Almost a month ago a bicycle track that was both loved and well used was torn down by the city of San Diego. This track was part of a larger bicycle park built on a unused and undeveloped land in Point Loma at the corner of Famosa and Nimitz Boulevard. The bicycle park was built by a group of friends who shared a passion for riding bikes and who wanted to share that love with others in the community.
According to Scott Irwin, one of the supporters of the bicycle park which is now a desolate space,
The bicycle park quickly became a local hangout for children and adults in the community. We were picking up trash, making sure kids were wearing helmets, and promoting being involved in a positive outdoor activity. We built jumps for all ages and ability levels and even taught the neighborhood kids how to fix flat tires and tune up their brakes. Parents were bringing their kids on the weekends. It was awesome!
Some of the children who derived a lot of use from the bicycle park. Click image to watch the entire video.
The supporters of the bicycle park felt the idea of a bicycle park at the corner of Nimitz and Famosa was too good to die because of the tremendous positive impact the park had on the community. They formed a group called Freeride Famosa with the purpose of developing a multi-use community park.
After the park was leveled, Freeride Famosa contacted the city and started working with them to convert this undeveloped land into a community bicycle park.
District Two Councilmember, Kevin Faulconer, had his office reach out to Freeride Famosa on February 23rd to discuss the idea of recreating that beloved bicycle park at Site 22 (a.k.a the undeveloped land on the corner of Famosa and Nimitz). Now, Freeride Famosa has a meeting this coming Monday (March, 12) to discuss the transfer of the ownership of Site 22 from the San Diego Housing Commission to the City of San Diego for the purpose of developing a city bicycle park. During this meeting Freeride Famosa will begin conversations with the City Park & Rec Dept. about the steps necessary for development. The meeting will be attended by the following individuals:
Council President Pro Tem Faulconer
Michael Patton - Council Representative for the Ocean Beach / Point Loma area
Rick Gentry - President, San Diego Housing Commission
Stacey LoMedico - Park and Recreation Department
Victoria Joes - Mayor’s Office
and members of Freeride Famosa.
Freeride Famosa is currently developing a proposal to share during this meeting. I will post a copy of this proposal as soon as I receive a copy of it. However Freeride Famosa still needs your help to encourage the transfer of land ownership from the San Diego Housing Commission for the purpose of developing a community bicycle park at this location. Here is how you can help.
Everyone in Point Loma who supports Freeride Famosa's efforts are very motivated to create something positive for the community and deserve all the support they can get.
I contacted Tom Landre at the city two weeks ago regarding the configuration of the new lanes northbound on PH between Taylor and the Naval Base Pt Loma Public Works driveway. The city striped the new lane such that the bike lane and the curb parking lane are one and the same. Photo:
PCH bike lane north of Taylor St. (Old Town) - looking north. Photo: Flickr/crosby_cj
It is a confusing configuration because the buffered lane emerges out of the curb parking lane.
Tom emailed me this morning to indicate that work orders have been issued to fix the configuration by adding a bike lane next to the parking lanes between Taylor and the start of the buffered lanes to the north. Apparently the goal is to get it "fast tracked" so the work is done soon. Thanks to Tom for the quick response to my inquiry.
If you notice any problems, please do contact San Diego's Bike Coordinator Tom Landre. Tom Landre can be reached via email or by phone at: (619) 533-3045. Do send in details about your own advocacy efforts and I will happily post any and all successes no matter how small.
Sharrows have appeared on University Avenue in Hillcrest. Read our previous coverage of sharrows and the purpose they serve.
Sharrows in Hillcrest. Photo by SDBikeCommuter.com reader
And Pacific Highway in Old Town finally got a long deserved bike lane upgrade over the weekend. And cyclists in the region immediately were seen riding on it. Once the resurfacing team gets around to resurfacing the area, this will be a true joy to ride on.
New Buffered Bike Lane on Pacific Highway between Taylor and the OB Bike Path. Photo by San Diego reader, Sigurd
Have you noticed any other road surface upgrades anywhere in San Diego County? Share the details in the comments below.
In 1990, a lifelong cyclist, Richard Allen Dreger was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bicycle southbound on Pacific Highway by Barnett Avenue. As any cyclist who has ever ridden that stretch in San Diego knows, it is a fast paced road that is extremely unfriendly for cyclists to ride on. But alternatives to that route are few or far away and so it remains a primarily auto-dominated route. Twenty one years after Dreger’s death, the City of San Diego striped a buffered bike lane on Pacific Highway by Barnett Avenue after Dreger’s parents tearfully pleaded with the City to do something to fix that road section at the 2010 Bicycle Master Plan Update Open House.
Buffered Bike Lane on Pacific Highway. Photo by Randy Van Vleck
Last year Jim Swarzman, a local cyclist, was killed while riding a brevet on Highway 101 in Encinitas. It is a stretch of road that could greatly benefit from a road diet and thus encourage more residents and tourists to ride along a beautiful stretch of the Pacific Coast. The Traffic Engineer in Encinitas, is considering striping a buffered bike lane on that same stretch of the Pacific where Swarzman was killed.
However, a buffered bike lane is not currently in the auto-centric California Vehicle Code - the manual that has codified all road treatments that affect all its road users. Clearly the antiquated California Vehicle Code ought to be upgraded to acknowledge the existence of all its road users.
In what seemed like a promising start to 2012, a state bill that is currently moving through the California Assembly and could have resulted in an incredibly progressive change in our transportation system recently got watered down in the State Assembly Transportation Committee. The bill’s language was amended by an organization that calls itself CABO, California Association of Bicycling Organizations. This small and relatively unknown, group argued that rather than create a law that would have created the sort of bicycle facilities that people around the country repeatedly keep asking for, they argued that it was instead more prudent to establish an experimental process that would study “nonstandard planning, design, and construction features in the construction of bikeways and roadways where bicycle travel is permitted”.
What may seem like a rather reasonable amendment deliberately fails to acknowledge that many of these road treatments that will get more people riding have been implemented and tested and shown to work well beyond initial predictions or expectations all around the country. It seems disingenuous to refer to these bicycle facilities as non-standard coming right on the heels of New York City’s announcement that the city experienced the lowest number of traffic fatalities in over 100 years as a result of looking at the streetscape through a different lens. Mia Birk, the former Bike Coordinator in Portland, transformed Portland into one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the country by looking at the city creatively and offering the public alternative choices to transport themselves besides the automobile.
So what does this have to do with California? As Bob Hawkins at the Union Tribune wrote last week, San Diego’s minimal investment in bicycle infrastructure and lack of creative thinking in how we should be redesigning our roads, manifested itself in an economic loss when we lost Velo Cult Bike Shop to Portland. Velo Cult’s Sky Boyer moved to Portland primarily because of his frustration in dealing with a bicycle unfriendly city administration. This is something that Jay Porter the proprietor of The Linkery and El Take it Easy, has also experienced in dealing with the City’s unwillingness to do more to get cyclists riding. Living in a region where our local administration is terrified of thinking creatively in order to address problems that affect us is ensuring that San Diegans will continue to have less choice in how they transport themselves.
Thus in watering down the language of AB 819 CABO has ensured that for the time being California will continue to be conservative in its transportation policy while cities and states all around the U.S. accelerate change before our very eyes. While California continues to reel from national and international economic catastrophes, we should be looking for ways out of this financial gutter, not ensuring that we continue to be backward in how we view our transportation sector.
Buffered Bike Lane on Pacific Highway. Photo by Randy Van Vleck
Thankfully, people like Jim Lundquist was willing to exercise his engineering judgment to ensure that cyclists would be allowed to ride safely on a popular commuter route and thus ease up on our growing traffic congestion. What remains to be seen is whether cyclists in Encinitas will also be given that same choice. In order to gauge public interest in a buffered bike lane, I have created a petition that will be forwarded to the Traffic Engineer in Encinitas. CABO representatives maintain that a buffered bike lane is not a safe option. While I remain unclear about CABO’s real intentions, offering more choices to Californians should be the cornerstone of our transportation policy. And our willingness to learn from other cities and states around the country should determine how we tackle the problems we face now and in the future.
The Rose Creek Bike Path that begins on the north end of East Mission Bay Drive and ends at Mission Bay Drive has long been the site for homeless encampments and has generally been neglected by the city. But Tom Landre, the city's Bike Coordinator is working to ensure that the path is clean and a pleasant and useful route for the city's cyclists
Tom Landre has been working with the SDPD and with the Public Works Department to clean up the Rose Creek Bike Path. Landre says the following,
we are working hard to get the Rose Creek Bike path cleaned up. The police department has been helping out by removing the homeless camp. The public works dept cleared out the trash and will be doing so again as shopping carts and other junk are reappearing. We are also trying to get the graffiti removed under the bridge.
San Diego has a new innovative program to help the homeless, you can read more about it here.
