Riding to Carlmont High School each morning means sharing the road with cars moving 30 to 40 miles per hour, according to student cyclists in Belmont who say the lack of bike lanes on their commute routes has led to regular close calls and at least one collision. Students, parents and bike advocates recently rode about five miles from Carlmont High School through San Carlos and back to the Belmont Library to draw attention to the conditions they navigate daily.
Carlmont sophomore Matei Christodorescu told KTVU he has experienced cars passing within inches of his bike, was hit once while riding down San Carlos Avenue, and once encountered a car door swung open in front of him while someone was dropping off children. Ben Mangiafico, a Carlmont senior and president of the school's transportation club, said his usual route to school has no bike lanes and forces him to ride in the road next to cars traveling 30 to 40 miles per hour, leaving him feeling unsafe without any protection between himself and traffic.
Those experiences aren't isolated. Students who spoke about the ride reported that close calls with cars are common, and safety concerns keep some students from biking as often as they would like, even though many say they want to bike to school. Some parents, meanwhile, drive their children to campus instead, which only adds to congestion around the school.
A Multi-Million-Dollar Redesign Years in the Making
The route those students ride runs directly through a planned overhaul of Alameda de las Pulgas, a multi-million-dollar project intended to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians near Carlmont High School, which straddles the Belmont-San Carlos boundary and draws roughly 2,360 students from Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City, Redwood Shores and East Palo Alto, according to Public School Review. The corridor could be redone in a few years, or possibly sooner, per the KTVU report.
The City of Belmont's preliminary design for the corridor calls for mini-roundabouts at three key intersections, according to the City of Belmont. The effort includes the “Four Corners” working group, a joint initiative involving Belmont, San Carlos, the Sequoia Union High School District and the San Carlos Elementary School District to address traffic congestion and active transit safety near Carlmont High School and Tierra Linda Middle School, according to W-Trans.
State money has already flowed toward the project. In September 2022, Assemblymember Kevin Mullin helped secure $3.5 million in state grant funding for the joint Belmont-San Carlos corridor project, per a bulletin from the city. Still, local agencies are seeking additional grant funding to close the remaining funding gap needed to fully execute the redesign.
City Engineers Join the Ride
Belmont provided two engineers who joined students on the five-mile ride to understand firsthand the conditions cyclists encounter, including stretches of San Carlos Avenue where students navigated traffic without a bike lane. Daniel Matthews, an assistant engineer with the City of Belmont, said officials hope to understand what challenges people face and what is working well, per KTVU's account, and acknowledged the project faces challenges both in identifying community priorities and in finding funding.
Karen Casciotti, who took part in the ride, said safer streets for cyclists would make streets safer for everyone. Giuliano Carlini, affiliated with the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition, said he wants safe cycling infrastructure from end to end on Alameda de las Pulgas — the coalition broadly wants safer, more connected routes for students traveling to school across the region.
Statewide Rules, Regional Momentum
Student complaints about close passes come as California's OmniBike Act, known as AB 1909 and passed in 2022, requires motorists to move into an adjacent traffic lane whenever feasible when passing a bicyclist, expanding on the state's earlier three-foot passing rule, according to CalBike. The law also allowed bicyclists to cross intersections on pedestrian walk signals starting in 2024. A 2022 High Injury Network analysis was also conducted as part of the San Mateo County Safe Routes to School program, according to the City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County. According to a December 14, 2017 C/CAG board agenda, San Mateo County's Safe Routes to School Program aims to enable and encourage children to walk, bicycle, carpool and use transit to school. A May 9, 2024 C/CAG board agenda listed an update on the San Mateo County Office of Education's Safe Routes to School Program annual report for FY 2022-2023.
Other stretches of the same commuter spine are already seeing upgrades. In April 2024, the California Transportation Commission awarded $5.4 million to San Mateo County for the construction of the Santa Cruz Avenue and Alameda de las Pulgas Complete Streets Project, enhancing existing sidewalks and bicycle lanes in West Menlo Park. Further north, Hillsdale Boulevard intersects Alameda de las Pulgas.
For now, Carlmont's student cyclists say they're hoping their ride — and their firsthand accounts of near-misses and unsafe conditions — will help push the redesign of Alameda de las Pulgas closer to reality. Whether that happens sooner or years from now may depend on how quickly Belmont and San Carlos can close the funding gap that officials say remains the project's biggest obstacle.
