Cupertino officials are pulling the plug on studying how to improve safety on one of the West Valley’s busiest roads.
The Cupertino City Council voted 3-1 to defund the Bollinger Road corridor study last week, which would have gathered data to assess potential safety improvements. Councilmember Sheila Mohan voted no and Councilmember J.R. Fruen recused himself because he has financial interest in a property along the road. The decision was largely made over concerns about the cost and how recommendations could affect traffic, the fact the city had already conducted a similar feasibility study and a desire for a more comprehensive study of all of Cupertino’s major corridors. San Jose’s portion of the street will no longer be studied, as the 2-mile Bollinger Road spans both cities.
Cupertino planned to fund the study with a $425,600 federal grant and a $106,400 match from the city’s general fund. The federal funds still needed to be finalized and could only be used for Bollinger Road. That money could have helped Cupertino and San Jose narrow down options to protect cyclists and pedestrians on the road with two known fatalities in the past decade, according to the latest Cupertino data.
Councilmember R “Ray” Wang voted to defund the study because as a cyclist himself, he wants to prioritize safe routes in neighborhoods rather than bustling streets used by commuters. He said the study and its potential recommendations for the street would make more sense in a bigger city.
“If we were that dense, (I would) totally would agree with it,” Wang told San José Spotlight. “We’re suburban infrastructure with a declining population. The people here want to move from A to B.”
Colin Heyne, spokesperson for San Jose’s Department of Transportation, said Bollinger Road isn’t one of San Jose’s priority safety corridors.
“We are happy to work with Cupertino on this corridor if they pick it back up in the future,” Heyne told San José Spotlight.
Councilmembers also unanimously defunded a $350,000 project to provide chargers for Silicon Valley Hopper’s electric cars, and asked staff to look for alternatives. The micro-transit service offers affordable rides to local destinations for less than $5. The council chose not to defund a roughly $2.35 million project installing protected bike lanes along Stevens Creek Boulevard and left more than $4.4 million for solar panels on public buildings — both of which were on the chopping block.
Cupertino’s Vision Zero plan identified Bollinger Road as a priority corridor last year. The plan aims to reduce and eliminate all serious injuries and deaths caused by car crashes. The city also studied the street in 2021 and found more than 130 car collisions between 2015 and 2019. That study introduced the controversial idea of reducing the road from two lanes in both directions to one, but staff said the city needed more data to implement changes.
Hervé Marcy, a commissioner on the city’s Bicycle Pedestrian Commission and member of neighborhood safety group Walk-Bike Cupertino, said he’s disappointed by the decision because he saw it as a starting point for improving the road’s safety. He’s never felt safe biking along Bollinger Road, which he sees as a “disaster waiting to happen.” He liked that the project was multi-jurisdictional.
“We don’t live in a Cupertino vacuum. We share a lot of infrastructure,” Marcy told San José Spotlight.
Clarrissa Cabansagan, executive director of nonprofit Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, said it’s rare to see cities defund small but critical projects like this. She said it’s a loss for public safety and doesn’t want it to be abandoned.
“I’m hoping that the city understands when they don’t fund studies to get to the necessary improvements that the community can back, you’re continuing to risk the lives of your constituents on that road,” she told San José Spotlight.
Story updated May 27 at 1:35 p.m. Original story published May 27 at 8:30 a.m.
Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X.
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