The Burlingame Voice

Podcast: Mark Lucchesi and I talk B'game (#103)

I'm honored that B'game podcaster Mark "Mark at the Mic" Lucchesi asked me back for another episode of Burlingame - It's a Small Town.  Over the course of about an hour we covered numerous topics that will be familiar to regular Voice readers and some new stuff too.  If you want to invest the time, around cocktail hour is recommended, then settle in with your favorite beverage and listen to the "Voice of the Voice".  The link to Episode #103 is here.

Thanks again, Mark.  He has me queued up for another one in a few months since there is always something to talk about in our Small Town^TM.

Crosswalk Daylighting: Minus 100 spaces and counting

We covered the new "daylighting" law that went into effect last January but is only now starting to be enforced here in B'game and elsewhere.  You can refresh your memory here regarding the 20-foot clearance around all crosswalks.  I have been having email discussions with Public Works and BPD on what the effects will be in our commercial districts, the areas around schools and the Rec Center as well as plain old residential areas.

2024 was the "educational" year when marginal violations would only earn a warning, but BPD does not show that it issued any warnings in town.  I say "educational" because the city is only marking red curb areas in the high traffic-high pedestrian areas.  Both of our commercial districts and the school zones qualify for new or refreshed paint.  Public Works notes "The City has already completed red curbing in the Burlingame Avenue downtown area and is now focusing on Broadway as the next priority" and estimates this will eventually result in a net loss of about 100 spaces city wide.  Some of our existing red zones will have to be extended to 20' like the one shown below in front of Ike's, so I think there maybe a few more than the initial 100 estimate.

Things get more interesting in residential neighborhoods.  There are crosswalks all over the place and plenty of people are accustomed to parking in front of their houses within 20' of such intersections.  I can go for a 15-minute walk in Burlingame Park and regularly count a half dozen.  There are two pocket parks on my walk, one that used to be Pershing School, so that may account for some of the legacy crosswalks.  Very few of these have any red curbing.  Thus, BPD has indicated:

The fine for daylighting is $40.00, the same as most of the City's parking fines. Parking Enforcement Officers won't be actively patrolling residential neighborhoods specifically looking for these violations. However, if they happen to observe one, they are encouraged to take appropriate action, which could be a warning or a citation.

I think good judgement will prevail at least for some educational period.  Six months?  9?  We shall see.  I'll be on the lookout for new red paint and whether or not it improves visibility of pedestrians.  Drivers should remember it is no longer illegal to jaywalk per The Freedom to Walk Act, which was signed into law in January 2023.

EV Charging: Fixing the Lot Y chargers

The Lot Y parking lot on Chula Vista near B'way has had a shaky history of EV charging reliability.  We reported on the initial low usage four years ago here.  It may have gotten more usage in the intervening four years, but back then one and a half charging sessions per day per unit was not a good use of city parking slots.  Part of the problem has been that the chargers themselves are wonky.  Sometimes it's the credit card readers.  Sometimes other things, but the owners, EVGo, have thrown in the towel on their first-generation units and torn all of them out.

Replacements are on their way and reportedly will be re-installed by the end of the month.  Let's hope at least some parts of the dead units are recyclable.  In the meantime, the gas guzzler meters that are behind the construction fencing are offering free parking in those spaces (since you can't get to the meter).  Park on!  Let's hope the new chargers last more than five years and we get the upgraded ones at the Walgreen's installation.

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.

Lot Why: Some parking spots are busier than others

The Broadway business district was humming this afternoon in spite of the overcast and drizzle.  Four days before Christmas and Hanukkah is "peak shopping time".  I made four stops that took about an hour including two trips back to my car, so the scene below wasn't just a single instance anomaly.  The gas guzzler spaces were packed.  You remember how tight the Lot Y lane is between the two parking rows next to Pick of the Litter when both sides are full.  Even in a mid-size sedan, backing out of a space is a two or three-cut process.  Maybe it is the rain, but my meter took my coins, flashed green, but failed to display how much time I just bought.  It's ticket roulette.

Many people were looking longingly at the EV spaces.  I didn't have the heart to look at each charger to see if they were operational--I sort of know the answer already based on this post two weeks ago.  As the "Daylighting" ordinance goes into effect with fines starting Jan 1, parking spots will get incrementally rarer.  Just wait until 19 spaces go EV-only in Lot K between Safeway and Walgreen's.  Perhaps Santa will bring the city a few shrouds to cover broken chargers that read "Open to all vehicles for free".  It's on my list.

Pushing back on the YIMBYs

From the "broken clock is right twice a day" file comes this Letter to the Editor of the SF Comicle.  Somehow the editors let this one slip through the cracks and into print.  I don't know the woman or the organization, but she hits pretty much every button right on the nose:

YIMBY housing fantasies won’t work in California. Here’s the reality

Regarding “There’s no protecting California values without building more housing” (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, Dec 13): The steady drumbeat of op-ed pieces from SPUR and YIMBY housing advocates is tiresome. Many Californians disagree with them.  Urban density and infill housing are supposed to remedy suburban sprawl. But urban density, in practice, simply creates overcrowded streets, with motorists circling in search of rare parking.   Infill comes at the expense of historic buildings and districts, which are often demolished. A classic example is the enormous apartment buildings planned for the former California College of the Arts campus in Oakland.

Transit-oriented development? This fantasy assumes that public transportation is a fixed utility. Many bus lines that once served our communities have been cut.  How many voters will oppose a tax to support BART because of the agency’s plans to put apartments in its parking lots? How many people have quit taking BART because there is no secure place to park near the stations?

The SPUR and YIMBY people want Soviet-style apartment blocks wherever they can be crammed in, extinguishing every vestige of charm from neighborhoods.  It’s time for the state to stop forcing draconian “density bonus” and “builder’s remedy” laws on neighborhoods that want to retain some breathing room.

Amelia Marshall

Board member, Oakland Heritage Alliance

Amen, Amelia.  Look no further than our latest Cellblock at One Adrian Ct.  It may not extinguish any charm in the neighborhood since it sits next to a Public Storage business, but you can bet it will raise traffic thru the Worst Intersection in the State and put pressure on all sorts of public services.  Did the grid get any major upgrade?  School capacity?  Did we hire another police officer for traffic enforcement?  Anything thing else listed here?  Keep up the good work, Ms. Marshall.  You are far from alone.

EV Chargers: On the blink in Lot Y

The bloom is off the EV market for a variety of reasons.  Unit growth is slowing dramatically.  Now that early adopters have made their purchases, the mainstream buyers' reluctance to go all-electric is hitting home hard with car companies, parts suppliers, battery factories and infrastructure players.  A number of EV start-ups will likely go bankrupt by summer according to the WSJ analysis and the big manufacturers are losing their rear bumpers on every sale.  Some to the tune of more than a $100,000 loss per sale!  Ironically, sales of high-end gas pickups and SUVs are propping up companies' EV divisions!

Range anxiety is one of the key causes of EV reluctance--and it is helping the hybrid market accordingly.  My only experience with a Tesla rental drove that anxiety home as I got about half of what the range gauge estimated.  Paying the supercharger rate wasn't dramatically cheaper than gas in the state I rented in.  Heightening range anxiety is charger malfunctions and vandalism (stealing the copper filler wire for scrap value).  Malfunctions are a national problem (estimated to be one in five) and very much a local issue as reported by the DJ this weekend:

In Burlingame’s Broadway District, continued issues with its electric vehicle charging stations are inconveniencing businesses and residents alike, Broadway Burlingame Business Improvement District president John Kevranian said.   A representative for EVgo, which owns and operates the six fast-charging electric vehicle stations located at 1133 Chula Vista Ave., confirmed that five of the six stations have likely been out of operation at times for a couple of months. One has been out of operation for weeks, she said.

Now, however, eight parking spots in the tightly packed Broadway District have become largely nonfunctional.   “This is the holiday season, too. It’s crucial these work during the holiday season. If EVgo is not going to repair them, maybe they can cover the stations, and use them as public parking,” Kevranian said.

John is on-the-money with the idea of covering a charger if it is broken so everyone could see that they can use the space.  Given they don't have meters, it would be a freebie, too. The sad part is that EVgo cannot keep chargers working that only went live in 2019, as we noted here.  The DJ piece notes that EVgo may not be complying with the city contract.  I'd say that is a safe bet, but did we negotiate any performance penalties?  Usage in Lot Y ramped up pretty slowly as we noted here, but random outages are likely to stunt future usage.  Anxiety is bad for business.

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.

Do we need some AI at Broadway?

I get it.  It's a complicated intersection.  We've got a lot of traffic coming off 101.  We've got a lot of traffic headed to 101.  We've got three big intersections at Rollins, Carolan and California before cars squeeze into an historic retail district.  We've got Caltrains going in both directions and they stop occasionally on the weekends.  We've got the worst designed roadway in the mid-Peninsula at our new and "improved" California Dr. with a too-tight left turn from B'way to southbound California.  There's pedestrians and a few bikers.  There SamTrans busses and big trucks--really big trucks that carry the cars whose sales fund the city quite well.  Some of the drivers from somewhere else and are staying at our other revenue stream--a half dozen Bayfront hotels.  They get to figure out the maze in real time.

Almost everyone wants a grade separation that is a hundred million bucks or so short and losing ground as inflation grinds on.  All the local politicians want it--and some even get kudos from the press for "advocating" for more money.  I can "advocate" for SpaceX to get to Mars sooner, but that ain't gonna make it happen.

In the meantime, perhaps we could chip away at the easiest annoyance.  Coming into the Broadway district from the 101 off-ramps, it's not uncommon to sit through two or even three cycles of the light to turn left onto Carolan.  You think you are a savvy local and will head down towards the high school as a Caltrain rumbles through.  But no.  The light cycles from yellow to red.  Back to yellow, back to red.  No traffic coming towards you (the gates are down).  No northbound traffic turning left onto B'way (no room at the gates).  So you wait.  Informed sources tell me that it's because two old light controllers are joined at the hip when they should be separate.  No one wants to invest to fix it while we wait for the Big Dig.....

What's it going to take?  OpenAI and an awesome code jockey?  A plea to ChatGPT?  A grizzled old Caltrain electrician coming out of retirement to save the day?  How do we Grok this problem?  At the very minimum, let's not replicate the problem at Oak Grove, please!

Sunday Sweets

I finally got a taste of Salt & Straw ice cream, but I didn't walk over to the Avenew to get it.  On flights to and from Boston on Alaska Air, it was the dessert in First Class.  Chocolate on the way out was...just chocolate.  Returning with the Meyer Lemon Custard with Blueberry Jam seemed more in line with their claim to artisan ice cream, but it was nothing special.  What say you Voice readers?  I hear the new ownership at Preston's is knocking it out of the park.