Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/19/2022 Item 7a, Wait Delgado, Adriana Daniel Wait <wait.dan.j@gmail.com> Sent:Saturday, July To:E-mail Council Website Cc:clovejoy@thetribunenews.com; Fukushima, Adam; Rebecca Davies; Molly@slochamber.org; pio@slocog.org Subject:Please reconsider cycling infrastructure funding This message is from an External Source. Use caution when deciding to open attachments, click links, or respond. Dear council members, Apologies in advance for the length of this message; this topic is important to me, and I hope it's important to you as well; important enough to make you rethink how you approach spending on cycling infrastructure in SLO. Stopping at a bike shop on my way home the other night I met a family whose SLO HS student was visibly ecstatic about getting a bike so they could ride to school on their own. I remember that joy and a new sense of freedom, and while I was happy for them I was annoyed that the conversation included something along the lines of "and it's safer now there's that protected bike lane on Marsh..." Because I use the "protected" lane on South Higuera on my commute, and I felt like I needed to warn the family, but I couldn't crush their spirits. My experience with these cycling improvements around town is that these are anything but improvements, and worry that people feel like they may be safer and wind up feeling otherwise only after something goes wrong. Take S. Higuera; at least once a week, frequently twice, sometimes three times there are garbage cans left in the protected lane. With a curb on either side it's an adventure for me to cycle through w/o hitting the curb or the can, but I've got 30+ years of experience riding. The two other cycling commuters I regularly see take different approaches; one rides in the car lane skipping the entire protected lane, the other hops onto the sidewalk at speed and slaloms along. There's also the cyclist who salmons in the lane against traffic, but I'm not really counting them as a commuter. That's not also not counting the times the garbage truck is parked blocking the lane to get to the trash they're collecting, or the times the delivery trucks are moving back and forth across that lane, or the times people leaving their houses or cars walk directly across the lane w/o looking, because the can't seem to figure out there's traffic in that lane. And then at the intersection at Marsh, there's frequently a large vehicle parking the last spot on the protected lane, so I can't see cars approaching from behind (or they me) as they move to the green right arrow to the freeway on-ramp and I move left to the red light for the continuing traffic. And as far as I can tell there's either no sensor or no working sensor in the bike lane at the intersection, so I have to wait for a car to stop as well to trigger the light. I feel like all of those things would be obvious in advance, but here we are, and I don't know what we gained. I'd guess we've spent what, $50k on that stretch of protected bike lane? More? 1 I've already written Adam about the mess of the eastbound roundabout at Orcutt and Fernwood with the obstacles along the turn onto the "shared bike path" (i.e. sidewalk, which is apparently okay for cyclists to ride on, as opposed to most of the other sidewalks in town). I've already written Rebecca that the scoring People For Bikes uses leans much more on things that are easy to throw money at, as opposed to metrics like how many collisions there are with bikes, or how many people actually ride. While Chole's article has Adam mentioning a goal of mode share, there was no question on what the present number is and how effective these expenditures on cycling infrastructure are in raising that number. I've already written this council about how we need to rethink cycling infrastructure expenditures, and Carlyn's response made it sound like this is all a done deal two years in advance - but why aren't you asking for metrics on before and after impacts as you approve these expenditures? Or is the metric you're using simply "miles of protected lanes" vs "how will this measurably impact either safety or ridership?" Meanwhile, when I was hit from behind last September, I eventually found out there was no report filed (even though I asked SLO PD to respond) so I question the validity of what metrics anyone may of may not be using using to make these decisions. There are so many other things we could and should be doing with our funds. If you're not forced to use the funds on cycling, please, consider funding more services for the less fortunate, or planting trees, or helping SLO PD keep up with all the other things on their list of to-dos, or just general upkeep of the existing infrastructure (like the craters in the northbound bike lane/gutter on S. Higuera between Suburban and Tank Farm, or pretty much all of Palm north of Santa Rosa). If for whatever reason you're forced to spend money on cycling improvements, please take the time to make them effective improvements, rather than simply trying to game the scoring that orgs like People For Bikes uses. If you don't have the right metric, please fund research to get the metric rather than some project hoping that it helps. I know you have a lot on your plates, but please consider at least asking these questions rather than throwing money at ineffective metrics. Thanks, Dan 2