ago as well and we don’t particularly handle failed traffic lights well in town either. Putting a sawhorse in the middle of ECR with no lights or a flare that went out an hour ago is standard protocol.

    You may have read about a woman who gave birth in a Waymo on the way to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. Better to stick with Uber or Lyft if it’s urgent.

  • 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.

  • ECR Flooding: Four more years?

    Today is the first real rain of the season due to an atmospheric river that the media has been warning about for days. And right on schedule all of the usual flooding spots on El Camino are badly flooded. Anyone who has been in town more than a couple of years knows exactly where the bad spots are located. They also know to stick to the left southbound lane if possible. It’s dangerous. The $130 million Little Big Dig is expected to take four years–best case. So, will we have to wait four years to attack these known dangerous spots? Check this out.

    I had to stand back aways because the splashes were getting twice as high as this photo. Check out how far up ECR the pond extends and how deep it is on the sidewalk corner–8″.

    Nov 17: Here’s an update four days later after the second wave of this storm series landed last night. Cones are better than nothing. Maybe Caltrans is reading the Voice (not)!

  • 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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