Biking on Castro

[lil....@yahoo.com]

Been thinking about my biking on Castro

I know it's an infraction - MVCC 19.51

The view's just so much nicer than side streets

And farther than I want to walk.

All the time it's been illegal

Only one said anything

Cop on a bullhorn 50 feet down Villa

Didn't even get out of car

Everyone all WTF

So I walked my bike

Popo rolled on

Got back on my bike

Biking on Castro

[Bruce England]

Were your riding on the sidewalk or in the pedestrian mall area? Otherwise, I don't know what the restriction would be.

Cheers,
Bruce 

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[Li Zhang]

Hi Chloe and everyone,

Thanks for sharing your experience. I know MVCC 19.51 prohibits riding bikes in the pedestrian-mall portion of Castro Street, and personally I try to avoid biking there because it’s such a high-foot-traffic area. It can feel unsafe for people walking, especially during busy times.

I’m curious — is there a reason the parallel streets (like Hope, Bryant, or Villa) don’t work for your trip? They’re usually quieter, safer, and only a block away from Castro. I often use those routes when traveling through downtown, and they still provide good access without entering the pedestrian-only zone.

Not trying to judge at all — just genuinely interested in why Castro feels necessary versus the nearby alternatives, since this comes up frequently in conversations about downtown mobility.

Best,
Li

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[April Webster]

Jumping in with a quick perspective from a street-design and user-experience lens.

On paper, “just use Hope or Bryant” sounds straightforward. In practice, though, those streets are objectively less safe for people bicycling due to their design: angled parking, frequent driveways, and higher driver–bicyclist conflict points. They also feel very different from Castro for those who prefer low-stress routes and don’t feel comfortable negotiating space with drivers.

Hope has angled parking where drivers back out with very limited visibility of someone approaching on a bike, creating predictable and unavoidable conflict points. It also has several parking-lot driveways that introduce additional conflict points. And because many people biking don’t feel comfortable taking the full lane, they often ride too close to the parked cars, making them harder for reversing drivers to see.

Villa doesn’t have angled parking, but it carries a fair amount of car traffic and has numerous driveways. There are no clear sharrows signaling that people biking are entitled to take the lane, so drivers often expect them to stay far right. When it’s busy, some drivers can be impatient or aggressive, which leads many people biking to ride closer to parallel-parked cars and puts them in the door zone.

Castro, by contrast, has no cars at all, so none of those conflict points exist: no backing movements, no turning movements, no driveways, and no lane-positioning ambiguity. For people who prioritize comfort and lower risk streets, that can make a big difference.

For anyone interested in best practices for street design, the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide covers angled parking, driveway density, conflict points, low-stress network criteria, etc.

Cheers,

April

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[lil....@yahoo.com]

Than you, April. Everything she said, and also the basic notion of a safe and sane policy. 

I have been biking past those multi lingual signs since they were first up. (The fact they are multilingual so that skaters wo/English know to back off is its own complexity of an accommodation becoming belittling, though that's a separate issue).

It is just safer and nicer to ride straight down Castro when it's not busy. Yet, it is an explicit MVCC (not state, etc - we chose and council can reverse this) infraction. There is even a bilingual sign (Chinese first on the one by caltrain, those traveling scofflaws). Two per block, alternating to Spanish, etc. but never Vietnamese even by the Viet places.

At this point, it's a stunning level of detail in a not-even law with cyclists highlighted in extra big pic and letters. I had never experienced a complaint until the aforementioned MVPD called out at me to get off my bike on the while on Castro middle of the street at 2pm on a tuesday approaching Villa northbound. She was 50 ft east and all of us pedestrians alike were wondering about the agitation until I realized, oh she's talking about me. So, I got off my bike. She drove on by.

At this point, it was pretty much an act of civil disobedience to keep pedaling so I proceeded to do so.

More agnostic on ebike rights though. They are the pit bulls of cycling. Sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with the breed - de facto though, those folks need more training to chill out and slow down.

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[Li Zhang]

Thank you both for the prospectives,.

[Oculus Lights]

Rarely comment here.  Hasn't been mentioned yet:
An underlying basis for the the no bikes on Castro rule is to cover the city for liability if a bonehead bicyclist causes injury or property damage to themself or others.  This was one of lots of little aspects that had to go into have the pedestrian mall on Castro get approved.
Rate of ebike acceleration was the subject of many side discussions back at Interbike 2018 which had a major ebike exhibition and test ride area.
Some ebicyclists are in the "more horsepower than brains" category.  Max speed limiters are easy and inexpensive to design in.  However power regulation to moderate acceleration to that top speed is both more costly and restricts the marketing appeal if that "Whee" feeling is lessened in squeezing on the electric power boost that helps sell many ebikes.

[Chris Parry]

Re: legal liability, California has a “trail immunity” statute (Cal. Govt. Code Section 831.4) that courts have construed very, very broadly to immunize state and local governments from liability claims.   I’ve researched the caselaw in this area in the past.  If anyone wants a quick overview of the issue, this web site has a pretty good description:  https://cjpia.org/risk-management/reclaim/trail-immunity/

City of MV had its reasons for closing Castro to bikes.  There was a lot of bike advocacy asking them to reconsider, but City didn’t budge.  But if legal liability were the City’s chief concern, they could have gone down the path of making that area look more like a designated trail (whether it is open to peds, bikes, or both).

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 1, 2025, at 2:41 PM, Oculus Lights <ba...@barrybeams.com> wrote:

Rarely comment here.  Hasn't been mentioned yet:

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[Daniel Hulse]

The street was closed to bikes due to observation that " bicyclists riding too fast, weaving through pedestrians and tables, and, in one instance, popping wheelies" and a dedicated bike lane was not recommended  to be added at the time because it would limit social distancing during the pandemic.

You can see the memo here: https://mountainview.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4621170&GUID=C0E4CE4E-5F66-4B07-83F4-6EB1AFAD6E86&Options=&Search= 

Well, social distancing policies have long been over and I personally think there are better ways to enforce appropriate and safe cycling behavior than to just blanket-ban bikes. Castro has incredible value as a transportation corridor--being the most direct route from the Caltrain station and Moffett Boulevard crossing to California St and Across ECR--and there are many times during the day when it is not crowded and much safer than the alternatives. It is not uncommon to see people cutting through without an issue. The alternatives I take usually involve really heavy and uncomfortable interaction with cars who often don't understand how stop signs work.

There will be some opportunities for us to advocate for bikes on Castro in the future when the pedestrian mall is improved to its "final state". Personally, I think we should advocate for a dedicated path with features designed to slow bikes down, using California Avenue in Palo Alto as a working example.

P.S. At some point around 2022-ish the city did some engagement with cyclists on designing "alternative routes" to Castro and the universal preference in the focus group audience was that opening Castro to bikes would be better than any of those alternatives. It's unclear where that effort went.