Cupertino plans safety improvements for major thoroughfare

One of Cupertino’s busiest streets is on the road to becoming safer.

Cupertino is receiving more than $425,600 to increase safety on Bollinger Road through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program. The city will match the grant with more than $106,000 from its general fund, in conjunction with San Jose.

Bollinger Road, a major thoroughfare that runs for two miles along the San Jose-Cupertino border connecting Lawrence Expressway and De Anza Boulevard, is two lanes in both directions, with no medians or designated bike lanes and few pedestrian crossings.

The money will fund traffic modeling, engineering designs for safety improvements and speed monitoring conducted by police officers for the next two years. The project is set to begin this summer.

Seema Lindskog, chair of Walk Bike Cupertino, an organization that advocates for increased safety for pedestrians and bikers, has lived in Cupertino for 18 years. She said the street has needed safety improvements for years.

“The only constituent that is being served properly on Bollinger is the cars,” she told San José Spotlight. “If you look at the residents, the pedestrians, the students, the transit users, they’re not getting served in a way that makes them feel safe.”

From 2015 to 2019, there were more than 130 auto collisions along Bollinger Road, according to the Bollinger Road Corridor Safety Study conducted by Cupertino in 2021 and the latest city data. The intersection at Bollinger Road and De Anza Boulevard had the highest amount of collisions with 22, followed by 19 collisions at the Miller Avenue intersection and 15 at the Lawrence Expressway intersection. Two pedestrians died after being hit by cars at Miller Avenue and Wunderlich Drive.

The study introduced two options to increase traffic safety: reducing the lanes from two to one on each side and adding safety elements, such as a protected bike lane and traffic cameras, a tool that San Jose added to its streets last year.

David Stillman, Cupertino’s transportation director, said the road is one of many the city is working to improve.

“It’s kind of unique among our corridors,” he told San José Spotlight. “There’s just not as much right of way along Bollinger, as we have (on) a lot of other streets.”

The grant works in conjunction with the city’s proposed Vision Zero program, which Cupertino is still developing, with the aim to reduce and eventually eliminate traffic fatalities and injuries.

Neighboring cities have already implemented Vision Zero plans. San Jose’s program found a spike in unhoused traffic fatalities in a study published last year.

Colin Heyne, San Jose’s Department of Transportation spokesperson, said while the plan is still in its early stages, he is a strong proponent of traffic safety across municipalities.

“We’re always keen on having these safer bicycle and pedestrian facilities extend across city limits,” he told San José Spotlight.

Lindskog said she hopes the grant money will meet the needs of everyone who uses Bollinger Road.

“(We) have to balance the needs of drivers, cyclists, residents, pedestrians, students (and) transit users,” she said.

Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.