Tasman Drive: Beauty, Destruction, and Hope
- Ari Feinsmith
- Jan 11
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 9
I grew up in Casa De Amigos. When I was little, I asked my parents for a bicycle basket for my birthday. I wanted to help my parents by biking to the grocery store and bringing home food. I was too young to understand that biking on Tasman was insanely dangerous. My parents never got me the bike basket.
Today Tasman Dr has no bicycle facilities and no continuous sidewalk, trapping many residents like myself. How did we get here?
I’ve dug through hundreds of pages of old reports about Tasman Dr. Of all the streets in Sunnyvale, this street has the most unique history. It is a story of beauty, destruction, and hope. For brevity, I'll focus on the segment of Tasman Drive between Fair Oaks Avenue and Lawrence Expressway.
A Dusty Farm Road
Tasman Drive started as a dusty farm road in the late 19th or early 20th century. In 1969, the road was paved with 4 car through lanes and a center turn lane. The City’s largest 2 mobile home parks, Casa de Amigos and Plaza del Rey, were built along Tasman between 1969 and 1976. The street had painted bike lanes on both sides of the street. Sidewalks were lacking, so residents would frequently walk in the bike lane. While this wasn’t ideal, Tasman Drive had relatively little traffic, making it a fairly stress-free experience. Residents could enjoy the beautiful trees, which had developed into a lovely green canopy.
Light Rail Wreaks Havoc
Everything changed on Tasman Dr when the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) installed light rail tracks in the late 1990s. First, the road was widened, and many of the well-established trees were cut down. Residents were devastated to see the sliced up trunks lying on the side of the road like corpses.
But it got worse. There was not enough space to keep the 4 car lanes and the bike lanes. Unfortunately, Sunnyvale and VTA staff would not consider a road diet. The Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) pushed back, advocating for a road diet to preserve the bike lanes. In a letter to the Santa Clara County Board Supervisors in 1992, the president of SVBC Bill Michel explained that a road diet would not cause car congestion:
"This section of Tasman handles 475 cars in the peak commute hourly period one way and 180 to 300 in the other direction .... The 24 hour vehicle count figures are 8,900 westbound and 5900 eastbound. These numbers, ... less than 10,000 per day, do not support the retention of the extra traffic lane in both directions. As a minimum the traffic lane in the eastbound direction must be eliminated to satisfy the requirements of the [Light Rail Transit] corridor design." -- Bill Michel, Aug 18, 1992
The maximum capacity of a lane is 900 vehicles/hour. A single lane in each direction could have easily handled the maximum peak commute with capacity to spare. Michel warned the Santa Clara County Board Supervisors "[Sunnyvale] has a track record of overbuilding roadway capacity." Yet VTA and Sunnyvale staff doubled down. They justified keeping the 4 lanes using questionable traffic modeling that claimed existing traffic would triple. They anticipated a tsunami of traffic from the future I-880/Tasman Drive Interchange in Milpitas 6 miles away. Their predictions were greatly exaggerated from reality. Furthermore, the model assumed no trips would switch from vehicles to light rail and ignored induced demand. Lo and behold, the predicted traffic never materialized.
Against the wishes of many residents, VTA and Sunnyvale kept the 4 car lanes and removed the bike lanes. Eliminating the bike lanes violated the Regional Transportation Plan, the Clean Air Plan, the Congestion Management Plan, MTC resolution 2270, and Caltrans Design standards. Furthermore, they did not build continuous sidewalks. Residents soon found themselves trapped in their own neighborhoods. Walking on Tasman Drive meant walking in the tiny gutter next to car traffic traveling at over 45 mph. Blind curves and poor lighting could make pedestrians nearly invisible to drivers. Cyclists felt endangered for the same reasons. The only alternative path was the John Christian Greenbelt, which adds over a mile to the trip. It was prohibitively too far, especially for children and the elderly. As a result, residents were forced to drive.
A Massive Equity Problem
This was a massive equity problem. The mobile home parks had disproportionately high numbers of low income and elderly individuals who could not drive. Instead of prioritizing the needs of Sunnyvale residents, the traffic engineers prioritized accommodating commuters, many of whom commuted to high-paying jobs in Moffett Park.
As the surrounding area developed in the early 2000s, the mobile home park residents were left behind, unable to safely walk or bike to the new parks and businesses opening around them. But that didn't stop some from trying anyway. This recently resulted in disaster.
A grandmother and her granddaughter were hit by a car while crossing Tasman Dr mid-block outside the West Entrance to Casa De Amigos. The grandmother died from the collision. This tragedy could have been avoided. Had there been safe pedestrian facilities on the entire street, they could have walked to an intersection and used the crosswalk.
Pandemic Paves the Way for Temporary Walk and Bike Pathway
As the years went on, traffic got worse on Tasman. Moffett Park was developing rapidly, and the high-tech commuters used Tasman as a shortcut more and more.
But in 2020, the pandemic caused traffic on Tasman to plummet. I recognized we had a unique opportunity. I suggested to Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein that we convert the outermost lanes on Tasman into walking and biking pathways. He was open to the idea. So I started a grassroots lobbying campaign. I talked to my neighbors, created a website, and hung up flyers. I got 30 of my neighbors to send emails to the city council asking for the pathways. In June of 2020, the City Council voted to install a temporary pathway on the south side of Tasman Drive between Tasman Court and Vienna Drive. This pathway closed the sidewalk gap on the South side. It was a major success, and it is still here today. Dozens of people walk and bike on it daily. I see people walking their dogs, walking to Grocery Outlet, and walking their babies in strollers. I see teens biking on it and commuters cycling on it. The temporary pathway was so successful that its original lifetime of 10 months was extended to over four years by the City Council.
Hope for Permanent Walk and Bike Pathways
As great as the temporary pathway is, a long term solution that covers the entire corridor is needed. Sunnyvale is currently studying installing permanent safe walking and biking facilities on Tasman Drive between Fair Oaks and Lawrence. The proposed solutions, if implemented, will finally right a historic wrong. Residents of all ages and abilities will be able to safely walk and bike out of their neighborhoods, granting access to a variety of local destinations. More trees may be planted too.
But these ideas are only in the study phase. In a few months, Council will be deciding whether to put permanent walking and biking facilities on Tasman, and if so, what they will look like. There is opposition to change and making this happen will be a major political lift. Sunnyvale Safe Streets is leading a grassroots effort. And this is where you, dear reader, come in.
Please take a minute to sign our petition and write an email to Sunnyvale City Council in support of walking and biking facilities on Tasman. Further details and calls to action will be published in upcoming Sunnyvale Safe Streets newsletters, so make sure you sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of this page. Your advocacy is invaluable.
About the Author
Ari Feinsmith is a lifetime resident of Casa de Amigos Mobile Home Park and the former lead of Bike Sunnyvale. He is a certified Engineer In Training and he is currently at UC Davis studying transportation engineering.
