PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
CITY HALL
10300 TORRE AVENUE • CUPERTINO, CA 95014-5732
TELEPHONE: (408) 777-3354
CUPERTINO.GOV
CITY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT
Date: February 19, 2026
Subject
An update on the development of the Active Transportation Plan, including a summary of Phase 2, explanations of plan edits, revised scoring criteria, and next steps.
Recommended Action
Receive an update on the development of the Active Transportation Plan and provide feedback on the agenda packet attachments.
Executive Summary
The City of Cupertino is developing an Active Transportation Plan (ATP) to update and consolidate the 2016 Bicycle Transportation Plan and the 2018 Pedestrian Transportation Plan. The ATP is a City Work Program project and fully funded through TDA Article 3 funds. Phase 1 of the project established the technical foundation for the Plan, which included a Needs Assessment and Existing Conditions Review that applied methods such as Active Trip Potential and Level of Traffic Stress to identify where walking and biking are most challenging and where short vehicle trips could realistically shift to active modes. Community input validated the analysis and emphasized strong support for improving safety on the Vision Zero High-Injury Network (HIN), connectivity to schools, designing for all ages and abilities, and balancing project tradeoffs for drivers.
Phase 2 advanced the Plan through continued engagement and produced clear priorities for both pedestrian and bicycle networks. The ATP and the draft prioritization criteria were presented to Commissions and Council in fall 2025, where there was strong consensus and feedback converged on prioritizing safety (especially near schools and on the HIN), using objective metrics to score projects, and elevating technology solutions. These comments led staff to revise the scoring frameworks and create a new project category, Transportation Technology Corridors. Staff also developed two new policy memos to address comments on potential project impacts and on how to measure project effectiveness. Next steps are to release a draft ATP for public review in
spring, incorporate revisions, and return to City Council for adoption in late June or early July.
Background
With substantial progress made on implementing the recommended projects from the 2016 Bicycle Transportation Plan and the 2018 Pedestrian Transportation Plan, a new, comprehensive Active Transportation Plan (ATP) is being developed that will build on those successes and address evolving community needs. Additionally, this unified, citywide plan will align bicycle and pedestrian initiatives while accounting for the needs of motorized vehicles. This coordinated approach ensures consistency across policies and projects, avoids duplication, and addresses overlapping concerns.
The City Council approved the FY 24/25 City Work Program on April 3, 2024, with the ATP included as an approved project. City staff then identified Transportation Development Act Article 3 (TDA3) funds as an external funding source to wholly fund the Plan's development.
On December 3, 2024, the City Council authorized the City Manager to award a contract to Alta Planning + Design, Inc., for development of an ATP.
Phase 1 Summary
Phase 1 of the ATP occurred between March and June 2025. It included policy review, community outreach, and technical analysis to develop data-driven project recommendations.
The first step of Phase 1 was to develop a Plan Review Memo to ensure the ATP is consistent with and supports local and regional policies, including Cupertino plans like the General Plan’s Mobility Element and Vision Zero Action Plan, the Countywide Active Transportation Plan, and other relevant documents.
Phase 1 also resulted in a Vision, Goals, and Objectives Memo. This document captured the shared vision that Cupertino should be a community where walking, biking, and rolling are easy, safe, and comfortable for everyone. The ATP’s vision, goals, and objectives were developed by consolidating similar and overlapping statements from existing Cupertino plans and refining them using input gathered during Phase 1 outreach to also reflect today's community needs and concerns. The community ranked these goals in order of importance, as shown below:
1. Safety: Consistent with the Vision Zero Action Plan, pursue an active transportation network that reduces the number of serious and fatal crashes involving pedestrians, bicyclists, and other active transportation users to zero. Enact measures to anticipate human error and minimize the impact of traffic crashes for all roadway users.
2. Accessibility: Provide a well-connected multimodal transportation network that offers comfortable and convenient walking and biking options to key destinations for all residents and visitors in the City.
3. Maintenance: Active transportation needs should be considered and integrated in all City roadway maintenance activities.
4. Sustainability: Advance environmental quality and economic prosperity for the City by providing inviting active transportation facilities that encourage frequent usage and improve adoption of all non-vehicle modes of travel, resulting in a reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs).
5. Multimodal Balance: Consider multimodal priorities and impacts of all projects to improve sustainable transportation options throughout the City. Limit impacts to all other transportation modes whenever possible, including transit and personal vehicles.
6. Fairness: Provide a multimodal transportation system that is equally distributed across all neighborhoods in Cupertino.
During Phase 1, the project team also conducted a Needs Assessment and an Existing Conditions Review. These documents examined the City’s transportation network in detail, identifying where walkers and bikers feel stressed or disconnected. Analyses such as Active Trip Potential and Level of Traffic Stress were applied to determine areas in the City where existing short driving trips could realistically shift to walking or biking. Together, these analysis methods established a clear picture of where gaps are greatest and where investments could potentially yield the greatest community benefits.
In parallel with the analysis task, staff reached out to the community to learn which destinations they want to travel to and what barriers prevent them from walking or biking.
Residents consistently expressed concerns about safety on the Vision Zero High-Injury Network (HIN), the need for improved connectivity between neighborhoods and schools, the need to consider potential project impacts on drivers, and the importance of designing facilities for people of all ages and abilities. Feedback from the community helped validate the technical analysis, and together, these two sources, along with state and federal design guidance documents such as the Caltrans Design Information Bulletin Number 94 and the Federal Highway Administration Bikeway Selection Guide, were leveraged to develop draft network recommendations.
Draft project prioritization criteria that align with the Plan goals were established to assist in ranking the draft network recommendations. The scoring metrics were selected to be consistent with community goals and VTA Measure B funding requirements. These criteria were presented to the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission (August 20, 2025), Planning Commission (September 9, 2025), and City Council (November 4, 2025) for review and public comment. These draft project prioritization criteria included the following metrics to rank recommended projects:
• Collision History
• Stress Level
• School Proximity
• High Frequency Transit Proximity
• Parks & Other Destination Proximity
• Active Trip Potential
• Roadway Impact
• Public Input
Phase 2 Summary
Following Phase 1, the project transitioned to the Network Recommendations Phase (Phase 2).
All Phase 1 documents can be referenced on the project webpage at www.cupertino.gov/atp.
This information was included in the staff report (Attachment A) for the November 04, 2025, City Council meeting. During this phase, public engagement continued, with the community encouraged to review and comment on the draft network recommendations. Phase 2 ran from August 20 to November 30 and consisted of eight pop-up events and three public hearings. The online input webmap was also updated to allow community members to review and comment on the project recommendations using the project webpage.
Phase 2 public outreach once again highlighted repeated concerns about intersection conflicts, particularly with right-turning vehicles, limited visibility, red light running, and speeding through major intersections. For pedestrian projects, respondents strongly supported the proposed Class I shared-use facilities (Tamien Innu, Union Pacific Trail, and Lawrence Mitty Trail). For the Lawrence Mitty Trail, the community specifically noted the value of extending the shared-use path northward and into Santa Clara to improve school access. There was also broad support for the recommended sidewalk projects. Participants noted that safety issues at intersections become more pronounced during commuting hours due to the high volume of traffic. The intersections most frequently mentioned were those along Stevens Creek Boulevard, Bollinger Road, Prospect Road, Stelling Road, De Anza Boulevard, and Blaney Avenue. The community’s preferred pedestrian projects were:
• Tamien Innu
• Lawrence Mitty Trail
• Blaney Ave and Stevens Creek Blvd (Typology A, B, C Intersection) • Union Pacific Trail
• Pacifica Dr and Torre Ave (Typology A Intersection)
For bicycling, popular projects included upgrading bike lanes on corridors such as Homestead Road and Blaney Avenue, and addressing intersection safety issues along Stevens Creek Boulevard, especially near Highway 85 and De Anza College. The community’s preferred bicycle projects were:
• Stevens Creek Blvd (Separated Bike Lanes)
• Blaney Ave (Buffered Bike Lanes)
• Homestead Rd (Buffered and Separated Bike Lanes)
• Bollinger Rd (Buffered Bike Lanes)
• Stelling Rd (Buffered and Separated Bike Lanes)
Overall, participants expressed support for enhanced network connections to schools and requested that some of the proposed buffered bike lanes be upgraded to separated bikeways to improve safety due to high-speed traffic. The corridors that received the most feedback included the recommended shared-use paths, as well as Homestead Road, Stevens Creek Boulevard, Blaney Avenue, and Bollinger Road. Many participants favored the suggested shared-use paths, expressing that they would provide safe alternatives to major roadways and intersections. Concerns about speeding and unsafe intersections along Stevens Creek Boulevard were highlighted, particularly near Highway 85 and De Anza College. Separated bikeways were supported on Foothill Boulevard, Stelling Road, and Wolfe Road. Most unique comments were regarding the recommended neighborhood bike routes, with overall support for the enhanced neighborhood network serving schools.
Across both pedestrian and bicycle projects, recurring priorities were improving safety for students travelling to schools (Lincoln Elementary, Monta Vista High, and Cupertino High were referenced the most), implementing traffic calming and speed-reduction measures on local streets (speed tables, RRFBs, and when legally permissible implementing automated speed enforcement measures), strengthening connectivity between parks, schools, and neighborhoods, and improving intersection safety.
Commission and Council Feedback
Following Phase 1, the ATP was taken to the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission, Planning Commission, and City Council to solicit feedback on the ATP and the draft project prioritization criteria. Based on the Council's direction and the Commissions’ feedback, staff revised both the draft prioritization criteria and draft policy and program recommendations to address comments from the three bodies. Additionally, staff prepared two new policy memos to accompany the ATP, which will be applied to new ATP projects to better evaluate potential project impacts and project effectiveness.
A review of the Commission and Council feedback showed clear consensus among the Commissions and the Council regarding each body’s comments on the ATP and the draft project prioritization criteria. These areas of agreement were:
• Safety should be prioritized, especially near schools and on the Vision Zero HIN. • Scoring criteria should emphasize objective, data-based measures, and Fairness should be removed as a criterion.
• Support for improving future decision-making with more robust data collection. • Technology solutions need greater emphasis.
Specifically, on August 20, 2025, the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission provided the following comments to staff:
• The Commission emphasized considering road maintenance before approving new projects.
• Concerns were raised about including public likes and dislikes in the evaluation process, and it was suggested that they be treated cautiously.
• Calls were made to ensure decisions are based on data, and to avoid penalizing projects that involve parking or lane removal, as those decisions should be left to the City Council.
• There was strong support for prioritizing safety, with extra points suggested for projects near schools and along high-injury corridors.
• The evolving nature of the City was acknowledged, with a push to ensure plans address both current and future needs, particularly in growing residential areas.
On September 9, 2025, the Planning Commission provided feedback to staff through the following motion:
• Access Criteria: Award fifteen points if within one-half mile of a school and include senior housing and senior facilities in the “Parks & Other Destinations Proximity” definition.
• Sustainability/Connectivity Criteria: Rename “Sustainability” to “Connectivity” and award ten points for being within one-quarter mile of a trail or low-stress facility, raising the section maximum to twenty points.
• Balance Criteria: Subtract five points if five or more regularly used parking spaces are removed, and subtract fifteen points if a car lane is eliminated for ten percent or more of the project length.
• Fairness Criteria: Delete this criterion as it is subjective, unmeasurable, and likely to increase community divisiveness.
• Additional ATP Recommendations: Improve high-injury intersections with cameras, evaluate adaptive right-turn-on-red technology, conduct baseline bike counts, and partner with multiple providers for routine bike education.
On November 4, 2025, the City Council provided the following feedback to staff through the following motion, during which Vice Mayor Moore made a friendly amendment to add grant funding (Mayor Chao and Councilmember Wang accepted the friendly amendment).
• Drop “Public Input” from ranking criteria since it’s not objective and unreliable. • Remove Fairness as a ranking criterion, as the CIP adoption process will address that. • Add “Cost-efficiency (user impact)” to ranking criteria - low cost, high impact projects should have high priority; and grant funding.
• Add impact to vehicular traffic to arterial streets as a ranking criterion to subtract points. • Add and prioritize technology solutions such as sensor-driven pedestrian and bicyclist detection
o Safe driving technology – speed feedback signs, red light cameras • Need input from drivers on dangerous points.
• School crossing - needs traffic management too, in addition to bike and ped infrastructure.
• Need data:
o Longer trip data from cell phone data, in addition to short trip data o Project list generated
o Data for De Anza Buffered Bike Lane collected so far.
o Hopper data
o TDM data from Apple
Staff addressed the comments specifically related to the draft prioritization criteria by:
• Modifying the scoring for the HIN and High Injury Intersections (HII) to give greater consideration to projects along the HIN/HII or locations in close proximity. • Modifying School Proximity scoring so that Suggested Routes to School is the chosen metric, rather than a distance-based proximity score for schools. This is more precise and appropriate, as it specifically addresses safety on known walking and biking routes to school.
• Adding senior facilities to the Destinations proximity for scoring. • Creating a new project category for transportation technology. • Removing the Fairness criterion so that all metrics are based on objective data. • Adding additional negative scoring for projects that impact Cupertino arterials. • Adding cost effectiveness as a scoring criterion.
The revised criteria tables are included in Attachment B, and the draft scored project list is in Attachment C. These prioritization results are undergoing QA/QC with the City of Cupertino and are intended as draft results to inform discussion with the City Council.
Staff addressed general comments on the ATP by creating a new project category for technology, developing two policies to apply to the new ATP network recommendations during project delivery, and making minor revisions to the program and policy recommendations (Attachment D). These changes include:
• The creation of a new project category for transportation technology, so that technology solutions are grouped into corridors and equally ranked against traditional network recommendations, not just listed as policy and program recommendations. This new project category is titled Transportation Technology Corridors. • A Project Impact Assessment Memo, which lays out the approach for comprehensively assessing project impacts and a path for project delivery when the full extent of parking or roadway impacts is discovered during design.
• A Project Effectiveness Memo, which describes how the City can better evaluate long- term project effectiveness.
• Minor edits to the program and policy recommendations to better reflect the character of Cupertino and address comments received during public hearings.
The first major revision to the ATP following the last Planning Commission review in September was the addition of a new project category, Transportation Technology Corridors.
This new category addresses the community’s desire and the Council's direction to prioritize technology.
To achieve this, transportation technologies were added to the ATP network recommendations as standalone corridor projects rather than as programmatic elements as previously identified.
Staff began by reviewing Typology C intersection recommendations (intersection signal and control changes) located at Cupertino-owned signalized intersections and evaluated their overlap with the Vision Zero HIN. Following this exercise, staff analyzed collision data to identify corridors with higher collision rates where “unsafe speed” is listed as the primary collision factor, or where collisions occurred due to traffic signal or sign violations. Lastly, corridors and the intersections along them were screened for implementation feasibility to determine appropriate Technology Corridors. This process helped staff select five corridors that would benefit most from transportation technologies, based on collision history and the City’s ability to control and implement different technologies. These corridors are:
• De Anza Blvd: From Homestead Rd to Prospect Rd
• Stevens Creek Blvd: From Foothill Blvd to Wolfe Rd
• Homestead Rd: From De Anza Blvd to Tantau Ave
• Wolfe/ Miller Rd: From Homestead Rd to Calle de Barcelona • Stelling Rd: From I-280 to Rainbow Dr
Technology solutions in this project category could include red-light cameras, speed- enforcement cameras (when legally permissible), adaptive detection for vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists, and audible pedestrian detection. Transportation Technology Corridor projects will be treated the same as traditional network recommendations, and their scores will be normalized against bicycle, pedestrian intersection, and sidewalk projects. Technology Corridors will be ranked in the final project list alongside all other project types.
The next notable change is the addition of two new policy documents to be presented to Council for consideration. These documents aim to address two commonly heard themes from the community, Commissions, and Council related to the need to better consider project tradeoffs before construction and to collect more data on ridership resulting from bicycle improvement projects. These two memos (Attachments E and F) describe the approach that staff will follow for new ATP network recommendations.
For evaluating project impacts, the Project Impact Evaluation Memo (Attachment E) states that following the Council-approved initiation of any new ATP project, and when parking or traffic impacts are identified during the preliminary engineering (30% design) phase, staff will return to the City Council to present the 30% design, identified impacts, and potential trade-offs. At that meeting, the Council will determine whether the project should undergo a detailed impact analysis tailored to its specific impacts. This level of analysis requires a degree of design detail that is available only once the 30% design phase has been completed.
A 30% level of design is necessary to evaluate traffic and parking impacts with technical accuracy because traffic analysis tools, such as Synchro, TransCAD, Cube, or Inrix-based models, require defined lane assignments, turn pockets, signal phasing, parking layouts, and other project features to produce meaningful estimates of delay, queues, diversion patterns, and parking utilization. Additionally, tying the analysis to the identification of parking or traffic impacts at 30% ensures that funding is focused on projects that clearly reveal meaningful operational or parking impacts, rather than expending significant resources on every concept in the ATP, regardless of its risk profile. A description of the potential scope and cost estimates for that work is included in Attachment 4.
The second policy memo (Attachment F) describes the process by which the City will use data to measure the success of new network recommendations in the ATP. This approach exclusively applies to Class II (striped bicycle lane), Class IIB (buffered bicycle lane), and Class IV (protected bicycle lane) bicycle facilities. The goal of this approach is to ensure that transportation projects identified in the ATP and completed through the City’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) are successful in furthering the City’s stated goals.
The ATP supports two City policy priorities. These are traffic safety (Vision Zero Action Plan) and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Climate Action Plan). The City’s Vision Zero Action Plan calls for eliminating serious and fatal collisions by 2040, and the Climate Action Plan seeks to reduce vehicle trips and their associated emissions in part by shifting short driving trips to walking, biking, and transit.
To demonstrate progress toward these goals, staff must track the number of people using new facilities and the safety of those facilities over time. This proposed evaluation approach will allow the City to answer basic but important questions, such as whether these projects encourage the use of active transportation modes, whether collision rates are decreasing even as ridership increases, and, potentially, which types of improvements deliver the greatest benefits.
Historically, due to the costly nature of this work, city staff has relied on occasional spot counts or project-specific traffic studies, which provide only short snapshots of bicycle and pedestrian volumes. To fully measure the effect of new ATP projects, staff proposes establishing an approach that combines a one-time citywide baseline count effort along with project-specific before-and-after counts for certain bikeway projects. This effort will require the purchase or lease of bike-ped counting equipment and, potentially, the associated analytics software, so bicycle and pedestrian activity can be measured in a repeatable way.
Staff recommends that the first action of the ATP should be to conduct a comprehensive snapshot baseline bicycle and pedestrian count at ATP priority project locations. This initial effort would record how many people are currently biking (and walking, where feasible).
Following completion of the baseline count, for individual bikeway projects approved by the Council, staff proposes a before-and-after evaluation approach for Class II, Class IIB, and Class IV bikeways.
Upon Council approval of project initiation, staff would begin a pre-construction data collection period at the project site. This establishes a clear pre-project picture of both ridership and safety.
After the project is constructed, staff would then repeat this process for post-construction. With these two datasets, staff can calculate changes in average daily and peak-period bicycle volumes, as well as changes in collision rates. The key metric will not just be the number of collisions, but collisions relative to the number of bicyclists or pedestrians. A successful project would be one in which more people use the facility while the collision rate per bicyclist or pedestrian remains the same or decreases. This will be referred to as the Safety Plus Mode Shift (SPMS) rate, which aligns with Vision Zero and Climate Action Plan objectives.
These new policies are intended to improve transparency and accountability around new active transportation projects. It also provides Council with a way to compare projects and project types, allows designs to be refined based on what works best in practice, and creates a feedback loop between adopted policy goals and real-world outcomes. By committing to these approaches, the City can signal that success is defined not only by miles of bikeway delivered, but by thoughtful design and quantifiable improvements in safety and mode shift toward sustainable transportation.
Next steps for the ATP will include preparing a draft report for public review in the spring.
After the public review period, staff will incorporate any needed revisions and bring the Draft Plan to the City Council for adoption in late June or early July.
Sustainability Impact
The Cupertino ATP will have positive sustainability impacts because the Plan will develop infrastructure improvement recommendations that increase safety and accessibility for all non- motorized roadway users. Additionally, the ATP will include mode shift strategies to promote walking and bicycling to reduce personal automobile dependency, which will reduce local greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. Overall, the ATP will help create a healthier, more sustainable community. The development and implementation of an Active Transportation Plan is a Transportation Measure (TR-1) in the City of Cupertino’s Climate Action Plan (2022).
• Measure TR-1: Develop and implement an Active Transportation Plan to achieve 15 percent of active transportation mode share by 2030 and 23 percent by 2040 Fiscal Impact
The project is fully funded through the City's TDA3 direct allocation.
City Work Program (CWP) Item/Description
Yes, FY 24-25
Active Transportation Plan: This is a consolidation of existing and new transportation efforts that aim to further the goals outlined in the City’s Vision Zero Initiative, including:
18.1 Review and update bike plan
18.2 Review and update pedestrian plan
18.3 Review current Complete Streets Policy and propose adjustments to create a better interface between all modes of transportation
Council Goal:
Transportation
California Environmental Quality Act
The project is not subject to CEQA.
_____________________________________
Prepared by: Matthew Schroeder, Senior Transportation Planner Reviewed by: Chad Mosley, Public Works Director
David Stillman, Transportation Manager
Approved for Submission by: Tina Kapoor, City Manager
Attachments:
A – November 04, 2025, City Council Staff Report
B – Revised Project Prioritization Criteria
C – Draft Prioritized Project List
D – Revised Program and Policy Recommendations
E – Draft Project Impact Evaluation Guidelines
F – Draft Project Effectiveness Guidelines