Google Wants to Make Silicon Valley as Bike-Friendly as Copenhagen

I suggested to the Sunnyvale city council rather than remove a couple of lanes from El Camino they add an elevated bike pathway right down the center. You can ride on El Camino from Gilroy to Milbrae and if it had an out of traffic bike lane on it then you could open up a lot of the bay area to bikes.

Those were at least dedicated bike trails, which is more than I can say about a lot of other areas in South Bay. I would never attempt to take Shoreline over 101 and compete with all the drivers trying to get on the highway on-ramp.

Do you have a citation for bike lanes digging into sidewalk? I've literally never heard of that, especially in the US where sidewalks are never near bike lanes and separated by a curb/parking/grass.

But the point is - no pavement, no speed, regardless of what kind of bike your using. Pave those things, and your average speed on a bike would double at least.

Put up better lighting on the Stevens Creek Trail, enough so that you can see the full trail and surrounding woods after dark. This alone would've doubled the amount of trips I spent biking to work when I was at Google: the limiting factor was that after daily savings time ended, I'd usually finish up work when it was dark out, and my bike's lights aren't really sufficient on that trail. I also know a number of female cyclists who won't ride the trail after dusk because they don't know who might be lurking in the shadows.

Pave the Bay Trails. There's a section by Palo Alto and another by Shoreline that get good use because they're paved. The connecting paths between them and over by Moffett and San Jose are unpaved, and only the most dedicated mountain bikers tend to brave them because it's a very bumpy ride. If you paved over the rest of the existing trails, you could bike from downtown San Jose all the way to the Googleplex via Guadalupe Trail and the Bay Trails.

Add more bike cars to Caltrain. The existing bike car can get really full during good weather. Adding more trains may not be possible, but adding another car to existing trains should be reasonably inexpensive.

Set apart the bike lane on Central Expressway. Central Expressway has a bike lane. You'd have to be crazy to ride on it, because cars whiz by you at 60 mph, they're not expecting to see you, they're often exiting or entering on cloverleafs, and there is nothing separating you from them. A concrete barrier & fence together with a few tunnels under the onramps would do a lot to improve safety, and make Central a viable North/South bike corridor. The real estate already exists for this.

Build more pedestrian/bike-only connections between streets that almost line up but don't quite. For example, a pedestrian bridge across Caltrain between Sunset & Pajaro Ave would let cyclists bike from South Sunnyvale to North Sunnyvale while avoiding busy Mary & Matilda Aves, putting their whole trip through quiet residential neighborhoods. A similar connection between Escuela and Farley (where there's already a traffic light) would connect the dense apartment complexes on California with the Googleplex via the Permanente Creek Trail, though I suspect it'd be bitterly resisted by people on the Farley side because the demographics of those neighborhoods are very different. A pedestrian crosswalk (with a light) between Sleeper and Cuesta Park and then a cut-through on the edge of Cuesta Park via Gantry Way to Rose Ave would link the Stevens Creek Trail and everything that feeds into it with very low-traffic, residential streets that go all the way to downtown Los Altos.