News from the National Bike Summit
Google Announces 'Bike There' Directions - Yesterday at the ongoing National Bike Summit, Google announced that biking directions would be added to their maps. This is exciting news and I did some test runs and was pleased that the elevation was taken into consideration when routing around San Diego's various canyons.
Call your Congressperson and ask to co-sponsor ACT - Kathy Keehan (SDCBC) is currently in Washington D.C. and will be meeting with Congressmembers Issa, Billbray, Hunter, Davis and Filner tomorrow morning (March 11) to ask them to co-sponsor the Active Community Transportation Act. The bill creates a competitive grant program where communities around the country will compete for $2 billion in funding to help make their communities better for walking and biking by creating more infrastructure for both pedestrians and bicyclists. To find your congressperson's contact information, use this link. Keehan asks that you call your congressperson between 6 AM and 2 PM San Diego time tomorrow.
The sad state of Kearny Villa Road
Recently, the Union Tribune reported on how dangerous the conditions are on Kearny Villa Road for cyclists. This is not news. In 2001, Larry Mahr was a victim of a fatal collision and, in 2005, Captain Patrick M. Klokow was fatally struck - a victim of a hit and run - all on Kearny Villa Road.
The dismal conditions of the bike lanes along Kearny Villa Road is not the sole culprit. Despite running parallel to the 163 freeway, the speed limit on Kearny Villa Road is 65 mph with drivers frequently going above that speed limit on a regular basis.
Nearly ten years after Mahr's death, Kearny Villa Road is still in shambles. There has been no traffic calming measures installed and the facilities for cyclists is dismal at best.
Cyclists who ride Kearny Villa Road have complained to city officials for years to no avail.
Kearny Vila Road lies in District 7 which is under Councilwoman Marti Emerald's control. We contacted Councilwoman Emerald's Chief of Staff, Xema Jacobson [XJacobson@sandiego.gov] who responded by stating that the problem had been forwarded to San Diego's staff to their traffic engineering department.
According to Kathy Keehan, Executive Director for the San Diego Bicycle Coalition, the city expects the city's contractors to repave some sections of the bike lanes in six weeks. Despite San Diego's deficit, lack of funding is not the issue as money has been allocated toward fixing the bike lanes along Kearny Villa Road.
Meanwhile, this is the current state of Kearny Villa Road as it stands. We'll check back in six weeks and report back on what changes have been made.
San Diego's Bicycle Master Plan
The City of San Diego is continuing work on its Bicycle Master Plan. With the aid of nationally recognized Alta Planning & Design, the city has come up with a list of top 40 projects [pdf link] and is now soliciting the cycling community's input and suggestions. Kathy Keehan, Executive Director of the San Diego Bicycle Coalition (SDCBC) will be accepting suggestions until Wednesday, March 3.
According to Keehan, there is currently no timeline for when work on these projects are scheduled begin.
As the SDCBC has chosen to focus on the Urban Core in 2010, I'd suggest continuing to maintain that focus and place the top 30 project ideas around the Urban Core region.
What are your thoughts and ideas? Use the comments to discuss.
New parking infrastructure for bicyclists
Last week I had written about how pitiful San Diego's bicycle population was at 0.9%.
Local business owner Jay Porter left a comment with suggestions he thought would increase the San Diego bicycle population to 20% in one year with no cost to the city, if they implemented the following policies:
1) Assess a “road services impact fee” of $5000 for each new automotive parking space built, public or private
2) Give a $500 credit against development fees (fund permitting) for each parking space removed from privately owned property
3) Assess a $250/year road services impact fee against all exisiting publicly accessible spaces
4) Assess a $50/year road services impact fee on all privately used spaces (garages, driveways, etc.)
5) Convert all free public spaces on City roadways to either 15 minute parking, enforceable 24/7, or paid/metered parking, enforceable 24/7, or turn them into bike and/or ped lanes with red zones.
6) All excess money from the assessments, apply to developing separated bikeways on major arterials (Genessee, Mission Gorge, etc).Within one year, I’d expect bicycling would become 20% or more of transportation. Plus the local economy would boom as money was shifted from car expenses (which leave the city) to discretionary spending and bike expenses (which often stay in the city)
As if on cue, three bits of information have crossed my desk that will put some of these suggestions into effect.
1. Jessica Freeman, Program Specialist for the Uptown Partnership contacted us to ask our readers to opine about bicycle parking infrastructure. Specifically, they have allocated $20K in the 2009-2010 budget toward bike racks. The Uptown Partnership would also like our readers to email info@uptownpartnership.org with specific project ideas to improve bike access and parking. The caveat is that the projects have to be located within Uptown Partnership's District boundaries which are the neighborhoods of "Bankers Hill-Park West, Hillcrest, and Mission Hills."
Additionally, John Hargreaves, Project Manager at Uptown Partnership, is open to hearing your thoughts on bike racks that will be funded from the 2009-2010 budget. Contact: jhargreaves@uptownpartnership.org
2. On Wednesday (February 17) at 5:15 PM, bicyclists in San Diego are invited to attend the offices of the Centre City Development Corporation to speak up for bike specific infrastructure that is already on the agenda. The CCDC's offices are located at 401 B St, Suite 400 in downtown San Diego. If you are unable to attend, please email Kathy Keehan (Executive Director at the Bicycle Coalition) at execdir@sdcbc.org a list of places where bike corrals would be most appreciated.
3. Omar Passons, President of the North Park Community Association, contacted us to let us know that the Association has allocated some money for bike racks within the boundaries of North Park. We will post more details as we learn them.
Report: Most Vulnerable Road Users Receive the Least Funding
The Alliance for Biking and Walking recently released a 2010 Benchmarking Report in order to measure the progress of efforts on bicycling and walking in the U.S. The overall conclusion of the report is that bicyclists and pedestrians receive a pitiful share (1.2%) of transportation dollars and yet, are at a much larger risk on our roadways where a disproportionate percentage of transportation dollars go toward auto-based infrastructure.
As the eight largest city in the country, the percentage of San Diegans who took full advantage of year round perfect weather to commute by bicycle was a pitiful 0.9%. The Complete Streets Act in California which was signed in 2008 and ensures that the design of all streets will enable safe access for all users was adopted by the city of San Diego. Yet to date, the city has done nothing to increase staffing to show the full support of that adoption. The sole bicycle coordinator at the City, Brad Jacobsen, was scheduled to retire in 2009 and the city has still not finalized plans on continuing that position.
Despite the gloomy report, San Diego has published very ambitious goals to increase bicycling [pdf link] to a 10% mode share by 2020. Unlike Portland whose successful efforts to promote bicycling include trying out innovative bicycling facilities; leading bicycle promotion activities like Bike to Work Day and Ciclovía; San Diego's plans to promote bicycling have been more modest. The plans include the creation and connection of bikeways, maintaining existing bicycle infrastructure, increasing the percentage of bicycle transit trips, and increasing public awareness of bicycling.
Facing a $179 million budget deficit and a crumbling infrastructure, the city of San Diego needs to step it up a notch if it really intends to meet the goals outlined in the Bicycle Master Plan. Maintaining existing bicycle infrastructure that is poorly connected is the very minimum that cyclists expect from the city. In order to really meet and exceed the goals outlined in the Bicycle Master Plan put forth by the city, San Diego needs to be a vanguard in promoting bicycling as a utilitarian form of transportation. I will be outlining some ideas in a forthcoming post.
In the meantime, you are encouraged to respond with your ideas or criticisms. What can San Diego do to ensure that 10% of all trips are made on a bicycle?