Jim Lundquist – The City’s Bicycle Coordinator

A few weeks ago, the city’s bicycle coordinator, Jim Lundquist, was gracious enough to meet with me to talk about bicycling. Over lunch I got to know a little bit more about the city’s appointed bicycle guru, his background, his motivation, his aspirations and his vision to make San Diego a world class city for bicyclists.

Jim Lundquist is the current Bicycle Coordinator in the City of San Diego. He is a local, having graduated from a local high school, local community college and then graduating from San Diego State University. By trade he is a transportation geographer which is a combination of engineering and geography and oddly enough, truck safety classes.

As a college student, he worked at the Metropolitan Transit Development Board where he helped plan the trolley system and the interfacing bus routes to the trolley. As a student he also worked with the Citizens for Rail California, a lobby group to improve rail passenger service that was successful in getting train service up and down California.

After graduation, Lundquist became a Junior Transportation Planner with the Metropolitan Transit Development Board. After the opening of the San Diego Trolley system, Lundquist began to work with the actual trolleys where he was the engineer in the trolley cab and the lead trainer for trolley operators. At this time, Lundquist had a condo on A Street and he biked to work downtown. He stated that this was his second job where he commuted by bicycle, his first being a newspaper delivery boy in the suburb of Spring Valley.

From the trolleys, Lundquist then moved to the County to work as a transportation planner and helped plan bus system. Eventually, he began working at the City of San Diego in their Engineering Department where he spent seven years using his experience at the County to review traffic studies. After the city’s previous Bicycle Coordinator, Brad Jacobsen, retired, Lundquist was made the City’s Bicycle Coordinator.

Lundquist, at the start of his tenure as a Bicycle Coordinator, had zero professional experience with bicycles as he had always been a casual rider. But he decided he wanted to do the job well and he decided to ride the 10 mile one way commute to work. It was a commute that opened his eyes to the various issues that cyclists face. He immediately noticed a need for another east-west corridor from downtown San Diego ideally located north of Island Avenue.

Although Lundquist is the city’s Bicycle Coordinator, it is just one of the two hats he wears. He spends most of his time dealing with Caltrans issues. For example, he is currently working on a direct auto access ramp on Hilary Drive. He lamented the fact that he only spends 20% of his time on bicycling issues and he wants to flip that figure.

After being anointed the City’s Bicycle Coordinator, Lundquist first reviewed the Bicycle Master Plan. As Bicycle Coordinator, he currently serves as the project manager on current and ongoing bicycle projects to ensure that they are being implemented correctly. After reviewing the Bicycle Master Plan, Lundquist then contacted Kathy Keehan at the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition as she was the voice of the region’s bicyclists. He then proceeded to spend the next four months on the job riding with Keehan to get a feel for the problems and issues that bicyclists around the city face.

Lundquist then proceeded to obtain funding to fix the problematic areas – both big and small.

I asked what he thought was most lacking for cyclists and Lundquist admitted that he noticed that bicycling was just not on people’s radar. People aren’t aware of bicyclists or bicyclists’ issues. He thinks that the biggest need is to create an awareness, that the Lose the Roaditude Campaign sought to solve. But in addition to making people aware, he wants to “develop a culture that embraces the bike as an equal form of transportation.” But Lundquist thinks that while this culture is developing, he feels that there are competing interests within the bicycling community itself in terms of what is needed. He thinks that this is a shame because these are interests that a majority of the population aren’t even aware of. And it is a shame since the fitness, transportation and recreation cyclists are all competing for the same dollars that everybody else is.

I asked Lundquist what the most underutilized resource for bicyclists were and he said that they were the bike racks on city buses. He thought they were especially useful if people didn’t want to climb up mesas on the bicycle. He thought that San Diego’s public transportation system to be very useful in getting around the city. He himself prefers to go multi-modal when he feels lazy or when he is uncomfortable riding, especially in the dark.

Lundquist’s future plans involve spending more time on bicyclists’ concerns and improving conditions for bicyclists. He wants to get additional staff so he can focus exclusively on bicycles because he has no interest in dealing with Caltrans issues, but sees that desire hard to fulfill. Because of the city’s budgetary woes, it is politically unpopular to spend money on say, hiring staff, even if would result in a net savings. So he thinks his desire may be a long shot. But once he does get staffing help he intends to go out and ride more and figure out how to make journeys pleasant for cyclists

He then admitted that he is known as a ram-rodder – one who thinks outside the box, and likes to get things done regardless of blame or praise.

Knowing that our local Bicycle Coordinator is a ram-rodder gave me the impression that San Diego has a good advocate at the City level. I thank Mr. Lundquist for spending time with me answering my questions. I encourage you to contact Jim Lundquist at:

Fax: (619) 533-3651

Phone: (619) 533-3045 to bring his attention to issues that you face as a bicyclist in the city.

Edit: Thank you to Trevor for providing the correct phone number.