One Step Forward, Two Steps Back for Homestead Road

One cold night in January, I found myself on Homestead Road measuring lane widths as cars sped past me.

Kevin Jackson, who was helping me, called out whenever a car was approaching so that I could run to safety at the side of the road.  I was trying to get a reading on the widths of the newly painted car and bike lanes to see why the bike lanes were shrunk to an unacceptably skinny width. 

The new lanes are one step toward making all of Homestead Road bike lanes full-time, a decision made by the Sunnyvale Council on August 8, 2023.  However, the implementation so far has some serious defects for cyclists.  The bike lane width used to be wide enough, at 5′, now they’re too narrow, at 3′. The asphalt-gutter seam used to be smooth; now they have a longitudinal pothole in one location and a 2″ lip along the entire re-paved segment.  People wonder whether they were better off with the previously full-width smooth bike lanes, albeit part-time, or with the full-time defective bike lanes now.  We shouldn’t have to choose between 2 inferior options.

Lane widths are now substandard

My lane measurements indicate that the car lanes were kept at their minimum widths of 10′ and 11′, at least at MacKenzie where I measured.  That’s good.  The bike lane clear pavement, however, was shrunk from 5′ to 3′ in order to put in a 2′ buffer.  That’s bad.  The buffer has the effect of guiding cyclists toward the gutter seam which could catch their bike tire and cause them to fall, especially a gutter seam that has a 2″ lip and longitudinal pot hole.  The VTA Bicycle Technical Guidelines (p. 7-3) say that the bike lane clear pavement should be at least 5′ on Homestead Road, where the car speed limit is 35 mph.  In the present implementation, the bike icon can’t even fit within the bike lane, an indication that the width is seriously deficient. The foregoing discussion indicates that the original 5′ bike lane without a buffer is preferable to a 3′ bike lane with a buffer.  A buffer is desirable but not at the expense of shrinking bike lane width below the optimum specified in the VTA Guidelines.

Homestead Road’s full-time bike lanes are currently 45% painted (between Mary and Wright).  Another 50% will be painted as part of the regular re-paving of Homestead Road this year (between Sunnyvale-Saratoga and Lawrence).  The remaining 5% will be painted if budget is approved for it, possibly this year (between Wright and Bernardo). 

Homestead Road has waited a long time for full-time bike lanes, since the 1990s.  Many cyclists ride on Homestead Road, from students to commuters to recreational riders. While I was measuring lane widths that cold night in January, a cyclist whizzed by me about every 5 minutes. We need full-width, smooth bike lanes now.

Sharlene Liu is Founder and Chair of Sunnyvale Safe Streets. She completed her term on BPAC last year and continues to advocate for biking and walking facilities in Sunnyvale and California.