HomeMy WebLinkAbout05-03-2016 Item Public Comment, SchmidtCOUNCIL MEETING: ca ro3C L
ITEM NO.: [''•�� L�
To: Maier, John Paul �.
Subject: RE: Kienow letter on bikes on sidewalks
MAY 0 r
2016
Correspondence responding to 05/03/2016 Public Comment
From: Marx, Jan
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2016 2:48 PM
To: Richard Schmidt
Cc: Maier, John Paul
Subject: RE: Kienow letter on bikes on sidewalks
Thanks for your message Richard. I am including our assistant city clerk in this response so that your email is
posted on our website as public comment.
Best
Jan
From: Richard Schmidt
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2016 2:17:11 PM
To: Marx, Jan
Subject: Kienow letter on bikes on sidewalks
Dear Mayor Marx,
Regarding Mr. Kienow's letter wanting it to be legal to ride bikes on sidewalks:
05-03-2016 Item Public Comment, Kienow - Laserfiche WebLink
05-03-2016 Item Public Comment, Kienow -
Laserfiche WebLink
I've got to say, are you kidding?
A number of thoughts.
1. Bike people apparently want to be catered to and think they're entitled to anything they want. In
San Francisco they're trying to get the law changed so they don't have to obey stop signs. In SLO
they don't stop at stop signs, and nothing happens, so the law has de facto already been changed. In
SLO, they want all our open space trails (at great hazard to hikers and great damage to natural
systems open space is designated to protect), and now they want our sidewalks.
This is out of hand.
I think somebody's going to have to have the guts to stand up to them, or you're going to suffer a
huge backlash from the rest of the populace. I'm not anti -bike, but I am pro -public -benefit and pro-
public -safety, and there are huge benefits to not letting one small organized faction of mobility nerds
take over the whole town.
Also, the whole bike propaganda thing is ageist. If these younger adults don't have any respect for
those very young and those very old who need safe sidewalks, then they need a spanking. As mother
of SLO, how about you do it?
2. The city's modal shift goals are nonsense, and will lead to much strife and anti -bike backlash.
When we revised the general plan 1988-94, it was with great optimism that we adopted the first
modal shift objectives. Our bike goal was a single digit one. We imagined it could be done. It has yet
to be achieved, 22 years later. Getting 50% of trips out of cars and trucks isn't going to happen, and
it's delusional to even think it will. Allocating transport funds towards that end is similarly delusional.
This will lead to backlash.
[One reason the shift will not happen is because there's no infrastructure to facilitate it. No functional
public transport. No bike network. Bad pedestrian facilities. In San Francisco in the 1980s, the city
made a decision to add 100,000 new jobs in the financial quarter, and to permit zero new commuter
parking spaces. They were successful only because they already had in place a vastly underutilized
public transport system called BART. We don't have anything like that around to facilitate a modal
shift. Words will not accomplish it. We further confound things by confusing recreational biking with
commuter biking, providing much more for the former than the latter.]
3. The greatest hypocrisy is how pedestrians are treated. Sidewalks in town are a mess, cracked,
uplifted, dangerous throughout town. Why does this continue year after year with minimal effort to fix
any of it? Are you aware that $100,000 will replace only 850 feet of sidewalk? That's about what
you're allocating each year when you've got miles of deteriorated sidewalk that needs safety fixes.
And now the bike minority want to ride their bikes on sidewalks to further endanger pedestrians?
The upshot will be people just don't try to walk anyplace. The city, and the developers of our new
shopping areas, have already made it so difficult to walk through town that it's a major challenge and
largely unsafe. Then the city contributes its further negative impact by putting up signs like "no
pedestrians allowed," "no crosswalk here," etc. It's as if the city wants to force people to quit walking.
just don't get it.
Sincerely,
Richard Schmidt