Here’s a vote for anything that makes University a little less scary for bike riders.

Also, making a major bikeway out of Island downtown seems like a really great investment. The street is not a primary route for car traffic and yet extends across all of downtown. Any investment here would be a good choice.

I will cast my vote for the Class I bike path connecting Sorrento Valley Blvd to Eastgate Mall. It is not on the list of 40 projects, but I see it proposed as part of the Coastal Rail Trail in this document:
http://www.altaprojects.net/sandag/Documents_files/Task2-1Report.pdf

The current route to connect Sorrento Valley to UTC and southern destinations requires negotiating the freeway offramp at I-5 N and onto Genessee Ave.

Thanks,
Travis

I wasn’t sure about the exact definitions either, but it looks like the classes are standardized:

Separate Facility (a.k.a. Class I) – A non-motorized facility, paved or unpaved, physically separated from motorized vehicular traffic by an open space or barrier. Also called Bicycle Path, Bike Trail, Non-motorized Trail, Multi-purpose Trail or some combination thereof.

Bike Lane (a.k.a. Class II) – A portion of a roadway that is designated by striping, signing and pavement markings for the preferential or exclusive use of bicyclists. Most often these are done in couplets, each one being one way and adjacent to the outside through travel lane. Also called Bicycle Lanes.

Bike Route (a.k.a. Class III) – A segment of road designated by the jurisdiction having authority, with appropriate directional and informational markers, but without striping, signing and pavement markings for the preferential or exclusive use of bicyclists. Also called Bicycle Route.

Also, here’s some general information about Bicycle Boulevards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard

But if anyone has a link to the specific Master Plan definitions of these facilities, please post them.

You’ll find definitions of the standard treatments, Class I, II and III, on page 13 of the PDF I linked to in my first comment. Bike Boulevards and cycle tracks are described in this document:
http://www.altaprojects.net/sandag/Documents_files/Task2-1Report.pdf

Basically, Class I is a separated bike path, like the San Diego River/OB bike path. Class II is a bike lane. Class III is just a sign indicated that a street is a good bike route.

A bike boulevard is a street where bikes are given priority, with markings such as sharrows and possibly barriers to through motor vehicle traffic.

A cycle track is a bike lane with a raised curb separating it from vehicle traffic, like the one on Friars Road by the YMCA. (Sometimes they’re bidirectional, like Friars Road, sometimes they’re not.) (It will be interesting to see how Alta is planning on having the Pacific Highway cycle track negotiate the merge with Barnett, which is the main danger spot.)

I may be wrong in the details of some of these definitions, so check the documents.

And yes, they’re soliciting comments about what’s been left off. I’d second the Kearny Villa Road comment, given everything I’ve heard about it over the years (never ridden it myself).

I’d like to point out that there’s another area that deserves attention: University City and UCSD. It’s interesting to look at the figures showing “bicycle trip generator model” and “bicycle trip attractor model” that Alta came up with.

(Pages 42 and 43 of this PDF: http://tinyurl.com/sdbikeplan — this is part of the planning process for the entire county, but I think they’re working off the same data. Can’t find a similar doc on the city’s website.)

These maps show that there are a lot of trip generators and trip attractors in this area, second only to the urban core area.

I was glad to see that there’s a plan for bike lanes on La Jolla Village Drive, since this serves to connect the big trip attractors and trip generators in the area. But my pet project, Nobel Drive between Regents and I-5, got left out. This is too bad, because if you look at the maps closely, the southern portion of North UC (the area south of Nobel between Genesee and I-5) and the shopping/residential district just across I-5 (around Villa La Jolla Dr.) are both big trip generators, and the latter area is a big trip attractor. These areas are also shown as having large “bicycle barriers” (page 64 of the PDF).

This is basically my shopping route (to get to Trader Joe’s). I know a lot of students also bike through here. The “barrier” here is that Nobel has intermittent bike lanes. Where they end, you’re often dumped into the back of parked cars across the intersection. It seems there are two solutions to this: remove the parking (ain’t gonna happen, I’ve been told) or add sharrows to one lane in each direction, in those places where there is no bike lane and there is curbside parking. Seems like this would be a simple, cost-effective measure, encouraging cyclists to do what we already have the right to do (many of the cyclists I see here don’t seem to know this) and letting the drivers know that we belong in the middle of the lane in these spots.

If you bike around the UC/UCSD area and think this is a good idea, please chime in with your own comment. (The link to Kathy’s email address in the original post isn’t working, but I bet she’s following this conversation.)

1) Where can we find definitions of the facility types (Class II, Class III, Bicycle Boulevard, Cycletrack)?

2) Can we propose ideas that are not on the list?

Thanks,
Travis