The Burlingame Voice

Cell antennae: 4G, 5G, Gee how many?

An issue that has been simmering in B'game and elsewhere for a long time is the number and placement of additional cell antennae around town.  The migration to 5G is starting to pick-up in the U.S. although we are probably still a couple of years from seeing much in town.  Yet coverage is still spotty in many places and the various providers are looking for ways to fill-in coverage which means more gear on poles or towers.  The Daily Post did a piece a couple weeks ago about a major tower management company, Crown Castle, seeking to add seven nodes in Palo Alto.  The article is instructive on the look of things to come

Crown Castle wanted to place an antenna on each of the small cell node light poles, with the associated mechanical equipment going in a green fake mailbox on the sidewalk nearby.  City planners didn't like the idea of fake mailboxes, which they said would clutter up sidewalks and are susceptible to damage.

The net result was approval to put all of the gear on top of the light pole in a green cylinder and their council upheld that decision 4-3.  The Telecom Act of 1996 and a subsequent FCC ruling really tie municipalities hands on cell growth, but the top-of-pole vs. "fake mailbox" vs. underground vault dispute is likely to continue.  Coming to a light pole near you soon.

Our Future with Facebook

During a lovely bike ride through B'game and over the Rosalie O'Mahony bike bridge then turning south towards what was once a popular drive-in movie site, I was faced with the same spider web of steel beams we have all seen from a distance.  Here's a view of our future.

And the Oscar for most asked question in town goes to "How are all of those people going to get to work?"

Bad Dieting Ideas

I can't link to the Wall Street Journal site behind the paywall, so I will just give you some highlights of a piece from today on the perils of "road diets".  They are becoming popular in the Bay Area including Menlo Park that just made one example permanent on Middlefield Rd. and, of course, our very own Carolan Ave. example.  I suppose you could add the roundabout as another example.  But.....

Los Angeles, like cities nationwide, is transforming its streets. In July 2017 the city installed a “road diet” on a 0.8-mile stretch of Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, reducing four lanes to two and adding bike lanes separated from traffic by parking buffers. The project is part of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities in the city by 2025. Launched in 2015, Vision Zero is the most radical transformation of how people move through Los Angeles since the dawn of the freeway era 75 years ago.

By almost any metric it’s been a disaster. Pedestrian deaths have nearly doubled, from 74 in 2015 to 135 in 2017, the last year for which data are available. After years of improvement, Los Angeles again has the world’s worst traffic, according to the transportation research firm Inrix. Miles of vehicles idling in gridlock have reduced air quality to 1980s levels.

Lane reductions, bike lanes, new meridians and other innovations designed to reduce vehicle speeds make it difficult for bulky ambulances and fire trucks to respond quickly to emergencies. 

Let's just file this under the Law of Unintended Consequences.  Here is our local example which is OK.  It gets a little confusing up at Broadway for both cyclists and drivers, but doesn't inhibit fire trucks and such.

 

Roundabout Comes into Focus

I'm still waiting to talk to someone who isn't associated with the project that thinks the California Roundabout was a good use of $3 million - even if it was "grant money".  You can review the history of the project here, here and here.  I usually tell the naysayers that a good part of the money "went underground" where drainage work was needed, but that doesn't convince many people.  Here is one example of the local sentiment sent to the Voice

There are no less than 30 luminaires.  It's completely over-the-top and over-designed. There is such a thing as overlighting leading to light pollution and this is the textbook example.  This is what happens when consultants design things and city staff missed it or ok’d it anyway.  Who’s paying for the electric bill?  And couldn’t they have combined poles to cut down on the forest of streetlights, pedestrian poles and traffic sign poles?  There’ll be easily near a hundred new poles with this project.

Meanwhile we have streets that desperately need streetlights. Like Carolan where there have been pedestrian injuries rr California between Broadway and the Caltrain station.  I wish a crane could lift some of the roundabout lights and put them where they are really needed.

But there is no sense crying over spilt milk I suppose.  I just have to stop asking myself as I gingerly weave around the various obstacles "what problem were we trying to solve?" 

Photo credit:  Roving Voice correspondent

More El Camino Observations

It seems like I revisit the sorry shape of El Camino about this time every year.  Last year's post here drew some insightful comments and general agreement on the sorry state of affairs for our peasant path--certainly no King's Road.  Perhaps the arrival of the rain that coincides with the arrival of the Caltrans FLOODING signage gets me thinking.  Or maybe it's the completely random light at Lincoln Ave. and El Camino that stops ECR traffic for no visible reason.  And now the "Grand Boulevard"-like sections in San Mateo and Millbrae have these inscrutable double flashing yellow/red lights for pedestrian crossings.  They appear to be set for walkers with walkers as most of the time the pedestrian is long gone and the flashing red lights are still flashing.  Most drivers can't decide if a double flashing red means wait or proceed-if-clear.  To tell you the truth, I'm not sure myself so I err on the side of caution.

Rather than just complain I got out my scooper and cleared my adopted drain.  It really needed it as you can see below.  The official page for city adoption services is here. It appears someone already adopted it, but I think of it as shared-custody since I have been clearing it for more than a decade.  I was able to adopt the one on the other corner which was "medium" priority--I would hate to see how bad "high" priority is.  84 Adopters have adopted 110 of our 1,400+ drains, so you are sure to have one nearby that needs your love.



  

It's Really Sacramento's Sidewalk

You really have to love the commonsense approach that our state legislators take on local issues.  Here is the latest example, now signed into law by Gov., soon to be ex-Gov. Brown

TAKE IT TO THE STREETS: Senate Bill 946 (Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens)

As the Trump administration ramps up its immigration enforcement efforts, California is attempting to bring street vendors, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, out of the shadows. The state will now prohibit local governments from banning sidewalk sales of food and other merchandise, and require them to set up a licensing system if they want to regulate the practice. Violations of local rules can only be punished with citations or fines, not criminal charges, so as not to alert immigration authorities.

And who pays for the "licensing system" to be designed, built, advertised and maintained?  We do.  Nice work.  Definitely got your priorities right, legislators.

Bike Lanes Bloom

I enjoy biking around B'game especially on the side streets and the bay front and I get that sometimes bikers need to use some of the main streets to get where they are going.  The new bike lanes just going in on California Drive (not "Avenue" as the contractor's sign says at the roundabout project) are the latest to bloom on our streets.  What I don't get is why the green lanes are not further to the right next to the curb?  From what the Merc's Roadshow column says, this is a point of confusion for a lot of motorists

Q Can you please remind drivers of the proper way to make a right turn when a bicyclist is present? I am terrified as I bike toward an intersection and a driver to my left or behind me waits until the last moment to make his move for a right turn, often cutting me off. … In my cycling experience, this is the single most dangerous habit of motorists that puts us cyclists at risk.  

A It’s time to remind drivers about a question that motorists get wrong more than any other on DMV tests: how to make a legal and safe right turn at an intersection when a bicyclist is present. Drivers, here is the right way to do this:

 

-Merge into or across the bike lane before your right turn, all the way to the curb. You can do this on all streets, whether they have bike lanes or not, within 200 feet of the intersection and only after ensuring there are no bikes in that lane.  (Ed:  so in many cases the turning car is blocking the green lane regardless of whether it is curbside or 4-6' off the curb)

-If you think there’s a chance that merging wouldn’t give a rider behind you enough time to slow down or pass on the left, then don’t do it. Slow down, and merge behind the rider to make your right turn. Treat bicyclists as if they were motorists.

All well and good but it doesn't describe why the lane is so far off the curb.  Where there are parking spaces, it's understandable but where there are none, like at busy intersections, it appears to me to add to the confusion for drivers.

 

Train Horn Non-update

Like many B'gamers, I wish this article in today's Daily Journal was about the B'game city council working on a quiet zone, but it's about San Mateo trying to get started.  I'll just pluck a couple of the technical and money points to highlight the challenges both cities face

To mitigate the uptick in risk associated with not sounding the train horns at crossings, the Federal Railroad Administration, or FRA, requires cities requesting quiet zones to implement safety improvements at the crossings, said San Mateo city engineer Jeffrey Tom. Among the measures Tom said could be taken to reduce the risk of crossings are:

• four-quadrant gate systems, which block both directions of traffic on both sides of the track
• installing medians to prevent drivers from crossing the tracks when the gates are down
• converting two-way streets into one-way streets and
• separating the tracks from the street level by building an underpass, or a grade separation project.

But those measures will be costly, Tom explained, with the least expensive option — to install four-quadrant gates at Second, East Fourth and East Bellevue avenues — to cost at least $9 million.

That would be $3 million per quadrant gate by my math.  I'll just play my broken record for a moment-  we have $100 billion dollars for an unneeded high-speed rail system that will probably never be finished, but $3M per gate is likely to take years.  Typical.

Drive-in Reality on the Bayfront

I suppose it is appropriate that the old Burlingame Drive-in, home to many a night of virtual reality viewing through car windshields, would become the home of the Facebook Oculus virtual reality (VR) business unit.  The Daily Journal is following up on the SF Business Times' piece and television newscasts with a story today about the proposed lease

Mayor Michael Brownrigg expressed his enthusiasm over the social media titan’s announcement.  “No more ‘Boring-game,’” declared Brownrigg, who said the decision is further indication of the city’s viability as a hub of industry.

Under terms of the agreement approved by the commission, Facebook will be the sole occupant of the 767,000 square feet to be spread across two five-story buildings, one seven-story building, one eight-story building and a two-story amenities building.

Furthering that transformation will be other developments in the area east of Highway 101, where adjacent to that site, interest has been expressed in developing property owned by the State Lands Commission into a hotel. North of the proposed site, sports entertainment enterprise Topgolf is slated to move into the city’s driving range.

A proposal has also been filed to build the SFO Technology Center, slated to house more than 239,000 square feet of office space, about 11,000 square feet for a restaurant and more than 8,000 square feet of retail space at the former Hyatt Cinema site.

You should click through to read the fine print about traffic and the usual platitudes about "alternative modes of transportation".  Pardon me for not being quite so enthusiastic about a million plus new square feet of Bayfront development without a traffic plan already in place.  And exactly what are the alternatives?  The Broadway overpass is done and functional at the current load, but probably not much more.  Any Anza access is years away.  Facebook better try to put a pier in for ferry service!

A Stop Sign We Don't Need

Is anyone else struck by the irony of the City spending $3 million bucks on a roundabout on California Ave to speed up traffic and improve pedestrian safety while simultaneously adding a new stop sign in front of the library's pseudo-roundabout a block away?  Doesn't seem to make sense to me.  We don't need more ways to impede traffic downtown.  In less than 5 minutes I saw a couple of cars blow right through the stop sign--no doubt locals who have been navigating the circle for decades.  And I also saw a near rear-ender when one car did stop as directed but the next driver was taken by surprise (not an excuse for them, just an observation).

I'm not sure what problem we are trying to solve.  If it's pedestrian safety there would seem to be other alternatives.  The posted sign nearby says this is a one-year pilot that will then be evaluated by the Traffic Safety and Parking commission ("T-spoon").  How about a one-month trial followed by removing the stop sign?

Sr. Engineer Andrew Wong at the City (awong@burlingame.org) is awaiting your input.