Bicyclists Join the Voice of San Diego to Share their Perspective

October 6, 2011
|In News
|By BikeSD Staff

Two years ago a Voice of San Diego reporter, Keegan Kyle, revealed both his disdain for cyclists and his bias as a reporter when he made some not so subtle digs at critical mass and, thus, at cyclists.

Now with all eyes on San Diego as SANDAG scrambles to revamp their 2050 Regional Transportation Plan, the media outlets in San Diego appear to finally be understanding the significant role that the bicycle plays in the transportation sector, including how bicycling will be tremendously useful in solving our air pollution problems and  our headaches with automobile based gridlock.

To that end, Voice San Diego has published a good selection of articles and opinion pieces to start a public conversation about the role the bicycle does and can play within our transportation sector:

  • Fix San Diego: Bicycling and Bike Lanes :  Grant Barrett, engagement editor for the Voice of San Diego, began the conversation on how San Diego ought to be fixed.
  • Opinion: Making San Diego More Bike-ish:  Grant then asked me about what I thought some first steps to making San Diego more bike friendly could be. I then shared some thoughts on how we could reach for some low hanging fruit.
  • Specifically, Here’s How Biking is Terrible in San Diego: Henry Rosen, a resident and bike commuter from Pacific Beach, then shared his thoughts on why he thought San Diego was one of the worst cities for bicycling. He listed some specific sections of the city that have long been neglected by San Diego.
  • Decoding Secrets in San Diego’s Transportation Future: VOSD reporter Adrian Florido wrote an article that delved deeper into SANDAG’s supposed proprietary transportation model (built using public funds) that is being used to determine how our transportation sector for the next forty years will be built and funded. I suspect the assumptions made by SANDAG are flawed, but without knowing exactly what variables are used to make the forecast, it is difficult to know whether their assumptions are valid or reliable.