Interactive map shows the most dangerous areas for bicyclists

Cluster of downtown Palo Alto streets had the most collisions, analysis shows

While San Jose may be the most deadly city for Silicon Valley cyclists, Palo Alto is home to the most dangerous zone in Santa Clara County, according to a new analysis.

A new interactive map offers cyclists a jarring reminder of the danger they face while riding — even as leaders across the region are trying to push cycling as an alternative mode of transit.

“We’re seeing an increase of both the frequency and severity of vehicle vs. bicyclist and pedestrian injuries,” said Michael Kelly, managing partner of the San Francisco-based personal injury law firm Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger that produced the study.

“And we thought that this study would be helpful for cyclists to know where are the places where they have the highest chance of getting injured so that they can decide whether to reroute themselves around those sections.”

The data analysis and map, created by the marketing agency 1Point21 Interactive, drew from publicly available data from the California Highway Patrol of 3,745 bicycle collisions across the county from 2014 to 2018.

It then scored zones across the county based on the frequency and severity of crashes, assigning one point for each collision, three points for each injury, five points for each severe injury and 10 points for a fatality.

Using that scoring system, the study found that the 10 most dangerous areas for cyclists were scattered across the county, from San Jose to Palo Alto to Santa Clara to Los Gatos.

But the most dangerous zone in the county, according to the analysis, was a grid of city blocks in downtown Palo Alto. The cluster of downtown streets, including the epicenter at the intersection of Waverley Street and University Avenue, saw 49 bicycle collisions, 84% of which involved injuries but the majority were minor, according to the study.

In Palo Alto, 10% of residents bike to work — or more than 10 times the rate of residents in most Bay Area cities, according to census data. Yet the study did not take the volume of cyclists in a given area into consideration.

Emma Shlaes, deputy director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, said that while the data does a good job of raising awareness, it should

not be looked at in isolation.

“It’s not that black and white,” Shlaes said. “There’s going to be more collisions in Palo Alto because you have more people biking. There’s also going to be more collisions in San Jose because there are significantly more people. There’s a relationship there that you have to consider.”

During the same fiveyear time frame, San Jose had nearly three times the number of cyclist-involved collisions as the county’s next largest city, Sunnyvale. San Jose not only had nearly 1,500 bicycle collisions during that time but had more cyclist injuries, severe injuries and deaths than the top five cities in the county combined, the study found.

Many of the city’s most dangerous zones designated by the study were concentrated downtown, including the intersections of South Market and San Fernando streets and East Santa Clara and South 4th streets.

Most of the cities throughout Santa Clara

County have adopted Vision Zero policies, which aim to eradicate traffic deaths on city streets. But the goal has proved difficult to attain.

In San Jose, for instance, the trend has moved far in the opposite direction. In 2019, four years after the city launched a Vision Zero initiative, 60 people died in

traffic collisions, matching the 25-year high reached in 2014. Seven of those fatalities involved cyclists.

Hoping to reverse the trend, San Jose this year put nearly $7 million of additional funds into its Vision Zero plan over the next two years to further analyze data, form the Vision Zero Taskforce and hire a consultant to design a community engagement and messaging campaign to discourage residents from speeding.

The city has identified 15 safety priority corridors totaling 56 miles of city roadways to focus safety improvement projects, but only some of the priority corridors overlap with the areas highlighted by the

newly released study.

Colin Heyne, spokesman for the city’s department of transportation, said that’s because the city chose its zones based on the severity of collisions — those that involved a fatality or severe injuries, not collisions in general like in the recent study.

“We appreciate a firm looking into it, but it’s really important to be able to explain what you mean by that and what qualifies as dangerous,” Heyne said. “With this Zero Vision work where we’re decreasing speeds and possibly making an area more congested, sometimes treatments may result in more crashes, but if there are less severe injuries, then that’s not bad.”

The study also found that more than half of the top danger zones for Santa Clara County cyclists occurred along an expressway or a major arterial throughway, both notoriously known for catering more toward vehicles and often leaving bicycles and pedestrians out to dry.

Five of the most dangerous zones on the Peninsula involved an intersection on El Camino Real, one of the most trafficked thoroughfares but least friendly to cyclists and pedestrians in the region.

San Jose’s East Capitol Expressway, Montgomery Highway and Sinclair Freeway also made the top 25 list.