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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2/20/2018 Item 11, Otto From:Garrett Otto <garrettotto@gmail.com> Sent:Saturday, To:E-mail Council Website Subject:Please remove item 11 from consent agenda Attachments:Bike lane one way.pdf Mayor and Council, I would like for you to consider removing the Anholm Bikeway (item 11) from the consent agenda. I believe the resolution does not accurately capture your recommendation to staff. During the Feb. 6th meeting, most of you were exhausted from a long day with a lengthy discussion and were ready to end the meeting. I believe your intent was to move forward on the northern and southern sections while staff came up with a solution for the middle section that may be less contentious between some in the neighborhood and within the bicycle and overall community. As the resolution is presented, there is no timeline specified for staff to present a new approach. I would request that you ask staff to move forward with the construction documents for the northern and southern sections of the project and concurrently develop planning documents for the middle section to be implemented during phase 2. I would ask that you request staff to develop a new recommended plan in the upcoming couple months. During the past week I have tried to understand what some of you hope to see with the outcome of this project. I have also reached out to staff, neighbors, SLO Bike Club, Bike SLO County, the BAC chair, and other community members. Many of us are concerned that the resolution does not reflect your intent to keep the middle section undetermined so you can explore a new, better approach. I am confident we can come up with a solution that many in the bike community can rally around, but there will still have to be a sacrifice to circulation or parking. Given the extensive community outreach and research the staff has done, they are well equipped to work towards a solution. I am not sure if you will need to give staff a direction on what sort of solution you want or if you can just send them out to work with the community to come up with their next best option. If you decide to give staff direction, I have 3 recommendations that I feel many in the bike community can stand behind. 1. Reconsider the bike boulevard approach. This needs to be done carefully since it was not very popular during the initial surveys because diverting traffic off Broad street will increase traffic on Chorro to unacceptably high levels. The only way that this could be successfully done, is if additional traffic calming was added to Chorro to ensure cars speeds are kept fairly slow (<25MPH). Significantly reducing speeds may encourage some drivers to use Santa Rosa instead of cutting through the neighborhood. Lincoln street would in turn be affected by those trying to bypass the Chorro street traffic calming and Broad street diverters. A simple diverter at a midpoint on Lincoln could solve this problem. This approach has the best potential to gain neighborhood support if done properly because pretty much everyone would like less traffic on their street. The difficult part of pitching this alternative is that we don't have a way to accurately predict the outcome. We can't say for sure how effective traffic calming will be in shifting cars to Santa Rosa. It may be difficult to convince some skeptics that this can work. Staff has suggested that they could pretty easily do a short term trial of some of temporary diverters and traffic calming devices. A trial of two to four weeks could give some hard numbers to their effectiveness and gage the neighborhoods sentiment before any planning documents or decisions are made by council. This approach will need a contingency in place if the trial does not have desired results. 2. Add a northbound bike lane on Chorro and southbound bike lane on Broad. This option is one that seems to have good support from all the bike groups and the families trying to bike to school through this corridor. See attached document for more information. Basically a northbound bike lane on Chorro can be added without 1 removing parking or drive lanes. Broad street can fit a southbound protected bike lane by removing parking along one side of the street. This is a sort of alteration to the "preferred alternative" but gets rid of the contentious two-way cycle track and limits parking removal to Broad. This gives bicycles a dedicated place along the streets so they do not have to share a lane with cars. Some of the same residents in the neighborhood will not like this approach because they will still lose street parking. A lot of us are sympathetic, but feel public right of ways would be better served to increase safety for all roadway users. It will not be the end of the world if they lose parking in front of their house, but it could very well be the end of the world if a cyclist was hit because we made another exception for cars. 3. One-way couplet (alternative 2 from study session meeting). This option had decent community support based on early studies. This approach does not remove parking, but will shift some traffic from Chorro to Broad. In my opinion this was a great idea and one of the safest options for bikes. It should be considered as an alternative to removing parking. Some bike groups have reservations about this approach because it has a two way cycle track. Despite data that shows that two-way cycle tracks are one of the safest bicycle facilities if implemented in the right place, some people are not convinced. I don’t want to complicate your decision with lots of options, but wanted to give you all insight into what sort of options are feasible and could be supported by the bike community. There are thousands or variations and hundreds of opinions. Please remove the item from the consent agenda and request staff come up with a timeline for a new proposed plan for middle section of the Anholm Bikeway. Thank you, Garrett Otto Anholm 2 BROADFOOTHILL CHORROSANTA ROSALINCOLNCHORROBROADRAMONA SERRANO MEINECKEMURRAYWEST VENABLEMISSIONMISSIONCENTERLINCOLNCENTERALMONDPEACHMILLPALMWALNUTUS 101BENTONMTN. VIEWCITY SPECIFICATION NO.DATE:SHEET NO.DESIGNED BY:DRAWN BY:CHECKED BY:APPROVED BY:SCALE:PROJECT TITLE: BROAD STREET BICYCLE BOULEVARD ALTERNATIVE 2 SUMMARY MAP SHEET TITLE: N1" = 350'EXISTINGSPEED HUMPSPROPOSEDSPEED CUSHIONSEXTEND BIKELANE BUFFERCHORRO CONVERTED TO ONE-WAY NB BETWEENMEINECKE AND LINCOLN WITH ONE AUTO TRAVEL LANEAND TWO-WAY CYCLE TRACKBROAD CONVERTED TO ONE-WAY SB BETWEENMEINECKE AND LINCOLN WITH ONE AUTO TRAVELLANE AND BUFFERED BIKE LANEPROPOSED BROAD STREET CROSS SECTION(MEINECKE TO LINCOLN)PROPOSED CHORRO STREET CROSS SECTION(MEINECKE TO LINCOLN)CONCEPT ALTERNATIVE 2(BROAD/CHORRO ONE-WAY COUPLET)