Palo Alto bike improvements coming to East Meadow, Fabian Way

After stalling for several years, a grant-funded bike lane project in south Palo Alto will soon be back in the city’s rotation, with construction slated for 2028.

The South Palo Alto Bikeways Project is expected to introduce temporary bike lane protections on East Meadow Drive and Fabian Way, two streets that carry a large number of students commuting to and from school. The changes may incorporate additional striping, flexible posts and high-visibility markings to existing crosswalks — all of which are described as “quick-build” treatments that could shape future, permanent fixtures to the streets.

The project targets a segment of East Meadow between Fabian and Alma Street, and a segment of Fabian between East Meadow and East Charleston Road, according to the city.

Despite the project’s stated goals, construction has been anything but quick.

Palo Alto leaders began looking to improve bike paths in south Palo Alto about 10 years ago in response to a number of bicycle collisions, mostly on East Meadow Drive. The city was awarded a nearly $1-million grant from the federal government in 2017 to facilitate more permanent changes to the routes, namely with protected bike lanes on East Meadow and Fabian and an improved Waverley Bike Path on land owned by the Palo Alto Unified School District

The grant, Vehicle Emissions Reductions Based at Schools (VERBS), came with a January 2023 deadline that the city could not meet, citing staffing shortages. In March 2022, the City Council voted to relinquish the money and reapply for another grant in the following funding cycle.

“Grant relinquishment allows the City to complete promised community engagement when staff resources allow, resulting in a better project and, potentially, an increase in grant funds,” in the report to council. “Re-applying for funds will likely result in more grant funds for construction because the current construction grant amount is based on the 2016 project cost estimate.”

In 2024, the city did win another grant — this time, through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets for All fund. The $888,000 grant is slightly smaller than the previous VERBS one and has more specific guidelines about spending the money, meaning that some pieces of the original bikeways project are set aside for now.

The city is also providing $222,000 in matching funds to accompany the grant.

“We cannot use funds to change or remove asphalt or concrete, meaning the changes to the Waverly Bike Multi-Use Path and the installation of crosswalks with accessible ramps will not be part of this project,”  according to the city’s  website.

Since the grant award, there has been little in the way of news about the project; its website lists an estimated construction timeline of fall 2025, and further down, a note says work remains paused due to staffing availability.

City spokesperson Meghan Horrigan-Taylor said the project manager moved out of state, resulting in major delays, but a new project manager will be onboarded in the next few weeks.

The deadline for the latest federal grant is Dec. 31, 2029, and Horrigan-Taylor said staff anticipate construction could begin in late 2028. According to the city’s Capital Improvement Plan budget adopted earlier this year, planning and engineering is scheduled to begin in fiscal year 2027.

In the time since the project first emerged in city conversations, there have been a number of bicycle collisions that safety advocates say were preventable. In 2023, two back-to-back collisions in which children were hit by cars, sparking outcry among parents and bike advocates.

The city’s newly approved bike master plan also identifies a stretch of East Meadow, between Fabian and Alma Street, as part of the city’s “high-injury network,” which consists of roads with a high frequency of bike collisions. The plan recommends protected bike lanes on East Meadow and Fabian, streets that are expected to only get busier in the coming years as the city’s plans to create a new neighborhood on nearby San Antonio Road start coming to fruition.

Robert Neff, who serves on the city’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advocacy Committee but spoke on behalf of himself, said that most of the updates he has received about the project have been about finding funding to complete it.

“The project is long overdue for Fabian, and it would be terrific to see the plans done in time to be implemented the next time Fabian is resurfaced and restriped,” Neff said over email.

This story originally appeared in Palo Alto Weekly. Riley Cooke is a reporter at Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online focusing on city government.