Category: Streets of Burlingame

  • Friends with 3 million e-Benefits

    Back in May, just before the new fiscal year started, the AP reported that

    Newsom announced on Friday a $26.7 billion deficit, but it’s really closer to $45 billion. That’s because Newsom didn’t include roughly $17.3 billion worth of actions he and lawmakers already agreed on. Those included a cut of $3.6 billion in primarily one-time funding to some school, welfare and climate programs. The plan also delays and defers about $5.2 billion in spending for various programs, including $1 billion to fund rail and public transit systems.

    So how do you manage a massive deficit?  The same way you eat an elephant.  One bite at a time.  Here's an easy morsel from the city e-newsletter this week.

    The California E-Bike Incentive Project application window is officially open.

    During this application period, the program will award up to 1500 vouchers to income-qualified residents for incentives up to $2000 that can be redeemed at numerous participating E-Bike retailers. Additional application windows with more incentives will become available later in 2025.

    1500 x $2000 = $3 million.  It's a good thing more "incentive$" are coming.  Perhaps the only way to get quickly through the Broadway interchange in 2026 will be on an e-bike.  In the meantime, what is Spin's incentive to haul away deserted e-bikes? (hat tip:  regular reader)

    Litter bikes_2

  • Broadway: New cost estimate, same old story

    The song remains the same on the grade separation at Broadway only a lot more off-key than before.  I wrote this five years ago here:

    One of the common questions I hear in town is "When are they going to fix the rest of Broadway?" meaning now that the bridge has been replaced, what about the rail crossing?  My standard response is "There isn't nearly enough money socked away to even start".

    That refrain got even worse this week as the DJ reports:

    The grade separation — designated as a top priority at last year’s city goal-setting — would separate the train tracks from the road to mitigate traffic, increase public safety and allow more than one train at the Broadway station. At the beginning of 2024, project costs were estimated at $325 million.

    Now, however, Caltrain recently informed the city about significant increases to project costs, raising totals to $500 to $600 million for construction alone, Public Works Director Syed Murtuza said.

    Aside from the usual, completely predictable, extreme increases in the cost of labor and materials, now we get to add the fact that with electrification of Caltrain we have to de-electrify the lines to do the construction for four hours at night.  Less construction time equals more project time equals higher costs.  Rinse and repeat.

    Pleas from the city to complete the grade separation before Caltrain electrification went unanswered, Murtuza said. “It’s just utterly poor management and mismanagement on the part of the organization, and we saw it directly,” (Donna Colson) said.  She urged the city to realistically communicate with residents about the realities of the long-awaited project moving forward.

    "Realistic" is our middle name here at the Voice.  No shovels will be hitting dirt in the foreseeable future, so we need to make lemonade.  Is it AI like noted here?  Is it just an underpass?  Do we try to get a reprieve from the state on our RHNA numbers so we can stop building giant residential cell blocks on Rollins that will change the traffic grade on the intersection from an "F" to an "F–"?   Just kidding, not "realistic", but a nice fantasy.  There are timing tweaks to the various signals that could make marginal improvements.  All we can really do is better traffic enforcement and hope the accident and fatality rates don't climb.

  • New Year: Same El Camino…or worse

    The calendar has turned over to 2025, but things are not improving on El Camino.  I just happened to make the round-trip from the southern edge of B'game to the northern edge and it's a mess.  Due to the New Year's mid-week holiday, the delivery trucks (Amazon, UPS, FedEx, Sysco, etc) are clogging up the traffic flow by taking the right lane away.  Nothing new there.

    What is new is how many new potholes have appeared.  Some blame the rains.  Some blame the prior poor patch jobs.  SamTrans buses pounding the pavement?  How about all of the above.  My less-than-scientific wild guess is there are about 400 potholes on our section of the King's Road.  The King should be ashamed of himself.  Maybe Caltrans is thinking why fix anything when we are planning to tear it all up anyway, but the section just south of B'game in San Mateo isn't any better.  Here's a reminder that somewhere on ca.gov you can ask for money to repair damage to your car from the road.  I've never tried it, but I hear it is possible.  In the meantime, we all suffer with the Peasant's Road.  Here is the new emblem of ECR that replaces the Mission bells.

    Hubcap hell

     

  • Boxes of news or… of nothing

    I love the hardcopy Daily Journal and Daily Post.  I search them out so much that my wife makes fun of me for it.  In B'game the DJ is easy to find, the Post not so much.  I won't reveal the few boxes in town where the Post can often be found.  Down in Palo Alto, the powers that be want to get rid of newspaper boxes on University Ave. in an effort to "beautify" the main shopping district.  The Post runs the ad below highlighting the threat to the First Amendment.

    The ad notes that Palo Alto already has a municipal code allowing the removal of unused boxes and there in is the rub in Palo Alto; and here in B'game.  I don't know if we have a similar code on the books, but I do know it's not being enforced.  Check out the line-up of boxes on Primrose.  A couple Epoch Times' boxes around town occasionally have the paper, but not this one that has no coin slot.  The beat-up maroon one next to it never has anything but trash and a lonely phone book or two.  It has siblings all over town in the same condition.  The red one might have been an SF Examiner box at one point, but Examiner boxes all over town have been empty for years.  This DJ box is filled daily as are all of them in B'game.  Thank you, guys, gold star!  This Post box hardly ever gets filled.  And there are other Post boxes in B'game that never get papers.  I don't think the City should be responsible for removing them–the companies should, unless they are out of business.  Then the City should take them to the trash heap.  Let's beautify B'game, one boxectomy at a time.  Candidates clutter the sidewalks across from Mints & Honey, in front of the Capuchino post office, along California Dr., and Mollie's sidewalk.  I could go on.

    P.S.  How funny is it to have three mailboxes lined up literally across the street from our sad little post office?  I bet they are a vestige of when we had the beautiful post office on Park Rd.  Let's yank two of those as well.

    News boxes on Primrose

    Post boxes in PA

  • The Conductor at work on ECR

    Not only is today the Winter Solstice and thankfully the days start to get longer, but I heard on the radio that today is "National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day".  Somber times two one supposes.  It's a time and a season for contemplating one's year, one's home and family, one's accomplishments and how our community evolved this year.  So it was appropriate that I was able to snap this photo today amidst a cloudy, rainy, pothole ridden El Camino trip through town.

    I call this guy "The Conductor" because he can be seen often standing on a podium made from a eucalyptus stump waving his arms as if the San Francisco Symphony were seated on the King's Road in front of him.  Only a baton and a tux are missing.  I have no idea if he's actually homeless, but I've heard he gets an occasional wellness check; and yet is still conducting regularly.  I wish him well.  I hope he has a place to get dry and warm and mostly I hope he accepts such an offer when made–if not, there are options.

    The Conductor

  • Fall Tree hugger Post: Early rains fill our creeks

    The Japanese maples in town have been spectacular, but we have to mix up our tree hugger species a bit each year.  The early rains have the seven creeks of B'game flowing nicely and the cloudy, rainy days this past week made our gingkoes stand out even more.  Here's a couple on Bayswater and the daylight portion of the creek at Heritage Park that runs through downtown.  We're lucky the rains cleared for Thanksgiving.  Hope you all have a good one.

    Gingko in the rain

    Heritage park creek

  • Sloppy floppy signage

    It's one thing to have cheesy plastic signs and bollards all over town; it's another thing to not maintain them.  I particularly dislike these floppy signs that sit in the middle of the street and have a little red Yield sign on them that drivers constantly confuse with an actual stop sign.  They stop for no reason even with no pedestrian around and I watch to see if they get rear-ended.  Here's one on Howard Ave. that broke several months ago and just sits tilted and missing one side.  It's a sad little sight.  At least there is a nice gingko or two on the block to distract tree huggers.

    Floppy sign down

  • Increasing 101 Congestion: Who’s to blame?

    The SF Comicle dove into the effects of the express toll lanes on 101 that opened in March 2023 through B'game. 

    The number of drivers using the Bay Area’s newest highway express lanes is rising — but even as those drivers are enjoying speedier rides, traffic in the regular lanes appears to be slowing, a new report says.  The number of drivers using the Bay Area’s newest highway express lanes is rising — but even as those drivers are enjoying speedier rides, traffic in the regular lanes appears to be slowing, a new report says.

    Those drivers, the report found, enjoy speeds of at least 45 miles per hour and travel about 11-12 mph faster than those stuck in the regular lanes.  However, the traffic in the general-use lanes slowed — at some times and in some locations — to less than 30 mph, according to the report.

    Our very own former councilwoman, Emily Beach, in her new capacity as communications person for the TA was tasked with the official response

    Emily Beach, a spokesperson for the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, said it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the express lanes, which started full operation in March 2023, and their effect on overall traffic.  “It’s early,” she said. “We have just over a year of data to analyze and that includes the learning period while drivers are getting used to the lanes as well as the increase in the number of people returning to the office.”

    And as anyone could have expected, the system ain't perfect especially when it seems to me that no one is enforcing the rules on darkened car windows

    But express-lanes officials are aware that some drivers without a sufficient number of passengers simply flip the switch on their FasTrak Flex toll tag to indicate they qualify for a free ride in the fast lane.  Transportation officials who operate express lanes across the Bay Area have identified express lane cheaters as a serious problem. They can be caught only by California Highway Patrol officers who can see how many occupants they’re claiming and compare it with what they see in the car.

    In the San Mateo County lanes, roughly 25% of those declaring they have three or more in their cars could be lying, a May “toll leakage” study found.  Those scofflaws could be costing the express lanes $8,000-$12,000 a day during the morning and evening commute hours alone.
     
    Let's just run the math on that.  Using just weekdays, of which there are 261 per year, that means toll fraud is somewhere between $2M and $3M and change per year.  If we throw in some busy weekends and why not if only the CHP can do anything about it and many of them are busy bailing out EssEff and Oakland local police per Gavin's direction?  Call it $3.5 million a year.  The next time you bog down in stop and go traffic trying to get from the north to the Broadway exit–which is pretty much every time you try to get from the north to B'way–and then get pummeled by the potholes on El Camino, think about the Law of Unintended Consequences.  Then think all of the new office space planned and being built on the Bayfront.

  • Election 2024: Signs of inexperience

    Lawn signs are the most visible part of election season.  I've planted (and picked up) hundreds of them in legal places.  The old saying "Signs don't vote" is partially true.  They have some value and give some sense of where a property owner's sentiments lay.  They can get out of hand especially when a property owner decides to have some fun by posting a lot of them including for competing candidates like here.

    But illegally placed signs in the street tree median strips (city property) and, say, the Caltrans right of way just demonstrate inexperience.  One would think a Caltrans employee would know where the right of way is and not plant his signs on it.  Gotta love the Caltrans hard hat in the photo.

    Illegal Paul sign

  • Peninsula Ave. interchange “scrapped” for good?

    I can hear the cheers from the Lyon-Hoag neighborhood from here on my perch on the west side.  The "upgrade" to Peninsula Ave. at 101 has been bandied about for almost 20 years.  The neighborhood concerns voiced in public go back more than 10 years as shown in this post from 2015.  Now the weight of the project–cost, eminent domain, and community opposition have apparently caused it to collapse.  I'm guessing this council decision pre-dates the weekend pedestrian fatality on Peninsula.  While I feel happy for Lyon-Hoag, caution and observation remain the best course.  These things can be like zombies.  And the pressure from over-development on the Bayfront is ever growing.  The Daily Journal notes

    A long-standing effort to move the Highway 101 southbound off-ramps from East Poplar Avenue north to Peninsula Avenue has been officially scrapped, though plans to address congestion and mitigate collisions in the area are still being finalized.

    For years, the city (Ed: San Mateo) has looked into relocating the (Poplar Ave.) ramps to Peninsula Avenue because, east of Idaho Street, it has two lanes in each direction, no parking or driveways and has shoulders and bike lanes, all advantages over East Poplar Avenue. The total project cost estimate ranges from $169 million to $227 million, and while some funding could be secured from regional or state agencies, the majority would have to come from the city.

    Moving forward would also require the city to acquire dozens of private properties along North Amphlett Boulevard via eminent domain, another financial burden for the city. Councilmember Rich Hedges said, at this point, many of the affected residents just want to know which direction the city is going so they can plan accordingly.

    A lot of B'gamers are having sighs of relief.  As one local noted "No, it's not April 1st".  Let's keep it that way.

    Peninsula interchange scrapped

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