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HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/30/2020 Item 2, Owen Wilbanks, Megan From:Purrington, Teresa Sent:Monday, November 30, 2020 7:40 AM To:Advisory Bodies Subject:FW: Comment on SLO's Active Transportation Plan Attachments:ATPCommentsFromFrankOwen.pdf From: Frank Owen < Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2020 5:59 PM To: E-mail Council Website <emailcouncil@slocity.org> Subject: Comment on SLO's Active Transportation Plan Dear council members, My comment letter is attached. Best wishes, Frank Owen 1 Comments on SLO Active Transportation Plan In my comments I would like to step back and look at the situation overall. I am a California-licensed Mechanical Engineer, PhD, professor at Cal Poly. I am also a life-long bicycle rider and regular bicycle commuter. I have ridden and commuted on my bicycle in numerous areas of the United States, in Germany, in Italy, and most recently in Senegal. The plan as it appears on the city’s website represents a hodge-podge of diverse bicycle paths. We have some great paths, like the one along the railroad from the train station to Orcutt Road. I ride this path regularly and see all sorts of people using it: runners, families walking or riding, and quite a few commuters too. The Bob Jones Trail, from Ontario Road to Avila Beach also is in heavy use. The orphan stretch from Prado Road to Los Osos Valley Road is quite nice, though since it goes from nowhere to nowhere, it sees little use. And that is the problem: the gaps! These stretches are under-utilized because they are not linked together. It seems like the people planning this are focused on details, to the point that they’ve lost sight of a big, overall network. This was made evident to me with the opening of the bicycle path that runs through the new Righetti Ranch development. I rode up this bike path from the south and then got stranded on the northern end, where it should descend and continue along Bullock Lane. See the accompanying photographs. It is obvious from all the bicycle tire tracks that there is a demand for this new section of bikeway to link up with the trail along the railroad at Orcutt Road. Did somebody overlook this link? Why go to the trouble to building a fine, expensive, new bikeway if it’s just going to be another orphan one, like so many that we have around here? Aren’t the people planning these things thinking ahead? Now many people continue north on Bullock illegally, because some planners here didn’t do their job, led these riders north along the new Righetti bike path, and then just abandoned them at Bullock Lane. On the left, the beautiful, new bike path leads up from the southern neighborhoods…and then, on the right, it just strands a rider on the southern end of Bullock Lane. Who forgot about this gap? The same was so on the bike path beside the sewage plant. It went all the way down almost to Los Osos Valley Road, then just ended without a bridge crossing of the creek down there. As such, a dead-end bike path, it became a Mecca for the homeless, who took up residence there, so that when the bridge finally was built, the bikeway was occupied by so many homeless people, that residents were afraid to travel this section of path. It seems to be a pattern with bike paths in SLO. Bits and pieces are built, but they sit for years idle or under-used because they link nothing with nothing. It’s almost as much a network of gaps as it is a network of bike paths. The Bob Jones Trail and the concept of a bike path from city-to-the-sea, where is this concept in the ATP? It should shout from many paragraphs, yet the concept of an overall path of this nature is not so emphasized or evident in the ATP. Has this vision been lost? Indeed, if I had to characterize the current ATP, it has no vision. It is more piecemeal stuff, little patches here and there. The problem, I think, is that this planning has gone on so long, has been passed so many times from one group to another, any overall thinking has been forgotten. I see no descendance of this plan from a former plan that did have vision. I see no thinking about a network, just suggestions about more pieces to build. Going back to a specific point, the Bullock Lane gap, that certainly is not mentioned in the plan, either as a Tier 1, Tier 2, or even Tier 3 project. Yet the gap is glaring for anyone who gets on his bike in the neighborhoods south of Tank Farm Road to head north into the city. And as more and more people take up residence in Righetti Ranch, this glaring gap will have to be filled. Yet it is not even mentioned in the plan. This brings me to have the thought that the people who are responsible for the current ATP maybe do not ride bicycles themselves. Certainly they do not commute from the southern neighborhoods of SLO into the city. Yes, the railroad path is heavily used. But if it connected with the southern neighborhoods, it would become an artery of bicycle traffic from the south into the city, reducing, I think, the number of commuters coming into the city by car. We need to have more global thinking, more vision, more connection to those of us who are on two wheels and who use bicycles everyday to get about the city. This is what is lacking in the current plan and what needs most to be fixed, in my opinion. The gaps, let’s close the gaps! That’s what makes bits and pieces into a network. Best wishes, Frank Owen, P.E., Ph.D.