Was the Investment in New Fremont Bike Lanes and the Future Implementations Valued by Residents?
Advisor: Ms. Mariam Abodouma
Internship Location: City of Fremont
Onsite Mentor: Lilian Ayala
Every developed country has a strong, government supported transit system—but many United States’ cities lack one. Public transit systems and walkable cities help improve social mobility, climate justice, and community connectivity. Our city’s new bike lanes received heavy negative criticism. Without a culture or want for public transit, bus systems and rapid transport will never improve, but without improvements to the system, there will never be support for transit. Understanding public opinion and increasing safety and awareness is incredibly important for urban planning. Conversations with my advisor highlighted the lack of communication between the city and different marginalized groups, including youth. Working with Fremont city’s Senior Transport Committee, I will be surveying youth reactions to the bike lanes and their biking comfort with different biking infrastructure. My project will be used to enhance the Fremont bike lanes and bridge the gap of communication between the city and differing marginalized groups.
Project Blog
Week 0: Fremont's New Bike Lanes — hit or miss?
Hello!
This is my first blog post briefly introducing my Senior Project.
If you drive anywhere in Fremont, you will see a number of street corners under construction. For Fremont residents, the reason why is obvious—the growing number of bike lanes and changing streets have been gaining attention. Many drivers complain about how this new infrastructure will increase traffic congestion, especially because they do not see an increase in bikers.
My senior project will better understand the perception of these new bike lanes. Since proposing my senior project, I have decided to focus my surveying on young individuals in Fremont rather than surveying the entire population.
Engagement with public opinion when designing policy is significant for implementing equitable and efficient policy. Fremont lacks engagement with marginalized groups, and conversations with my External Advisor highlighted the need to receive feedback from middle and high schoolers in Fremont to help design infrastructure based on the data I collect from my project.
Over the next few weeks, I will attend on-site high school and middle school transportation and safety events to collect data on students' perceptions of the new bike lanes. My external advisor has connected me with our city’s Safe Routes to School Events Coordinator to attend these events. I will connect with on-site student event coordinators to become a guest and visitor at these events.
Before attending these events, I will create a simple and quick survey for students. This survey will include information about how students get to school, their perception of transport, and their opinions on biking safety designs. I will work with my external and internal advisors to approve these surveys and collect the data.
Follow me through my Senior Project journey!
Week 1: Bike to Business
Welcome to my first week of Senior Projects!
Throughout this week, I have been in contact with Alameda County's Safe Routes to School Event Coordinator, Nora Dye. With her help, I have been able to connect with high schools in Fremont, where I will be able to host my surveys.
I have an event at Irvington High School lined up for March 6th and Washington High School for March 12th. Because it is challenging to get visitors to American High School's campus, I cannot survey their events. In the future, I may look into other ways to gather data from American High School.
I have been working on developing a survey to bring to these events. I wanted to keep them simple and easy to understand while still collecting enough data. I wanted to separate feedback from avid bikers and observation feedback. My external advisor has explicitly asked for more feedback on the preferred Class IV infrastructure (physical infrastructure separating bike lanes from the road).
At each event, I plan to do paper surveys and print out photos of the different types of infrastructure. Although paper surveys may become difficult to count, they are quicker to fill out and do not require students to have their phones.
I have also been biking around Fremont this week and experiencing the different biking infrastructures. I biked through Ardenwoods and a Coyote Hills trail. I plan to continue biking throughout the project to discuss the different infrastructure better.
Next week, I will be going to my first in-person event, so stay tuned for that!
Week 2: Facing my Fears
Welcome back! This week is super exciting because you will get to dive into what it is like to go to an in-person event.
On Monday and Tuesday, I was preparing for my in-person survey on Wednesday. I printed out all the surveys and confirmed my attendance with the event coordinators.
On Wednesday, though, I had trouble sleeping. I kept thinking about showing up to Irvington High School as a complete outsider. I woke up at the crack of dawn (6:16 am) and while I was showering I realized I had so much I needed to do. I had forgotten to print the images assisting the surveys, and I realized I wanted to also make an online version just in case. So I quickly wrapped up my shower, got dressed, and ran to my computer. After making the additional material, I scarfed down my breakfast and left at 7:18 am.
I needed to be there at 7:30 am.
Don’t worry, I didn’t speed. But in the car I was planning my reasoning for why I was late. I got lost? I made a wrong turn? I didn’t know where to park?
However, when I arrived, they had just started setting up, so it was all fine. One of the students already knew me! Which was scary.
I kinda just stood there awkwardly as they set up their equipment. They had a bike that powered a blender — and then they made fresh smoothies. The girl who knew me was super sweet and directed people towards me.
I was surprised that people agreed to fill out the survey. One issue I found, though, is that many people didn’t understand the different bike safety infrastructure — even though I had printed out images of them. Many people didn’t care about the biking infrastructure because they don’t bike. Although I cannot fix the latter issue, I may need to think about how I present the options for next week. (I can’t believe I am going to go through this again next week).
It went by really fast. We only really had the booth set up for around 30 minutes.
Overall, though, I think it was super successful! The statistical goal is to get around 0.1N surveys, with N being the number of students (around two thousand). I most definitely did not get 200 surveys, but another statistical goal used is to get 30 surveys, and I think I got close to that.
As I was walking off campus, I thought, what if someone thinks I am ditching school? Obviously, no one cared though, so I strolled away as fast as I could, dying to leave.
Join me next week to see how my surveying goes at Washington High School!
Week 3: Overcoming my Fears
Welcome back! Last week I went to Irvington High School and faced my fears. I surveyed students on biking, and this week I am back at Washington High School to do the same. Scary!
However, with my previous experience, I was more confident than I was last week. I went to Washington High School at 3:30 pm. Because it was the end of school, a lot of students had already left, and I was not able to get as many surveys.
I am surprised by how easily people decide to fill out surveys. Our table was also right next to the rack of bikes, so hopefully that helped me get feedback from actual bikers. As I went through Irvington’s responses, I realized that most people don’t bike and therefore their idea of safe bike lanes is not super accurate. I am thinking of interviewing some bikers and drivers to better understand different infrastructure preferences.
The girl I was working with was super sweet and even gave me another contact to continue my project. I definitely needed this, because my external advisor only helped me acquire two high school events. Maybe I should survey my own school. I forgot about them.
Now that I have a good amount of data, I will be going through it and making some preliminary conclusions to help guide the rest of my project. I plan on making distinctions between data from bikers and non-bikers, local bike lanes surrounding the schools, and more!
Stay tuned for next week where I will be getting more into the data!
Week 4: Reassesing
Welcome back, folks! After the last two, more hectic weeks of attending in-person events and surveying students, I will now be taking the time to input all the data into a Google spreadsheet and begin organizing the information.
I do not have quite enough data yet, so I am planning on surveying my own school sometime this or next week.
When inputting my data, I noticed that not many of the survey responses were from people who biked. This is a little concerning, as people who do not bike have a very different perspective of biking safety than people who do — which means my survey may be a little off.
Still, I am going to organize the data, taking into account the bike lanes near the school and how close students live to that area. Irvington and Washington High School actually aren’t too far away from each other, so maybe I will also look into talking to students from the other Fremont High Schools.
To better understand the experience of youth bikers, I plan to interview and talk to some students. Finding students from my own school will be pretty easy, but I also hope to reach out to students who live in different areas, as they would have different biking infrastructure.
My city is really ramping up the amount of bike lanes being built! And a few people have been asking me questions about it! Unfortunately, I do not have any answers!
Maybe one day I will! See you all next week!
Week 5: Background on Fremont Plans
Instead, I shall give an introduction to the biking plans Fremont has published. (A lot of people keep asking me why Fremont is ruining the intersections, so here is a little info on all that!)
Essentially, over the past (less) decade or so, the city of Fremont has published plans going into how they want to make the city more walkable, bikeable, and safe. Here is the list of plans: Bicycle Master Plan, Mobility Action Plan, Trails Strategy Plan, Pedestrian Master Plan, Safe Routes to School, and Safety & Vision Zero.
I only recommend you read the Mobility Action Plan because 1. It is aesthetically pleasing and well designed and 2. It gives a brief overview of all the other plans and 3. It is the most updated one.
If you are interested in the Safety & Vision Zero, please go read Aaryan Mishra’s blogs because it is completely irrelevant to me. (It also has an aesthetically pleasing design).
The Plan starts with an introduction to why traffic has gotten so bad in Fremont! It is because everyone is moving into the northeast bay and commuting to the south bay every day for work. This creates congestion all along 680 and 880 for hours each day, further pushing traffic into the inside roads where people live.
The Plan then goes into the community feedback and engagement it has done. Although they have done some feedback generally for mobility, the new bike lanes specifically did not have many active forms of feedback. In fact, my external advisor sent me the data on community and youth feedback — it's not great. In the plan, we can see that most feedback was from 35 to 45-year-olds.
Then they talk about Traffic Signal Modernization and Vision Zero. If you are interested, go read Aaryan’s project. Anyway, jump to travel alternatives where they talk about walking and biking. It outlines where it wants to put the bike lanes and how much money is being spent on each intersection.
The rest of the plan is very interesting and helps you see how community involvement pushed for different actions to be formed. You know, Vision Zero seems very interesting, I recommend you go read Aaryan’s blogs. I am sure he is doing super fun things.
Next week I will either give updates on my student interviews or talk more about the uploaded plans!
Week 6: Fremont's Biking Plan
Wow! Welcome back from Spring Break! It didn’t really feel like much of a break for me because I am already on a break, well more like I am finished because I am not going to come back to high school!
This week I am attending my Key Club retirement from Thursday to Sunday! So although I do not have much work to recap, I will continue with information on the Fremont Transport Plans.
Last time I gave background on the general plans that are published on Fremont’s website. Now, I will go more into a summary of the Bicycle Master Plan. The plan outlines the hotspots for traffic and biking in Fremont. The plan then outlines the existing infrastructure in Fremont which includes 159 miles of bikeways. The plan also shows the visuals for Class 1, 2, and 3 bike lanes. Class 1 bike lanes are completely separate and are the most safe bike lanes. Class 2 bike lanes have a separate lane for bikes while Class 3 bike lanes have bikes share the lane with cars.
The priority development areas are around American, Washington, and Irvington High School, as well as around the Warm Springs BART station.
The plan goes more in depth about different signage, connecting cities, maintenance and more. There is also a section for youth education which includes information about a local nonprofit organization called Safe Moves/Smart Moves that hosts community ride events. The education seems to rely on outside work and volunteering from schools and nonprofits.
The plan then goes into specific policies in each location, including in the city and general county rules and policies.
The plan goes a little more into public engagement and the needs of bikers. However, this plan is over ten years old. How concerning? The recent Mobility Action Plan has more updated information, but it is not focused on biking.
Anyway, beyond the plans, you can physically see the bike lane changes being implemented in Fremont. The right turns are under construction on Grimmer Boulevard and on Fremont Boulevard, two hot points for traffic. Has cycling increased, though? I am not sure.
Anyway, see me next week when I talk to Aaryan Mishra and Rishi Janga, two bikers!
Week 7: The End's in Sight
Hello folks! Welcome back!
I have had a super crazy weekend with lots of tears. But it also reminded me that I happen to only have three weeks left of my project. So it is possibly time to start writing my paper and doing some actual analysis of my numbers.
Tomorrow, I am going to go to school again and hopefully do some surveying during lunch of my students. I had a chance to speak with Rishi Janga earlier this week and got some very interesting feedback and thoughts on the bike lanes.
As I was talking to Rishi, his friend Shashwath kept chiming in, disapproving with Rishi’s opinion. This also made me realize that avid bikers will likely have a better view of the bike lanes than most people because they are the ones continuing the bike, versus disheartened bikers who stop biking because of safety concerns. Ah! So much survey bias!
So, I am thinking I will also talk to bikers who do not bike as much or have chosen to drive over biking when given the option. Hopefully, this will shed light on the bikers who have a different perspective on biking.
Next week, I have a conversation with Aaryan Mishra setup: he is quite a busy man so I am catching him on his day off. I am trying to find bikers from other schools, but my friends seem to know no one! How is that possible! Anyway, the lucky part about BASIS is that everyone lives in different areas and therefore bikes on the different bike lanes of Fremont!
See you next week!
Week 8: Very Scared
Hi folks. Welcome back.
Being at home for the past two months has made me forget what doing work feels like. Because wow, thinking about this is so hard. I am finally looking at the data to start writing my paper and making conclusions. I think it may not make sense to do in-depth statistical analysis because 1) most of the data is from non-bikers and 2) it will make more sense to use anecdotal experience.
I spoke with Aaryan Mishra and he had great things to say: lots of things I was thinking but now I can quote him as an avid biker who has the same thoughts. He gave me a splendid idea to speak with Jay Thanki, who used to bike to school but much prefers to drive — someone who knows biking but does not like it enough to make it their normal use of transport.
I have been reaching out to my Mission High School and American High School friends, and they do not know anyone who bikes! So it is going to be difficult to speak to other individuals who have concerns with the Fremont biking infrastructure.
Next week I have a meeting with my external advisor where I will give her a run down on all my conclusions. How SCARY. That means that I need to really do a full analysis this week and before my meeting so that I am very prepared.
I am afraid I do not have much NEW information; of course she must know that school areas do not have the best infrastructure, and she has seen my preliminary data. I haven’t yet surveyed my school students because everytime I come to school I get distracted… I also have to do that before my next meeting with her I guess.
It is bad that I am scared of my external advisor…. Ah!
Wish me luck for next week!
Week 9: A look at the End
Hi!
It turns out my external advisor is NOT free this week, so I will talk to her later. What a relief. However, I still only have a week left to finish my poster and presentation—actually, less time than that to finish my presentation.
I have begun outlining the different sections I need to have in my poster — the introduction to the Fremont plans and different bike lanes, different maps of school zones and construction areas, a compilation of the data in graphs and quick conclusions that can be easily understood. Wow. That is actually quite a lot now that I list it all together.
I have been working on compiling the introductory material and making some initial data conclusions. I think the visuals will be the most important part for the data and the maps of the bike lanes. Fremont has some great maps that they used in their plans but those are just the preliminary plans so I will need to make my own maps to show the actual things.
I also need to start planning out my final presentation, though I imagine it will draw from the same things as the poster. I want my poster to look really cool — I am envisioning one big map that zooms in on the school zones and then talks about the data at those school zones and also shows the bike lanes in that area. I need to figure out where I will put the interview things. Maybe I will just put one-liners around or just use that in my presentation rather than my poster.
It is a little complicated but maybe I will figure it out. I wonder how big my poster is supposed to be. Anyway, I am quite excited to see everyone else’s projects and see what they come up with.
See you all next week! For the last and final week.
Week 10: The END.
Hi Guys!!
Thank you for joining me on my journey of senior project. It has been a crazy few weeks but I think I learned a lot about communication and time management. Throughout this project, I have had to email so many adults I didn’t know. I was always scared to respond to professional adults who had to reason to respond back to me. But they do! Which is super nice. I have also had to figure out how to manage my time. In the first few weeks, I had finished my two surveys and I put off the analysis until more recently.
This week I have been finishing my paper. I had only started the outline — which really wasn’t much help for the entire paper. Because my question is less scientific research-focused, I was able to organize it how it made sense to me. I had to also finish my presentation and make it look nice. I probably spent a few hours just figuring out the aesthetics and graphs. In the end, I am really proud of my presentation.
All that being said, I would have not been able to do this project without all my advisors.
Thank you to my Internal Advisor, Ms. Abodouma for always helping me and giving me advice. I was really scared throughout the process but she always kept me grounded. I genuinely always looked forward to our meetings every week.
I would also like to thank my External Advisor. She had no reason to agree to help me with my project but she has been a great support in guiding my senior project question, getting me in contact with other event coordinators in the city, and helping me understand Fremont’s plans.
Finally, I would like to thank Ms. Nagpal for keeping us all on track and being understanding of all our projects. She has been a great help in contacting advisors and supporting us throughout our project.
This being the last week has also really solidified the idea that I am truly done with high school. It is crazy to see how far I have come with this idea and interest in urban planning, and I cannot wait to see where I go with it in the future.
Thank you to everyone who stayed updated with my blogs! See you at presentations ;0