One Contra Costa County city has found itself at the center of the debate over bike safety and traffic congestion — and attitudes are changing

WALNUT CREEK — Cara De Jong woke up, splayed out and covered in blood, on the corner of Treat Boulevard at the end of September. She had landed there after a four-door sedan collided into the side of her Urban Arrow cargo bike during her Monday morning commute to the office, while she was turning left onto Buskirk Avenue shortly before sunrise.

Now she’s forced to drive through that same intersection almost daily, relegated to knee scooters and crutches while she heals from a collision that she said sent her to John Muir’s trauma center for a broken nose and a laceration where her foot got tangled up in her bike’s chain. Dizzy spells and nausea tied to inner ear trauma have prevented her from mounting her bike in the weeks since, she said.

“I felt shame when I got hit,” De Jong said. “It was like it was sadness and regret and shame. Like, why was I even biking? Even though I’m allowed to, and it wasn’t my fault that this happened.”

Eight days after the accident, the city of Walnut Creek signed off on their share of a $6.2 million project to transform a quarter-mile of De Jong’s commute – hoping to attract safer roads for non-drivers with concrete, pylons and paint.

Treat Boulevard’s redesign will feature zebra crossings, neon green lane markings, bicycle traffic signals, vehicle yield signs, turn queue boxes and “tuff” curbs that provide a 2-foot road buffer along the four hectic intersections.

Plans for the project – a joint effort between transportation officials with the city of Walnut Creek, Contra Costa County and Caltrans – also include installation of a Class IV bike lane that physically separates cyclists and pedestrians from oncoming motor traffic, which is one of the safest designs of its kind, and will create 4-foot lanes for cyclists traveling in either direction.

Seeing those and other forms of physical barriers “makes a significant difference inside of your body as a rider — it’s a de-stressor,” De Jong said, later adding that she heard news that another cyclist had been struck by a car near the same corner roughly a week after she was hit.

But there’s one controversial tradeoff to the Treat Boulevard changes that will improve safety for bicyclists, and it’s a debate playing out in cities around the Bay Area and beyond: traffic-light delays may force motorists to wait up to 60 more seconds than they currently do for them to turn green, according to a Nov. 2023 analysis of vehicle flow at the intersections of N. Main and Buskirk, as well as Oak and Jones roads.

But that’s the whole point, according to Briana Byrne, an associate traffic engineer for Walnut Creek. Treat Boulevard has proven perilous for a number of cyclists, who have been hit by northbound traffic exiting Interstate 680 near Buskirk Avenue – collisions primarily driven by high speeds and unsafe right turns.

When traffic slows down – even a little bit, Byrne said — safety increases for everyone on the road.

In 2022, more than 40% of urban bike fatalities occurred at intersections, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials. While researchers have long reported that even small increases in speed can lead to dramatic spikes in fatal collisions, a July study from UC Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center emphasized that efforts to change driver behavior often required physical modifications to roadway geometry, traffic control devices or increased enforcement or other traffic calming strategies.

De Jong said such a slowdown is long overdue.

“This whole 60 seconds thing – that is not an inconvenience that’s going to change anything,” De Jong said. “The whole point (of the project) is that we want to make it more convenient for (bicyclists), so that people actually choose that method.”

However, Kevin Wilk, Walnut Creek’s mayor pro tem, said he’s concerned that the proposed benefits for pedestrians and cyclists will not outweigh the ripple effects on an already clogged traffic artery through the city.

Councilmember Matt Francios agreed that Treat Boulevard is a congested mess “pretty much any time of day.” That’s especially true for any of the cyclists currently braving that stretch of road, which lacks any separation between the drivers struggling to navigate the lanes, aside from a thick strip of paint.

Byrne said vehicles won’t get too jammed while they wait, or at least not noticeably compared to existing congestion. She added that the city will continue monitoring its signal timing system to mitigate persistent delays on Walnut Creek’s streets, and that Caltrans officials have not raised any concerns about traffic backing up onto the interstate.

But the truth is that driver delays don’t carry much weight within modern design standards for California’s roadways, especially as environmental permits for transportation projects have explicitly prioritized the safety of pedestrians and cyclists – prioritizing them above relieving backed-up traffic or preserving drivers’ favorite routes.

San Jose’s cohesive network of bikeways and sidewalks got a nod from National Association of City Transportation Officials in 2019. “Mr. Barricade,” Vignesh Swaminathan’s viral alter ego on urbanist Tik Tok social media feeds, highlighted the corner of Park Avenue and Almaden Boulevard in downtown San Jose for showcasing “all the best practices and all the bells and whistles” for protected intersection design.

Oakland started construction earlier this year to extend its two-lane cycle track near Lake Merritt, add directional protected bike lanes along several blocks of Harrison and protect the intersection where traffic meets Grand Avenue – construction that’s expected to extend into 2026.

Other Bay Area cities like Berkeley, Alameda, Fremont, and Richmond which have been in the forefront of bike safety projects, have dealt with a lot of controversy at first, said Robert Prinz, Bike East Bay’s advocacy director. And then people adapt, he said. Waiting for drivers’ expectations or commutes to change is one of the biggest barriers impeding these kinds of projects, he said.

“I don’t pretend like we’re not asking people to make sacrifices for these changes, but I hope that people agree that the status quo isn’t working very well, so there has to be some kind of change that needs to be made,” Prinz said. “There’s 100 years of car-oriented infrastructure that we’re going to have to revisit – but the more work a city does around this stuff, the easier it gets. Anything new gets a lot of additional attention and scrutiny.”