$312 million updated Bike Plan passes with unanimous support from City Council
Last Monday, the update to the 2002 Bicycle Master Plan passed with unanimous support from the City Council. This plan to build an additional 595 miles of bicycle facilities nearly doubles the city's existing 510 miles* of facilities and further demonstrated our council's growing commitment to bicycling.
During public comment, two of our proposed requests were included in the motion made by Council Member (and current mayoral candidate) David Alvarez and amended by Council Member Sherri Lightner. Our request to create a Bicycle Advisory Committee to ensure the implementation of the plan was also supported by the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition (SDCBC). Our request to remove the Coastal Rail Trail alignments from Rose and Roselle Canyons was not supported by the SDCBC but was supported by the community that this alignment affected: the Friends of Rose Canyon, the University Community Planning Group and Council Member Lightner whose district includes University City. Council Member Lightner spoke to not only preserving the city's limited remaining open space but to also saving the city the huge financial and environmental expenses of building in Rose and Roselle Canyons - an amendment that was accepted by Alvarez and the rest of the council.
Melissa Garcia, Senior Planner at the City of San Diego, presented the item for council consideration by stating that the goal of the plan was to "create a city where bicycling is a choice." The goal to promote "environmental quality, public health and recreation and mobility benefits" were also mentioned. The purpose of the plan, Garcia stated, was to "maximize spending choices for implementation."
The original Bicycle Master Plan was adopted by the City Council over a decade ago in 2002. The update to the 2002 Bicycle Master Plan was prepared by Alta Planning + Design for the City of San Diego and begins with this promising statement in its introduction:
"...the updated plan provides direction for expanding the existing bikeway network, connecting gaps, addressing constrained areas, improving intersections, providing for greater local and regional connectivity, and encouraging more residents to bicycle more often."
Since 2002, most of the facilities built have been incredible and award-winning (such as the bike path around Lake Murray and Miramar Reservoir), but not effective in meeting the needs of everyday San Diegans by connecting neighborhoods to ensure daily riding in a way that is safe and comfortable. In the two years since the plan was updated, the plan went through respectable community feedback and input. Is the plan the best that it can be for current and future riders? The plan is incredibly promising and it should give everyone cause to celebrate. But a good plan alone will not transform our city. The important lesson from the last Monday's vote is that the political will is unanimous and the way forward is to ensure that this plan actually gets implemented with the efforts of a Bicycle Advisory Committee.
What will this committee do and who will it be composed of? That depends on what the City Attorney proposes to the City Council, but we'd like to have council staff, city staff, advocates and community members (including high school and college students) be active representatives. This committee will ensure that facilities get built and that the group doesn't become yet another layer of bureaucracy inhibiting the implementation of the bicycle plan. We'd like to see all facilities implemented with complete transparency.
In this year alone, our council members have demonstrated incredible leadership. Interim Mayor Todd Gloria was the first to lead on the issue. Gloria has been very receptive to feedback, ideas, and has demonstrated a willingness to lead in a way that has not been seen before in San Diego. Council member and Land Use and Housing Chair Lorie Zapf's Council Resolution has provided us with much needed leverage to ensure accountability from the city staff in implementing bicycle infrastructure in the city. We have also learned how to listen to communities (such as the Friends of Rose Canyon) that seek us out and explain their concerns. Our success in transforming this city into a world-class city for bicycling depends on meeting the needs of our current ridership and being open and receptive to the feedback we receive from potential riders.
The next steps are not only to create the Bicycle Advisory Committee, but also to ensure that the plan is implemented. How will that happen? That will be the work for BikeSD's second year. Thank you for joining us on the ride.
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Foto Friday: A Floating Roundabout for Bicycles
A Floating Cycle Roundabout. Photo by Bici Chic
Here is a video about the roundabout:
This roundabout is located in the Dutch city of Eindhoven (population 220,000). Here's why the roundabout was constructed:
Every day 25,000 vehicles pass this junction. The city wanted to emphasize this importance. Eindhoven is considered a brain port and feels it has a leading role in innovation and technology. All those qualities had to be reflected in the high quality design for this new piece of infrastructure: “spectacular in simplicity”.
This would look pretty nice over the on and off ramps at Balboa Avenue, don't you think?
Update on Year 1 Goals: Increasing City Funding for Bikes
When we launched last year, our board voted on a list of seven goals to help guide our advocacy efforts during our first year. We met many of our goals and are working towards or fine-tuning the remainder. We will provide a full update on how our first year transpired along with our annual report. Until then, I want to provide an update on our Goal #5:
Work to increase city funding for bikes from 0.1% of General Fund to 0.9% of General Fund to reflect existing bike mode share. Bike infrastructure, especially good quality bike infrastructure costs money and we’re going to advocate to increase funding in the City’s budget.
First, the good news: in this year's adopted budget, 3% of the city’s transportation budget will be spent on bikes.
Second, we need to dig deeper and learn more about what we uncovered.
Our board approved this goal last year based on the concept of induced demand. Induced demand also applies to bicycle facilities and within bike advocacy circles this translates into "build it and they will come".
In retrospect, the original goal as listed was a bit imprecise; for example, there was no need to base the amount off of the General Fund instead of the Transportation Department’s budget. However, this gave us an opportunity to learn about the complexity of bicycle facility funding.
In 2011, 0.9% of San Diegans (now 1.1%) were commuting by bicycle. We wanted to see a matching percentage of dedicated funding devoted to bicycle facilities and for that percentage to grow to facilitate bicycle ridership in the city.
We can see this correlation in other cities that have prioritized bicycling as a mode of transportation.
A more useful metric is per capita spending on bicycle facilities. We've been working towards the goal of $39 per capita to meet the Danish and Dutch funding reality. These two nations have figured out how to move nearly 50% of their population by bicycle in their largest cities.
What is being spent in San Diego?
In the city of San Diego a single bicycle facility can be built with funding from the city, the region (SANDAG), the state and/or the federal government. Tracking these numbers down has been a painful process, so we decided to start with the city.
Where does a tiny little organization even start? We started by making strategic alliances. In this case, I'm proud to state that we joined forces with the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) who created the Community Budget Alliance (CBA) - an alliance of over 40 organizations formed two years ago to advocate for a fair, equitable and transparent budget. When the former mayor released his draft budget earlier this year to the public for input, we worked with the CBA to dissect the budget.
Bicycle facilities can be both capital improvement projects (like the Mike Gotch bicycle/pedestrian bridge) or service-related projects (such as sharrows, bike route signs or the new buffered bike lanes being striped alongside the ongoing resurfacing efforts).
It's almost overwhelming to envision the facilities that need to be built in order to become a world-class bicycling city. However, in the last year we have focused on some of the deficiencies in the city, such as the deadly freeway on-ramps and off-ramps that are found in nearly every community. Freeway on-ramp redesigns would fall under the realm of a capital improvement project and since these facilities fall under the jurisdiction of two or more agencies (in this case, the city of San Diego and Caltrans), agency coordination is absolutely critical.
Through the training led by the CPI, we learned about the two categories of bicycle facilities: capital projects and service projects. But how much was the city spending on them? In April this year, I asked Corrine Wilson at CPI, who put me in touch with Nelson Hernandez, the city's Assistant Chief Operating Officer. I posed this question to him:
I was asked to contact you about getting some detail from the mayor's proposed budget. Since bicycle infrastructure comes under the umbrella of both capital improvement projects (assets) as well as service related projects - I find it an incredible challenge to break down what actually is being allocated toward bike projects in the city budget. Is there a way for you to send me that information and perhaps make it easier to find within the budget documents?
Hernandez directed me to the city’s Deputy Director of Transportation, Linda Marabian, who responded:
Sam, what I am familiar with and am working on is the CIP annual allocation projects I discussed at our last meeting regarding this issue. That is identified in the CIP Section of the budget.
This year’s budget lists both Capital Improvement Plans (CIPs) and service-related projects (including some staff funding) for a total of $1.109 million. This is a per capita spending of $1.17 or 3% of the total Transportation Department's budget. The projects listed in the budget were as follows:
- Minor bike facilities, $639,000: this includes sharrows, signs, bike lanes, and facilities that can be built based on traffic service requests.
- State Route 163/Clairemont Mesa Blvd Interchange, $350,000: The budget detail states that "[t]hese improvements will eliminate existing pedestrian/bike high-speed crossings and all vehicle, bike and pedestrian moves will be controlled, thus improving safety. Transit movement through the interchange will be area will be greatly enhanced."
- Bicycle Program Manager, $120,744: This position was held by Ed Clancy, but according to Marabian this position was "reabsorbed" into the department after Clancy's resignation. This council-approved position has been vacant for months and, despite our letter to Interim Mayor Gloria, has not been filled. We are at-risk of losing our hard-fought momentum.
With the elimination of Clancy's position, the city is spending $989,000 on bikes.
City funds are not the only funds that are used to build bicycle facilities. SANDAG also provides funds via Transnet. How much was SANDAG allocating to the city of San Diego?
While browsing the Independent Taxpayer Oversight Committee report on Transnet expenditures, I found that the city seemed to be sitting on about $54 million. Could these funds be spent on bicycle facilities? I asked Marabian how the city determined its Transnet spending priorities and she responded that Council Policy 800-14 determines the prioritization factor.
Understanding Council Policy 800-14
The CBA, as led by the talented individuals at CPI, has been working with councilmembers and city staff on updating Council Policy 800-14. The purpose of the policy (which was adopted by the council last night) is:
to guide the Mayor’s Capital Improvement Program Review and Advisory Committee (CIPRAC) in its CIP deliberations. The goal of this policy is to establish a capital-planning process that ultimately leads to policy decisions that optimize the use of available resources for projects competing from the same fund source or multiple fund sources.
When the draft policy was scheduled to be released at the council infrastructure subcommittee last month, we worked closely with CBA and city and council staff to ensure that our needs were addressed in the policy. The draft language on prioritization was excellent and had a few gems, including the following:
scoring projects higher that result in:
reduction in accidents, main breaks, sewer spills and flooding problems.promote community walk-ability and use of bicycles or public transit.
Our input had two main points: account for the fact that some assets can have multiple owners (such as the on-ramps mentioned above), and recognize that the biggest return on investment (especially for bicycle facilities) would be had in areas of high population density like the urban core communities in Mid-City.
Last night, our city council unanimously approved the policy (with Council President Gloria absent). Although we joined in at the tail end of updating this policy document we're glad to have been a part of this historic moment. The newly-strengthened council policy will ensure that our second year of advocacy will be more deliberate and informed by policies to strengthen our advocacy efforts.
Thank you to all our members who showed up in support!
BikeSD Recommendations for Traffic Calming
I sent this email out earlier to all planning group chairs, Councilmembers and planning staff. This email (posted below with one edited typo) was put together with the help of some very dedicated volunteers - thank you! Much thanks to Michael Lewis for first bringing this to my attention.
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Good morning Planning Chairs and Councilmember representatives and staff,
I write not only as the executive director of BikeSD but also as someone who shares a similar value to you: wanting our neighborhoods to be livable places for both our residents and guests.
We, at BikeSD, regularly review the Community Planning Group agendas for issues relating to bicycling to better inform our audience and members to take action as needed. I have noticed an item that is coming up with increasing frequency and making us a bit alarmed: the requests for stop signs as a solution to stop speeding drivers and thus address the issue of neighborhood safety.
Stop signs are not an effective solution for dealing with speeding drivers (pdf link). Furthermore, stop signs contribute toward sign pollution, increase air and noise pollution and, waste fuel (pdf link). We strongly believe that engineering solutions are best implemented to address problems caused by human behavior. While some solutions may be part of a capital improvement program, interim solutions for traffic calming to address neighborhood needs could include paint, trees and landscaping as listed by the Project for Public Spaces.
Many traffic calming solutions could be disastrous for bicycle riders and we encourage you to consider solutions that would not unintentionally make bicycling more challenging than it currently can be, given how our city streets have been designed exclusively for one mode of travel, the automobile.
We recommend the following solutions to deal with traffic calming in residential neighborhoods:
Encourage communities to adopt a "20 is plenty" standard of maximum speed limit in residential neighborhoods. This can be both a solution that is self imposed, and imposed through road design as highlighted above by PPS.
Specific bicycle infrastructure based on best practices that have been tried and tested what works best for all users for nearly three decades:
Any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely,
Samantha Ollinger
Filner's 9-month Mayorship was the Biggest Boon to Bicycling and Livability in San Diego's History
Under the better late than never philosophy, I thought I'd write down some thoughts about the (now former) Mayor Filner's short nine month reign in San Diego.
Back in 2011 when the November 2012 election season seemed eons away, I began to realize the importance of having a mayor in office ready and willing to push the bike agenda. I was just getting started in advocacy and having observed the success of having a champion in the mayor's office from cities as large as New York City to ones as small as Oklahoma City, I thought I'd try and see how far I could get with having a mayoral candidate making a commitment a more bike friendly San Diego.
The story of how that transpired has been documented on this website and elsewhere but ultimately, all but one major candidate (Bonnie Dumanis) came out with a bike plan and bicycling became a part of the conversation during the mayor's race. During that period, about a dozen or so people talked me into converting my efforts on BikeSD, the blog, and instead focus my energy into a more coherent form by incorporating this website into a proper non-profit. Last September BikeSD formally launched as a non-profit so as to play a stronger role in the city in advocating for the region's cyclists. The goal was to dictate an agenda instead of simply begging and pleading our elected officials to throw us an occasional crumb while rewarding them handsomely with photo opportunities.
My assumption was that we'd have about four years during which BikeSD could organize and grow and thus play a much stronger role in subsequent elections. I had hoped to use four years for us to master all the issues and then train and/or hire the requisite help needed to execute our mission. Unfortunately, the best laid plans sometimes never come to pass and Bob Filner's term as mayor came to an end last Friday.
In the past nine months, the former mayor managed to execute the city's first open streets event, convert a parking lot into a pedestrian plaza without building any new roads or bridges, and begin the process of fixing our horribly auto-centric roads that were built to the detriment of all human reason or acknowledgment that fleshy humans use our public streets. In other words, Filner was unprecedented as a mayor of San Diego on the attention he brought to understanding and implementing a vision of making San Diego more livable, more humane, and more considerate of our city's bicycle riders.
For our movement, Filner did things that no mayor ever has. But in the eleven months since we launched as a formal organization, I have learned a great deal about what needs to be done at the city to make us a world class bicycling city - a city where a majority of trips are made by bicycle. Many have compared the movement we started to a juggernaut and I for one have no intention of slowing down or stopping. And so I expect everyone running for office of the mayor to come up with a coherent plan that understands not only induced travel but also the legal, policy and funding issues needed to continuing moving San Diego forward and the specific strategies needed to ensure the plan's success. We were so far behind when Filner was sworn into office and we moved a bit during these last few months, we need to keep the momentum up and onward.
Edit: I neglected to mention that along with Filner, Ed Clancy who was appointed by the mayor to handle bicycle initiatives, also resigned.
Edit: Gerry Braun was kind to correct me on my dates - Filner was mayor for nine months (December 2, 2012 - August 30, 2013), not eight. I have changed the article to reflect that correction.