STRS funding needs effectiveness appraisal.

As the state gears up to release $48.5M in Safe Route To School funding they need to look how jurisdictions are spending the money and what the planning agencies are doing to the reduce the occurrence of problems from Level of Service "enhancements."

Measure A money is used by the Transportation Authority in San Mateo County to "relive congestion" from low LOS grades at interchanges with planning through CCAG. The larger permitted traffic take away pedestrian and bicycle facilities. For example the Ralston 101 interchange in Belmont CA took the sidewalk away on the north side and has street furniture in the narrow five foot sidewalk on the south side. The doubled up right turning freeway access lanes to 101 northbound took away a shareable bike lane westbound. Some cyclists began riding wrong way on the south side sidewalk interfering with peds on the narrow sidewalk. And cyclist-vehicle collisions have increased where the sidewalk crosses the access lane to 101 northbound.

Belmont told Caltrans at the interchange design phase in 1998 that they would be building a Pedestrian Over Crossing which is why the ped and bike facilities were compromised. The POC has only secured twenty five percent of its funding ten years later. The city has applied for a stimulus grant because they say it is a shovel ready project. Because of the topography it will add, if and when completed, 7/8s of a mile to a ped trip!

In the neighborhood on the northwest side of the interchange complaints of cut through traffic resulted in a 450k SRTS grant for bulbouts. This was installed without any neighborhood meetings. When other neighbors complained that the bulbouts only made it difficult to get in and out of their side streets and did nothing for cut through traffic on the collector, the city took them out for $500k.

The larger interchange has resulted in higher traffic volumes and off peak speed increases. Complaints from parents of school aged children resulted in a couple of SRTS grants to install lighted crosswalks and a couple for Automatic Speed Radar Display signs. One of the intersections where the SRTS lighted crosswalk was installed is more than 70 feet wide and complaints have persisted from parents about near misses with children. The city is considering removing the lighted crosswalk and going with a zebra crossing instead.

Meanwhile the off peak speed increases have raised complaints that the ASRD signs are routinely ignored. The response from public works is to point to enforcement and the response from police is that the Prima Facie Speed law conflicts with the Speed trap law and they can't do anything about it. However when San Mateo City police chief Mannheimer tried to get the state to allow ASRD signs to also write speeding tickets none of the surrounding jurisdictions supported the effort. In the neighboring city of San Carlos a the police say the same thing after an SRTS funded ASRD sign was installed on San Carlos Ave. When a senior was killed crossing SCA a couple years ago the city's first response was to try and take away the crosswalk. However after protests, I saw this last weekend, that they have paid to signalize the intersection.