Santa Clara Countywide Bike Plan

Bike Plan Update Public Meeting in Cupertino, March 2016

See What's Happening This Month

VTA's Role in Bicycle Planning

We provide funding to cities for building bicycle paths and bicycle lanes, we work with cities to build new bicycle bridges and better freeway interchanges, and we bring city staff together so bikeways are consistent across city boundaries. VTA also provides space for bikes on our buses and light rail vehicles, and bike parking at our light rail stations.

About the Santa Clara Countywide Bicycle Plan

The Santa Clara Countywide Bicycle Plan’s primary goal is to make it easier and safer for people to bike when traveling from one city to the next in Santa Clara County. The plan establishes a network of Cross County Bikeway Corridors that will provide continuous, complete bike connections across the county. The plan also identifies locations where new and improved bike connections are needed across freeways, rail lines and creeks. Last, the plan identifies ways to make it easier for people to use their bike with transit, including bike access to major transit stops, bike parking at stops, and bicycle accommodations on board.

Why Update The Countywide Bike Plan Now?

VTA has had a Countywide Bicycle Plan since 2000. The plan was most recently updated in 2008. Since then, we have seen advances in bicycle infrastructure design, advances in planning for bicyclists, and a cultural shift toward bicycling. More people, and a greater diversity of people, are interested in bicycling, and they want bikeways that are physically separated from cars. VTA now has the capacity to model how building new bikeways will affect travel patterns, congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the local jurisdictions in Santa Clara County have built many new miles of bike lanes and trails. It’s time to update the Countywide Bicycle Plan to reflect these changes.

Public Outreach

VTA would like to thank the 90 community members who joined us at our three public meetings in Gilroy on March 29, San Jose on March 30, and Cupertino on March 31, 2016. We also received over 800 comments on our online mapping tool. Thank you to those who took the time to provide your valuable feedback. A view-only version of the online mapping tool with all its comments, points, and lines will be made available here soon. The Planners are currently busy drafting the Bike Plan Update. Your first chance at a glimpse of the document will be at a VTA BPAC meeting this coming winter season. Please check back with us later for more information. In the meantime, we welcome you to peruse our other bicycle resources:

View the PowerPoint presentation in English (or in Spanish) from three public workshops.
View the public input we received from the online mapping survey we conducted in Spring 2016.
Visit our Bicycle Program pages, read the 2008 Countywide Bicycle Plan, its appendices, and other documents

Project Schedule

January 2016 – Public outreach begins
March 2016 – Public meetings
May - July 2016 – Outreach at community events
August 2016 – Outreach to Member Agency staff
Summer/Fall 2016 – Develop updated Cross County Bicycle Corridors and bicycle policies and programs
Winter 2016/17 – Develop and apply prioritization criteria for Cross County Bikeway Corridors
Spring 2017 – Develop implementation plan
Summer 2017 – Draft Countywide Bicycle Plan available for public review
Fall 2017 – Countywide Bicycle Plan presented to VTA Board of Directors for adoption

What’s Happening This Month

March 2017: We are crunching the numbers to prioritize the Cross County Bikeway Corridors. In the next few months, we will bring the results to VTA Advisory Committees. At that point, the public will get its first peek at the revised network and proposed priority corridors.
December 2016: We are putting the final touches on the Cross County Bicycle Corridor network. The VTA Board of Directors adopted the prioritization criteria for the Cross County Bicycle Corridors in November 2016, which we are now applying to the network. Click to view VTA BPAC meeting information.