Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/5/2021 Item Public Comment, SchmidtOctober 4, 2021 Re: Did you know the Anholm Bikeway will increase vehicular speed? Dear Council Members, When the Anholm Bikeway is built on Chorro and Broad, vehicular speeds in bikeway blocks will increase. This will make these blocks less safe for cyclists, pedestrians and vehicles, and will diminish residents' quality of life. It does the opposite of what the project purports to accomplish — improve safety and neighborhood quality. Every constituency is a loser. It's LOSE/LOSE/LOSE/LOSE. This is, of course, yet another reason the Council should back off from completing this seriously flawed $3 million project, redesign, and do it right this time. The principle of street parking as a friction agent that reduces traffic speed is well -understood in city planning circles. It works because speed is partly governed by perception. Cars parked close to traffic lanes on a narrow street, like Broad or Chorro, reduce the perceived effective width of the traffic lane and cause drivers to be more cautious, i.e., to slow down. Those same streets, with no parking, have substantially higher vehicular speeds — and we know this from the historical evolution of these streets, not from theory. With the bikeways, parking friction disappears in the southbound direction on both streets. The bikeway becomes open street surface. From the driver's vantage point, suddenly there's a wide street with no friction. That means speed goes up since it seems to be safe to increase it. The fact that at any given moment there's unlikely even to be a cyclist on the bikeway simply reinforces the feeling of greater openness.' This is not hypothetical. Today we have an actual example on Broad. When the Village was expanded, the fire department demanded red curb the length of the property. So in the southbound lane of the 0-100 block, we see significantly increased traffic speeds where parking friction doesn't exist. Cars notably accelerate between speed humps. When they get to where on - street parking begins, they slow, and do not accelerate markedly between speed humps. In this "slow" zone the city plans to remove parking, transforming it too into a "fast" zone. Now here's my main point: Never in discussion of alternatives for the bikeway did staff so much as mention the speed effects of parking removal. Why? I have a few thoughts on that below, but "Why?" also applies to why the Council puts up with advocacy presentations from staff when they're paid by the public to provide for the public interest, and doing so demands a level of objective honesty lacking in just about every staff report you receive. As a result, Council decisions frequently don't optimize public good. 1 Staff alleges 300 bicycles per day use this route. That computes to an average of less than 13 per hour, which means this expensive embodied -energy -guzzling facility is a white elephant from the git-go. But 300 bikes per day is fantasy. On Broad there are maybe 2 dozen on a typical day. "Why?" in other words reflects on why the Council puts up with and expects so little open-minded thoughtfulness from our very well paid and clearly intelligent staff. I hope you will think about that. Now, a few thoughts about why staff might have advanced an overly complicated bikeway scheme that's clearly harmful to residents and serves cyclists poorly, while not highlighting its problems like vehicular speed increase. 1. Ignorance. It's possible engineering staff don't know about the effects of parking friction on speed. After all, they usually distinguish themselves by their proficiency with individual quantifiable specifications more than with wholistic thinking. But if this is the case, why then no pushback from higher up in staff? The City Manager, after all, is a planner. 2. Enthusiasm -induced blindness to defects. This is a learn -by -doing project.Z That has been clear from the beginning with the initial one of this, two of that seemingly random selection of textbook features, whether they made sense where proposed or otherwise. In undergrad learn -by -doing design studios, which I supervised for decades, it is often the case that only the brilliance of one's accomplishment is seen, its flaws remaining invisible. 3. Advocacy reporting. We're not talking journalism, we're talking staff reports, and staff lobbying of decision -makers. Staff reports today lack pretext of objectivity or neutrality. Instead they are one-sided advocacies, and a studied effort is made to omit anything — like negative impacts to the public or to city policies — that might persuade decision -makers to have second thoughts or pursue alternatives not advocated by staff. This "imperial staff" approach does not help the Council or others make good decisions. We have a template from our city's past practices for how staff reports could be lots better, and how staff can offer objective guidance instead of advocacy. When I was on the Planning Commission (8 years), every staff report would describe a project, then analyze it by, among other things, citing how it fits existing city policy and how it fails to fit existing policy. The reports would recite pro- and con-, and would offer meaningful guidance for possible alternatives. This kept staff honest, was helpful to decision -makers, and usually led to making sound decisions. Today staff openness is a mere public relations slogan ("open government!") not a reality. And so we have grotesque public scenes like after a planner bent over backwards Z 1 put this question to the former transportation engineer: Do you and staff have any experience designing and implementing a cycle track project of this magnitude and complexity? Instead of answering yes or no, he referred to state "standards' (i.e., specifications) and said "experience with cycle tracks is through our continued review and research of the State's development of these standards." In other words, no experience, just textbook guidance. When I sought clarification of this comment that clearly meant "no," just to leave no opening by which he could turn around and accuse me of being a liar, he responded "Given that we have reason to believe that there is a litigation threat related to this project, staff will not be answering any further questions . . " (So what's he trying to hide?) To which my lawyer friend added: "Since there's no statute of limitations on many issues of concern, that means they'll never answer your questions." This is typical of how residents have been dismissed and abused throughout this entire project. Is the Council proud of this? (Engineer quotes from email correspondence.) to advocate for the Buena Vista house that should have been rejected out -of -hand at the staff level, the victorious developer put his arm around "my planner" and went gooshy. This is not how staff should function in a well -governed city. Staff's role should be to strengthen, not suppress, Council's critical interrogation of proposed projects. Lack of thoughtful critique by Council, facilitated by advocacy reports full of already refuted factual misrepresentations, was how the Anholm project came to be. 4. Conflict of interest. From the beginning of public involvement, it was clear planning for Anholm was one-sided and carefully controlled to keep it that way. BikeSLO people got whatever they wanted, residents got ignored or dismissed. What was unfolding was blatantly unfair. Then we discovered the city's bike planner is a member and "financial contributor" of BikeSLO. This is a classic two -masters conflict of interest (which master does he serve, his affinity group or the public?), which no well-run city should tolerate.' The city's relationships with BikeSLO are riddled with conflict of interest: the provision of office space to a group that's rewarded with its own Council advisory committee is just the beginning. In effect, the city is subsidizing a lobbying organization, making it a city subsidiary, while pretending mutual independence.' No wonder the Anholm bikeway is such a mess! I hope this provides Council members with food for thought. Sincerely, Richard Schmidt a Let's not be too hard on this lowly bike planner when conflict of interest is modeled at the top of the city hierarchy. When the mayor and city manager serve on a Chamber of Commerce committee drawing up the Chamber's "economic vision," then bring that document to the Council for consideration and possible incorporation into city policy, one can understand that lower -level employees might think conflicts are OK. This city hierarchy is apparently insensitive to the entire concept of conflicts of interest. 4 The physical presence of BikeSLO in city office space is obvious, the details of the arrangement are opaque. Trying to sort through the city's online public records (which are a disorderly mess), I was able only to find the space is provided at an unknown bargain rate in return for "services," which appeared to be picking up garbage. So I was tickled when the Fair Political Practices Commission found similar documentary obscurity, concluding they had no idea what the rent actually is but that it appeared it could be as little as $1 per year. ' Members of the public might legitimately ask why does this "private" group merit such favoritism? For example, the city doesn't offer Residents for Quality Neighborhoods essentially free office space, its own advisory body and a free -ride into city policy-making even though that organization offers significant "services" for neighborhood wellness, which in any decent city should be a top priority.