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!