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Home My WebLink About2/6/2018 Item 12, Schmidt (2) Purrington, Teresa From:Richard Schmidt < Sent:Wednesday, January 31, 2018 11:58 AM To:E-mail Council Website Subject:Agenda Item 12 -- Proposed Facilities Unsafe third viewpoint safety rev.pdf Attachments: Dear Mayor and Council Members, I find it disheartening that our city's efforts to facilitate safe bike travel, a goal I have long supported as both a resident and planner, would degenerate into the inept and dangerous thing before you. After having one of those what-the-heck moments reading the convoluted plan sent to the bike committee, I felt a need to check my visceral reaction that the proposal was not only reactionary, but failed to meet basic engineering and safety standards I was familiar with. In doing a bit of research, I found not only that my intuition was spot on, but that good bike planners say NEVER, NEVER do these sorts of things. Indeed, Davis, supposedly your model, doesn't do these sorts of things because they're very BAD, BAD things to do. I also find it amazing that our local bike lobby is so out of the good bike planning loop they'd endorse anything with the word "bike" on it, even something intelligent and informed bike people would denounce. As one non-local critic put it, “If you're trying to grow cycling in a place which does not already have a high cycling modal share, the infrastructure that you build needs to be better than this.” Finally, the prattle about this improving safety is offensive since any thinking person can see that in fact it will greatly endanger the little kids who are held up as primary beneficiaries. Facts: 1. The plan attempts to apply types of facilities in places they will not work and do not belong. 2. The plan employs practices that are considered dangerous by leading national engineering and planning associations. 3. The plan employs practices the Federal Highway Administration says are "practices to be avoided." 4. The plan is an incoherent mishmash of so many different things, its facilities lack the functional clarity needed to be safe for those who lack the familiarity of those who use them every day. 5. The wrongheadedness of the plan, cycle tracks mid-block but messy intersection movements, is made clear by leaving riders unprotected while forced into awkward cross-traffic intersection moves. Intersections are where 3/4 of bike/vehicle accidents occur, and these facilities create confusion which will promote, not prevent, accidents. 6. The plan's route must be something somebody sitting at a desk chose, as it prioritizes a very minor bike traffic route (Chorro/Mission/Broad/Ramona) and completely ignores the major route through the neighborhood (Chorro to Murray to Cal Poly). Again, as with the facilities choices, this route seems like the result of clever lobbying rather than a real effort to meet a biking need. If you want to understand how bad this plan is, please read my attachment below. A version of the attachment ran in the Tribune also at http://www.sanluisobispo.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article197434604.html Richard Schmidt 1 By Richard Schmidt Why is San Luis Obispo rushing to spend $3 million for 7 blocks of unsafe, dangerous bicycle infrastructure along Broad and Chorro streets north of Highway 101? The city tells cyclists its offering them a Åsafe, convenient, low-stressÆ ride. Viewing SLOs plans against state-of-the art bike planning, my conclusion is the city offers cyclists the promise of safety and comfort without the reality. The ÅBroad/Chorro BikewayÆ is a mishmash of cycle tracks, cycles mixed with vehicles, cycles moving against the flow of traffic, dozens of unmarked intersections, and busy intersections with bikes forced into dangerous diagonal movements. None of this provides safety. Cycle tracks are physically-separated bike lanes on the street. The separations with bollards, painted buffers and in this case curbs. Two-way cycle tracks, with some bikes going opposite the direction of adjacent vehicles and bikes, on Chorro from Lincoln to Mission and on Ramona from Broad to near Palomar, are the plans centerfold. On Broad, the track is southbound only. Northbound bikes remain mixed with traffic. The city confirms bikes mixed with vehicles on Broad are safe, so why build the disruptive southbound cycle track? Tracks are supposed to eliminate interactions with vehicles. These dont. In fact, they create dozens of conflicts that dont currently exist. Thirty-one driveways cross the cycle tracks, each, to quote the City of Davis Bike Plan, an Åunsignalized intersectionÆ dangerous to cyclists. + Davis, Americas biking capital, doesnt do cycle tracks this way. Of 130 miles of Davis bikeways, about 1 mile is cycle track Ã used as short connectors between bikeways and schools, and on a stretch of major arterial without driveways. National engineering associations warn against cycle tracks crossed by driveways. Three ÅdrivewayÆ crossings are actually high-use intersections Ã two entries to the Foothill Plaza Shopping Center on Ramona, and the entrance to the Villages senior complex on Broad. Incredibly, the Villages entry isnt on plans, suggesting the designer is oblivious to this major intersection. Two way cycle tracks are particularly hazardous because motorists arent expecting bikes going against traffic. This is bad at any driveway Ã imagine backing out with poor visibility --, but its disastrous at the shopping centers exit on Ramona, notorious already for drivers looking left for on-coming vehicles and not seeing pedestrians in the crosswalk to their right. This dangerous spot is along the citys ballyhooed Åsafe route to schoolÆ for elementary-school kids. A bike in a track, unlike one on the street, is physically trapped within the track so when danger suddenly appears, theres little chance to evade it. Well-designed on-street tracks, in addition to being driveway-free, are buffered from vehicles by substantial things like a row of parked cars or a planter strip. SLOs will be immediately adjacent to moving traffic, the two separated by a curb. This will be uncomfortable for vehicles and cyclists moving in opposite directions and hardly looks like the Ålow-stressÆ ride the city promises. Its a sure recipe for turning minor mishaps into serious accidents. National engineering organizations, as well as Davis, have enumerated places its appropriate to use cycle tracks, and those not. SLOs plans hit zero for appropriateness and exemplify inappropriateness. Davis says cycle tracks are appropriate Åon streets with parking lanes, high vehicle travel speeds, high vehicle traffic volume, high parking turnover, and/or high bicycle volumes.Æ Engineering associations like AASHTO and NACTO echo that. None of those conditions exist on Broad/Chorro. On the other hand, every authority I could find warns tracks with driveway crossings are dangerous. As are two-way cycle tracks in general. The Federal Highway Administration lists them among Åpractices to be avoided,Æ stating they Åcreate hazardous conditions for bicyclistsÆ and are Ådangerous.Æ (Another FHWA Åpractice to be avoidedÆ is a curb separating track from vehicles, because bikes hitting it may flip into the vehicular lane and cars hitting it may lose control. These cycle tracks are to have such curbs.) International bike experts agree. The corporate blogger at Copenhagenize, an intercontinental bikeway design firm, says bi-directional cycle tracks havent been built in Denmark for more than two decades, because they were found unsafe. ÅThe bi- directional cycle tracks we see in emerging bicycle cities can't possibly be put there by people who know what they're doing,Æ Copenhagenize writes. ÅIf someone advocates infrastructure like this and actually believes it is good, they probably shouldn't be advocating bicycle infrastructure.Æ A Dutch cycling expert adds, ÅIf you're trying to grow cycling in a place which does not already have a high cycling modal share, the infrastructure that you build needs to be better than this.Æ Deficient cycle track design is made worse by squeezing it onto streets too narrow, so safety compromises are required for bikes and vehicles. On Chorro, the uneven pavement next to the curb with storm inlets that can flip bikes is counted in the cycle tracks minimum width, the buffer between track and moving vehicles is a half-foot narrower than minimum standard, as is the width of the parking lane on the opposite side of the street. This safety corner-cutting leaves two narrow 10-foot traffic lanes. On Broad, which is still narrower, the bike buffer is a foot narrower than minimum standard, as is the 7-foot parking lane -- so narrow many residents vehicles and tradesmens trucks dont fit within it. Those ÅdesignÆ measurements are for the wide spots on these streets. The plan notes places on both streets are narrower and unspecified additional safety compromises will be made. Bike accident dynamics dont support SLOs plan. Only a quarter of accidents happen mid-block, mainly at driveways, where SLOs tracks make accidents more likely. The danger point Ã three-quarters of accidents Ã is at intersections. Cycle tracks do nothing to protect cyclists at intersections. SLOs 2-way tracks make intersections much more dangerous. At Chorro/Lincoln, riders from downtown must cut diagonally across this busy intersection to reach the track on the left side of Chorro. Since dominant bike traffic on Chorro is headed to Cal Poly, not to Broad, at Mission these riders will have to execute another mid-intersection diagonal to get back to the right side of the street. How is this back-and-forth safe? At Broad/Ramona, cyclists coming towards Broad will have to exit their wrong-side-of- street track by cutting across all traffic turning at that intersection. This is nuts! Far from making biking safe for 7-year-olds, it assures their endangerment. None of this can possibly improve safety. For the past 5 years the police department has logged zero bike-vehicle accidents on Broad/Chorro (unless you count bike hit-and- runs on parked cars), so theres zero safety rationale for this project. The project itself is inherently unsafe, and common sense says it must not proceed. So why is SLO spending $3 million for several blocks of retrograde dangerous bike infrastructure? This project needs to be declared DOA. The City Council has the chance to do that on Feb. 6. Richard Schmidt is an architect, planner, 8-year veteran of the SLO Planning Commission, and a one-time resident of Davis, Americas biking capital. A version of this article appeared as a Viewpoint in the , Jan. 31, 2018