During a city council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 2, Burlingame’s Vision Zero — a recently implemented initiative to bring the number of serious injuries on local roadways down to zero — presented its progress in identifying current issues and engaging with the community. While far from a new issue in Burlingame, the organization, which began work in the spring of 2025, represents a next step in the city’s movement toward safer streets.
“You could argue that Burlingame has had as many pedestrian deaths proportionally as some of the most dangerous cities in the country, and for a city that prides itself on a walkable downtown and a very family-friendly community, I think a lot of people find that unacceptable,” said Mike Swire, chair of San Mateo County’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
At the meeting, Vision Zero said they identified four areas with higher-than-average collision rates: arterial roadways, school zones, downtown commercial areas, and signalized intersections. They also created a heatmap using community input, highlighting hotspots along streets such as El Camino Real and Carolan Avenue and intersections like the Broadway-Caltrain crossing.
“Sometimes it’s pretty hectic, especially [on] Broadway, the intersection and railroads. There’s a lot of people that don’t know that you’re supposed to just go, and that’s caused a lot of trouble,” senior Adrian Su said.
Vision Zero’s efforts to track dangerous corridors found widespread community involvement, with over 650 submissions from 250 residents, according to their presentation during the meeting. Likewise, after the fatal crash in August, Swire set up an Action Network portal, where 464 community members have submitted messages to the city council pushing for change as of Thursday, Sept. 18.
To address these issues, Burlingame has in the past employed strategies according to what Jason Orloff, Burlingame Police Department Traffic Sergeant, calls the three Es: education, enforcement, and engineering. Engineering projects are the most major and time-consuming; they have included traffic calming measures, roadway painting, and roadway diets, including the addition of a bike lane and on-street parking along Carolan Avenue in 2023.
“Measures are constantly being looked at as to how to implement traffic calming roadway diets, slowing people down, making the roadway more safe for vulnerable users,” Orloff said.
In 2024, California passed daylighting laws that prohibit cars from parking within 20 feet of intersections to improve driver visibility. While the rule reduces street parking, daylighting has been shown to lower pedestrian accidents in places like San Francisco. According to Swire, a parking space along Donnelly Avenue was removed after the crash in August, potentially to improve driver visibility.
“The positive news is, I’ve heard that the city has removed that parking spot,” Swire said. “I don’t know if they’ve officially claimed it was related to [the crash], but I think that’s a very positive step, because that’s, in my opinion, unsafe regardless of whether it contributed in this case.”
In the past, a lack of neighborhood-wide support has stalled pedestrian safety efforts, according to Councilmember Donna Colson.
“Sometimes neighbors do not want to see their neighborhood change,” Colson said. “They don’t like seeing things like arrows get painted on, they may not like to lose parking in their neighborhood or their city if we’re trying to make something a little more safe.”
In April 2025, the city discussed implementing traffic-calming measures and a bike lane near Franklin Elementary School, about three weeks after a car struck and killed a 61-year-old woman crossing Trousdale Drive. In the end, the city decided not to install the Trousdale bike lane to maintain traffic flow and space for emergency vehicles, but made improvements on Murchison Drive and Davis Drive.
“The fact that they ultimately refused to build the bike lane and slow the street on Trousdale, right in front of Franklin Elementary, was again prioritizing driver convenience over the safety of the kids that walk and bike to school,” Swire said.
According to Orloff, changing road layout often involves trade-offs, making infrastructure projects a “balancing act.” He cited the Carolan bike lane, which increased biker safety but led to unsafe driver behavior in some cases.
“It helps tremendously for its design purpose, which is bike safety, vulnerable roadway user safety. Now, because of that, one lane traffic backs up… so people who are either unaware or don’t care drive into the bike lane and go around,” Orloff said. “Motorists will travel across the wheel line into oncoming traffic to get to where they need to go.”
As a result, expanding education and traffic enforcement is also important to increasing pedestrian safety, according to Orloff.
“I’ve seen as a result of the fatal collision on Donnelly from a few weeks ago — the horrific, unfortunate collision that occurred — that people have called for an increase in the size of Burlingame Police Department’s traffic division, or traffic officers out there making enforcement stops and educating the public and acting,” Orloff said. “As a deterrent, that can have an impact.”
As Vision Zero nears a finalized action plan — expected in winter 2025-26, according to the city’s timeline — Swire said Burlingame should prioritize street safety over driver convenience.
“We need our elected officials to do the right thing, to spend more money on safer streets, to approve projects when they come before them,” Swire said. “City of Helsinki — it’s probably a couple million people, zero traffic deaths, no pedestrians, no bikes, no cars. That is a goal that is achievable.”
