According to JLS Middle School Principal Christopher Grierson about 60% of all students already use bikes on a daily basis to commute to/from the school.

With schools opening, the Office of Transportation has again published “Safe Routes to School” document encouraging students to use bicycles even more. However the problem is most of these “safe” routs could not in fact be considered safe neither for kids nor adults.

Here is a fragment of the published document, called “bike safely” where all responsibility for the safety falls on a kid, who doesn’t even have any protection from passing and parked cars.

City of Palo Alto is known for its bicycling initiatives. In 2012 it adopted Vision Zero program and created Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan. Despite all of this, tax payers money mostly allocated exclusively to car infrastructure.

Ten years later most of the bike lanes are just painted on the asphalt without any protection, which leads to new victims. According to OTS 74 bicyclists were killed or injured in Palo Alto in 2019, 17 of them were younger than 15. This is very far from zero.

The only possible way to prevent future accidents is to PROTECT BIKE LANES.

The 2019 University of Colorado Denver study finds that protected bike lanes can make roads safer for everyone, including car drivers. However most of the city documents and guidelines, including the "Safe Routes to School 5-Year Work Plan" published in 2020 by Department of Transport, do not even mention protected lanes. 

On behalf of all parents in Palo Alto I ask you to create a plan of improving bicycle infrastructure in the city and allocate funds in 2023 to protect existing bike lanes with hard bollards or something similar.

Nikita Kutselev, Palo Alto resident, parent of 2