HomeMy WebLinkAbout2/6/2018 Item 12, Foster
Christian, Kevin
From:Emilie Foster <atownfoster@aol.com>
Sent:Tuesday, February
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Anholm Bike Route
To Mayor Harmon and the SLO City Council,
Quite simply, please vote to table the Anholm Bike Route until more studies can be done and a
better solution develops. And if that solution is to not change anything, have the courage to admit it.
The two current options are stinkers, and here are just a few reasons why (all of which have
been stated by others, but just in case you're listening this time):
1) Most bikers will not use your $3M+ path. It's one thing to build something that no one uses, but a
whole different ball of cheese to use 3 million dollars to do it. The young and strong riders will
continue to go straight up and down Chorro, directly from Foothill. They will bypass the Broad portion
of option A and skip all of the Lincoln route. All that money, wasted. Even the "timid" riders you want
to draw? I'm one of them, along with my three kids. We ride Murray to Peach, five days a week. We
take Chorro into town because of the gravity assist, and we use Lincoln to come home so we won't
hold up traffic. We will not use portions of either route, and we actually live here!
2) The limited research I have done on my own shows that in the city of SLO, most bike accidents
occur where there are bike lanes, as opposed to the shared road concept. The most dangerous spots
for bikers seem to be at intersections with a bike lane, where cars turn right into a bike who is
continuing straight. There are none of these types of intersections along the Anholm route. There are
also many, many instances of accidents (49% of those in California) involving a bike that were
caused because the biker was not following the laws, ie, doing something stupid. In case you haven't
heard, you can't fix stupid. Not even with 3 million dollars.
3) The positions you were elected to are meant to represent and serve the residents and merchants
of San Luis Obispo. You seem to be a lot more worried about the tourists and travel
magazines. Businesses are dying because no one can find parking to go visit them. And now you
want to remove even more parking (at a time when hundreds more cars will be in the area thanks to
22 Chorro and 71 Palomar, but that's a whole different screw up that never should have been
approved) and decrease the standard of living for an entire neighborhood, just so you can use more
of your sexy green bike path paint.
4) The biking capital of the world, Denmark, does not use the elements the designers have included
in the Anholm plan. These include driveway crossings and two-way cycle tracks. Diagonal crossings
across busy intersections? There are no arm signals for a move like that, for good reason: no one
should be attempting it. Davis, another biking community, if you're looking for role models, wouldn't
approve of these plans, either. If you want to be a biking community, shouldn't you be taking advise
from the oldest and the best? Don't try to reinvent the wheel, it generally ends badly.
And because I don't want to be one who simply complains without offering other potential solutions,
here are a few, also borrowed from others who have already suggested them:
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1) Lower the speed limits in the Anholm neighborhood. We all know if it says 25, drivers will go 30-35
because they think they can get away with it. If the posted speed limit is 15-20, logic says we'll get
the 25 mph that is safer for everyone. I live on Murray, between Broad and Chorro and we don't
actually have a posted sign. I've tried to get up to 25, and it feels like attempted homicide. 15 mph
would make all my neighbor's dreams come true. If you could assign more patrols to enforce the
limits, so much the better.
2) Spend the money on other safety measures like street lights and traffic slowing methods, such as
chicanes. I've seen reference to narrow streets being a traffic slowing method and I can tell you, living
on Murray, it is far from true. Light and clean up the Chorro underpass. You paint electrical boxes,
why not underpasses? How about a speed camera or two? I've lived in Canada on and off and those
things work!
And completely unrelated to the bike route: please stop doing everything you can to turn this side
of town into Isla Vista North.
Emilie Foster
745 and 765 Murray Ave
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