Finding the Gold in Advisory Lanes
I dream of quiet, safe, neighborhood streets with networks of bikeways that promote efficient, healthy, and joyful commutes near and far, for all ages and abilities. After attending Circulate’s Vision Zero Coalition meeting and the Mira Mesa Town Council this evening, I am providing an update to the previous article about advisory bike lanes as new bicycle infrastructure for San Diego.
There is gold to be found on Gold Coast Drive and I'm hoping it will be dispersed throughout the city, in neighborhoods that are frustrated with high speed, cut through traffic. Gold Coast Drive in Mira Mesa, Evergreen in Point Loma, and many other streets are great candidates for this new type of road design to create safer streets by calming traffic speeds through our neighborhoods. The benefits of these types of lane markings are a reduction of vehicles on the street, lower vehicle speeds, quieter neighborhoods, less pollution, and safe access to key destinations. As a property owner, that sounds pretty nice.
Unfortunately, much of the Mira Mesa community hasn’t realized the value of the innovative design, known as advisory bike lanes. On Monday, many expressed concern over perceived dangers such as increased traffic, head on collisions, and drunk drivers. Lacking accurate information about how advisory bike lanes work, and how successful they’ve been on streets with similar characteristics, they argued that advisory bike lanes are inappropriate for Gold Coast Drive. However, research has found a significant reduction of crashes on roads where advisory bike lanes were implemented; an aggregate 44% reduction in crashes.
There is an alternative solution of providing protected bikeways that would be safer, but this option requires removing parking spaces which is not an easy sell. Gold Coast Drive is a neighborhood street with a designated 25 miles per hour speed limit, therefore, edge lanes are an appropriate design.
Many mentioned last night that Gold Coast Drive is a cut through used by drivers to avoid congestion on Mira Mesa Boulevard. Hello neighbors, wouldn’t your quality of life and property values improve if you lived on a more peaceful road?
A silver lining is that Gold Coast features three public schools along its length and this type of bike facility will create safe routes to schools, SRTS. Imagine our children enjoying the ride to school, chatting and laughing with friends on a bike, scooter, skateboard, or whatever active mobility option they choose. After six years of leading 10-12 year olds to school, it was evident, and supported with research, that active transportation and physical activity has positive effects on the brain and on school performance. Our younger folks are the leaders to break free from the car dependency that is choking our streets, polluting our air, and changing our climate and we must provide the opportunities to empower them. Many have experienced the independence and the fun of electric bicycles and we must embrace this healthy way to move in San Diego. Please help dedicate a safe space for them to ride and establish healthy lifestyles.
Shout out to the older folks like me. Try riding an e-bike to enjoy your community, improve your health, and reach your destination feeling refreshed and energized. E-bikes flatten hills, make it easier to carry heavy loads, and go longer distances while filling your body with exhilaration and life. You not only can watch your grandchildren ride to school with their friends, maybe you will be lucky enough to join them.
If you have questions or are still unconvinced, please reach out and we can ride an e-bike together to discuss and experience the real dangers of sharrows and understand why more people don’t ride bikes in beautiful, climate kissed, San Diego. As a car driver, I understand the frustrations of a slower bicycle rider impeding the way. Advisory bike lanes make mobility more efficient for all, as it becomes easier for drivers to navigate around cyclists, giving options to legally move along the road in synchronicity with cyclists and other drivers.
Advisory lanes make our neighborhoods safer, quieter, and more enjoyable. I hope Mira Mesa and Point Loma folks will learn about them, be open to change, and support the city’s efforts to make our streets safer for all.
Your Bike Friend.
Nicole BurgessNicole23ob@gmail.com
Advisory Lanes in San Diego
“It is a whole new way for drivers and cyclists to share the road.” City of Ottawa
I first experienced Advisory Lanes in Holland in 2014 on a bike barge trip with my family. This was a new type of bike facility to me and I liked them. Below is a photo from the trip that shows a great visual of an advisory lane In Holland. I especially appreciate the different colors of asphalt that are used to differentiate space for different types of users. As one can see, space is dedicated to a safe pathway for people on bikes and other rolling devices. Check out this one minute video to quickly learn how Advisory Bike Lanes work for cyclists and drivers. We do believe it is an intuitive street design treatment that drivers and cyclists will learn to use quickly.
As a long time advocate, I was thrilled to hear that our City is recommending and implementing the use of Advisory Lanes in San Diego. In May, City staff, Everett Hauser, provided a brief introduction to the Mobility Board for the use of Advisory Lanes on Hancock Avenue. I personally believe it will be an improvement for all and is a great compromise for businesses, parking, and active commuters along this corridor with limited street space.
In June, Everett updated the Mobility Board with criteria being used for evaluating future streets for Advisory Lanes. Below is the table presented. It shows Advisory Lanes will be evaluated for narrow streets with limited space, low volume traffic and low volume speeds. It was clarified that streets with parked cars will be considered, as straight-in parking is being proposed for Hancock. As noted, this type of treatment will be used on streets designated in the Bicycle Master Plan that will be resurfaced with slurry seal or overlay treatment. Check out streets.sandiego.gov to view upcoming street resurfacing projects.
If you have ideas or suggestions that you think advisory lanes would be a good fit in your neighborhood, please feel free to share with BikeSD to gain support and help advocate for innovative paint treatments that prioritize safe pathways for people on bikes. If you’re a fan like I am, please send Mayor Todd Gloria an email. Send gratitude and encourage more.
If you like to ride, we recommend to do so often. 😊
Prioritizing Chollas Creek Bikeway
The vision and goal to establish a safe and comfortable bikeway with community parks from La Mesa and Lemon Grove through City Heights, Oak Park, Encanto, Mid City, Barrio Logan to the San Diego Waterfront should be a top priority for mobility, sustainability, waterways, and health. In my opinion, this would be the most equitable active transportation bike project in San Diego County that protects our valuable Chollas Creek watershed, bringing economic, environmental, and health benefits to the community and city, while providing our residents with safe and comfortable access from the urban neighborhoods to the waterfront and downtown San Diego.
The proposed bikeway is just part of the larger plan for the Chollas Creek Regional Park that has visions of establishing sustainable eco-villages, along with healthy parks and waterways, while connecting schools and residents to the natural environments for health and happiness, in a place that has been neglected and overrun with freeways and pollution for far too long.
I've personally tried to explore riding along or near the creek to find myself stuck among freeways and no way to cross. The creek was nonexistent in some areas and filled with debris and pollution in other areas. Under the old neglected concrete water way, there is the light of potential and the creek is seeking our attention. It has the potential to become something amazing, capturing and reclaiming our water in an ecosystem that the locals can become engaged in, be proud of, and be active in protecting. This pathway would greatly benefit the local communities, the region, and our most valuable resource, our water.
It is critical we begin to protect and support the existing watersheds in San Diego. By creating pathways along waterways, connecting South-of-the-8 communities of concern to beautiful natural spaces in their own backyard and letting the residents engage and appreciate the water and the natural environments and the history the area when it was taken care of by the Kumeyaay before the industrial colonization.
A big shout out for the leadership at Groundwork and Board Member Vicki Estrada, for creating a coalition to collaborate and support the prioritization and funding for this incredibly valuable resource. Over the years the coalition members continue to engage in clean-ups, urban hikes, and visioning sessions to help communities adjacent to creek reclaim the watershed, and are ready to work with the city to pursue grants and funding to rehabilitate and activate the Chollas Creek Watershed and create a Chollas Creek Regional Park for the residents of San Diego. More information about specifics of this important connection can be found at https://docs.sandiego.gov/councilcomm_agendas_attach/2015/enviro_150408_3.pdf
This map shows the Chollas Creek Watershed and a proposed pathway connecting schools, parks, neighborhoods, and businesses. The other photo shows the benefits of creating healthy sustainable community projects while protecting our waterways and providing a safe place to walk, bike, travel, commute, and enjoy nature while in our city.
Sharing bike love while I venture to Croatia, the Adriatic, and beyond
I'm excited as I depart for Croatia for my fourth Climate Ride and thank all my friends for the continued support as I learn, explore, and engage with unfamiliar territories. I'm making the best of my long flight and will continue onto Munich and take a solo adventure down the Danube to Austria. From there, I will indulge in an all inclusive tour through Italy and Slovenia. I'll plan a pitstop in Utrecht to admire the beautiful infrastructure that makes me proud to have Dutch blood. I imagine the weather will bring me back to paradise in Point Loma, but who knows maybe I will just head south to Sevilla where they have been prioritizing safe bike infrastructure, in a city similar to San Diego.
As I am excited for my adventures, I'm also excited to leave some bike love in San Diego and have found beautiful riders for the many bikes in my garage that like to be ridden.
I've become a big fan of electric bikes as they have proven to become an efficient mode of travel. Just the other day, I left a meeting with Mayor Faulconer in Downtown San Diego to an event with Hasan from SANDAG at Mid-City Community Action Network (CAN). My ebike commute took approximately 25 minutes, which was the same amount of time that it took SANDAG staff to get to the event in a car, and was quite faster than transit (the bus). It was fun, healthy, and powerful.
Since I understand the values and joys of commuting by bike, with both electric or human powered bikes, I'm excited to share these joys with others.
Kim Heinle from Linda Vista CDC was the first to jump in on a bike challenge. Her commute is from PB to Linda Vista Community Center, a nice commute in SD, but Linda Vista is a challenging hill to go up everyday on a regular bike. Kim rides on occasion but opts to walk her bike up Ulrich as LV is too challenging on a regular bike, hence an ebike made perfect sense. As ebikes are heavy, we were also challenged with how to carry the bike up a flight of stairs. Therefore, we decided the foldable ebike, the Vika Blix, would be the best option.
Kim got the bike on a Sunday and I was thrilled to get at 7:30 AM text from Kim that she'd already arrived at work and loved the ride. I look forward to hearing more about her experiences as she tries to put more miles on the bike than on her car.
Sophie Wolfram was also interested in the challenge but also needs to carry bike up a flight of stairs. She'll be next in line to try the foldable bike when I get home.
Our next friend to get rolling on a bike is Ryan Beal, a volunteer for CAC. I met Ryan at the recent event at Mid City Can and briefly chatted about his desires to try to be multimodal from Escondido to Kearny Mesa. I had the perfect bike, a Surly, that was just waiting for a rider. Ryan did use bike/transit in LA and had good intentions for trying it out in San Diego. “Baby steps” for becoming an active commuter is important. No pressure, no judgement. What are the obstacles, challenges, joys, and benefits that Ryan will encounter. I can’t wait to hear about his journeys when I return. I honestly think he will be hooked and will be traveling by bike for his next overnight vacation.
Then there’s Rosa Olascoaga, a beautiful young leader for Mid-City Can advocating for safe streets and better mobility options for the residents of City Heights. Rosa is a new rider and borrowed the electric Blix Avanti for a ride to Tijuana with Los Cruzadores last weekend. This was a fabulous ride, joined by more than 125 riders, exploring the communities from Barrio Logan, National City, Chula Vista, San Ysidro, and into Tijuana for a night of fun. The first day was a 30 mile ride for Rosa and she rocked it. She was excited to experience riding the electric bike and mentioned that she would like to try an electric bike to commute from Paradise Valley to City Heights. It was perfect timing, and she would become the next rider to explore the opportunities and joys of riding through San Diego on a bike. I'd have liked to have been in town to show her how to navigate properly in traffic, but hoping some of our friends will help her with this skill and lead her to safe and blissful riding. We must be patient and take time to feel comfortable riding in traffic. For me, I grew riding up as a kid, but my daily commutes as an adult was a simple 1.5 miles to the neighborhood school twice a day for six years. That is what really transformed my tansportation choices and why I now use my bike for transportation.
As our region indulges in the conversations of transportation with SANDAG, MTS, cities in the county, and locally within our communities, I do believe it is important for our leaders to become active commuters and to ride a bike to have better understanding and perspective for the benefits of bikes.
If you're interested in the challenge and want to try to change your commute, please feel free to reach out to me (nicole23ob@gmail.com). Nothing makes me happier than seeing new friends experience the freedom of riding a bike and escaping a car for local commutes.
Although I'm on the opposite side of the world, I send good vibes to these new riders and all of you that have been blessed with the beauty of riding a bike.
Ride on friends and may we all shine together for health and happiness.
Nicole Burgess
BikeSD Board President
A summer ride to Ruffin Road in Linda Vista to see the Garden
BikeSD Board Members, Nicole and Natalie, led a fun ride to Ruffin Road to visit an amazing food garden in the heart of Kearny Mesa. The day was fabulous and many thanks to all the riders that came out.
Meeting in Old Town with a diverse group of bikes and riders, we first headed through Morena Blvd and I-8 intersections. We encountered fast vehicles and this became one of least favorite segments of the ride. I'm happy to say that Caltrans is painting new striping throughout the small corridor but unfortunately, I don’t think it will make it more comfortable nor safer.
We ventured up Linda Vista Road, Aero Drive, Kearny Villa Road, and Balboa Ave to Ruffin Road, enjoying the sights and neighborhoods along the way.
When we arrived, we enjoyed walking through the garden seeing the plentiful fruit, birds, flowers, bees, and more. We learned about sustainable practices in the garden and on the property. We grilled up delicious open-faced zucchini sandwiches with homegrown tomatoes, Bitchin Sauce, and arugula. Dessert was grilled raisin challah bread with almond butter. All very tasty!
After a nice visit with property owner Peter Aardema, beekeeper James MacDonald, and gardener Paula Gandalfo, we headed off in different directions. Brother Pete biked back to Solana Beach, a couple with electric bike-pods headed east to El Cajon, the Pacific Beach group headed west out Aero Drive, and the rest went down through Qualcomm and west along the San Diego River.
Thank you to all that joined to make it a successful and memorable day. BikeSD looks forward to hosting more rides to the garden. Stay tuned and join us for the next ride.
