San José City Council approves Hedding Street bike lanes

Good news from last night's San José City Council meeting! The Council voted unanimously to approve a buffered bike lane along Hedding Street, between 15th Street and the Guadalupe River Trail.

Due to some resident complaints, a few blocks of the project will retain on-street parking, which means the lanes in that section will not be buffered. As a compromise, Councilmembers Liccardo, Herrera, and Campos authored this memo, part of which calls for green lanes for the length of the project. I spoke in favor of the compromise, but pointed out that retaining on-street parking was not ideal. The plan calls for a review of the situation in 2017, after the Berryessa BART station has been completed and (hopefully) the Hedding Street bikeway becomes continuous between BART and the Santa Clara border on Winchester.

Thank you to all the members and supporters who showed up to voice their thoughts. There was a range of support for the bike lanes - some fully supported the project, while others felt that leaving parking posed too much of a risk to be worth it. In any case, the City Council received the message loud and clear that people want to ride bikes in San José, and want to do so safely and comfortably. Many of the Councilmembers commented on this, and it sounds like we will have their support as we work to build an excellent bike network throughout the city!

For more thoughts on last night's meeting, read DvortyBikes' forum post at http://bikesiliconvalley.org/content/2698.