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Take the Survey – Bike the Vote!

Participate: Community Priorities Survey and Community Forum

It seems like it was just yesterday, but the time for the bike community of San Luis Obispo to stand up and be counted is here again. Every two years, the City of SLO establishes the top priorities to make San Luis Obispo an even better place to live, work and play. The City Council then matches the resources necessary to achieve these priorities through adopting the budget in June.  ibikeivoteThe adopted budget sets the City’s course of action for the next two years and helps the City to continue to provide the exceptional services and programs the community cherishes.

In previous years the bike community has been a strong presence in the preliminary Community Priorities Survey and at the Community Forum that follows, resulting in bike and pedestrian improvements throughout the town. While we’re happy to see the ongoing improvements, there is always more that needs improving. 

With recent narrow failure of Measure J, which would have generated about $25 million dollars per year for local roads and transportation countywide, it is now more important than ever for people who support bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure improvements to stand up and be heard. For residents of the City of SLO, there are two easy steps to take:

  • Take the Community Priorities Survey before midnight on December 14, 2016 and your answers will be summarized and presented to the City Council at the Community Forum in January. A link to the survey site is here: Community Priorities Survey
  • Attend the City Council Community Forum on January 10, 2017  from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Ludwick Community Center, 864 Santa Rosa St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 (map).  This forum is an opportunity to present your ideas to the Council and discuss them with other community members.

While many of us in San Luis Obispo will rightly raise our concerns for the projects that we see making the most difference in our daily lives, The Bike SLO County Advocacy Team suggests support for the four following priorities. Experience has shown us that when we focus on a concentrated number of projects we are able to see them adopted and built:

  1. Complete the next segment of the Railroad Safety Trail – Pepper Street to the train station – while continuing the effort to create a permanent trail separated from traffic citywide. (The city received a grant for the segment from Taft to Pepper Street, including a bicycle/pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks behind California Highway Patrol headquarters. Construction is scheduled to start in 2017.)
  2. Complete the Bob Jones Trail, with the priority of designing and constructing the Los Osos Valley Road to the Octagon Barn connection. (The feasibility study is complete and environmental study in the approval process.)
  3. Design and construct Safe Routes to School to Pacheco and Bishop Peak elementary schools, including the Broad Street Bicycle Boulevard from Monterey Street to Ramona Drive and safer bicycle/pedestrian crossings of Foothill Boulevard at Ferrini Road and Patricia/La Entrada. (The previous budget approved feasibility studies for these projects, which are under way.)
  4. Feasibility study for a Madonna Road protected bikeway and improvements to the bikeway crossing of Highway 101 between Marsh Street and Madonna bike path. (The proposed San Luis Ranch project may include some of these improvements.)

Survey Deadline: Midnight December 14th. Do it now! Community Priorities Survey

City Council Community Forum: January 10, 2017  from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Ludwick Community Center, 864 Santa Rosa St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 (map). Put it on your calendar now then show up and be heard on January 10th.

Pro-Tip: The Community Forum has historically been extremely crowded, with all seats packed, people standing and also observing from the lobby. If you enjoy sitting down, show up to get a seat early. If you enjoy standing up for 3+ hours at a time, show up at 6:30 or later. Bottled water? Bring some, and even bring some to give to folks sitting or standing nearby. The Ludwick Community Center can get pretty hot and stuffy when packed with the many civically involved citizens of SLO.

How to Design Cities for People: An Update

Meredith Glaser revisits questions from “How to Design Cities for People”  

A few weeks back we heard from SLO-raised but Amsterdam-based urban strategy and sustainable mobility consultant Meredith Glaser on How to Design Cities for People.

Meredith Glaser & Bike SLO County Executive Director Dan Rivoire at Bello Mundo Cafe

Meredith Glaser & Bike SLO County Executive Director Dan Rivoire at Bello Mundo Cafe

She works on a freelance basis with Dutch municipalities, on international projects with Copenhagenize Design Co, and as a guest researcher/lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. She curates and leads study tours for city leaders around the world. And with any spare time she blogs for Amsterdam Cycle Chic.

Her talk focused on three key ideas for more people-centered urban planning. First, we need to observe how people are currently using our streets and public spaces. Observing human behavior can provide valuable data for leveraging change. Second, providing choices for people makes them happy. Transportation and land use decisions that result in easily accessible services that are walkable and bikeable can change the way people move in and use their city. Finally, we need to hone and nourish our very human skill of imagining better streets that caterer more to people and places rather than cars and traffic.

Kinkerstraat Amsterdam

Kinkerstraat, Amsterdam. From top: 1981 via www.studiokoning.com; 2016 via @fietsprofessor; near future via City of Amsterdam

We had a packed house at Bella Mundo and after her talk many people asked some great (and tough) questions. Meredith took some time to write up more detailed responses to some of those tough questions.

What zoning changes would you prioritize if you were a SLO planner or policy maker?

I’m not a California zoning code expert, but in true cycling cities, like those in the Netherlands and Denmark, daily needs services are within close distances from where people live and work, and the zoning code is flexible enough to allow for uses to change and adapt with the changing needs of a neighborhood. Mixed use developments with grocery stores, pharmacies, child care and schools, doctors, and other specialty retail strategically placed on the ground level and concentrated on corner sites should be prioritized. Downtown SLO neighborhoods would greatly benefit from a full-service grocery store (or a couple) to support the daily needs of its immediately local residents. (The lot across from Bank of America would be an ideal location for a mixed use development with underground parking, ground floor services, and apartments above. Reminds me of several relatively new developments in Berkeley on University Avenue.) Downtown has ample space for infill and small scale, mixed use developments. Outside of downtown is a whole other issue. New housing developments (out off Broad for example) lack accessibility to services within walking or biking distance, which only perpetuates auto dominated lifestyles. New developments should be clustered near existing services; if they aren’t, then the developers need to provide logical and safe bicycle and walking connections to existing services, schools and other daily amenities. You can read a lot more about these kinds of examples in my new book The City at Eye Level, download it for free here.

Would you agree with the statement that we need to make driving more difficult? 

Right now our streets are set up in a way to benefit only one type of user – those driving cars.

Photo from Amsterdam Cycle Chic

photo from Amsterdam Cycle Chic

We’ve become very accustomed to the conveniences of an unbalanced transportation system that doesn’t reflect the actual costs on society – subsidized gasoline, wide streets, free or very cheap parking, and a ‘door-to-door’ righteous mentality. Modernizing our city streets means allocating some of that space to other users of the road. Best practice bicycle infrastructure that is safe and comfortable and gets people where they need to go has proved an effective way to calm traffic and ease congestion. (Imagine if those bicyclists were in cars!) Surveys from drivers in cities that have created more balanced streets showed that they appreciated the bicycle infrastructure: the infrastructure made the street easier to navigate because each user better understood their place, their role and how they should behave. So it’s not about making it more difficult to drive – it’s not a zero sum game – it’s about balancing out a very unbalanced system.

If we can’t have bike infrastructure, what’s the next best thing?

Amsterdam_Intersection

Photofrom Amsterdam Cycle Chic

Best practice bicycle infrastructure has been around for decades; it’s not new and we know how to do it. And compared to car infrastructure, it is low cost, low maintenance and benefits outweigh the risks. The next best thing to permanent bicycle infrastructure is temporary bicycle infrastructure – a trend that is already sweeping the nation. Pilot, pop-up, and demonstration projects are a great way to try out low-stress bicycle infrastructure. Plastic posts or planter boxes can create temporary protected bike lanes or sidewalk extensions. There no reason San Luis Obispo cannot try out some of the ideas that are already out there – no need to reinvent the wheel, especially with that budget surplus we heard about!

I’m not a planner or engineer; what’s my take away from this? What can I do?

Re-establishing the bicycle as a mainstream mode of transport means getting people just like you more involved. If you’re already using the bicycle as a daily transport mode, you are already doing a lot. Keep riding and keep smiling. Tell your friends to join you. Tell your colleagues to join. Have your company buy bikes to leave at the office so they bike to meetings instead of drive. You can advocate for better infrastructure and bicycle facilities by writing to the city council and showing up for city council meetings. Write letters to the Tribune. Join Bike SLO County.

How would you Copenhagenize our downtown streets?

Downtown streets were planned for cars and traffic; it’s time to give more space to people and places. There is ample space to play with and plenty of ideas already out there – just pick a couple and see what works. It’s not rocket science.

If you want more of an answer than that… The design of the streets downtown, for the most part, does not match the uses. Let’s take Higuera: three wide lanes of traffic plus parking on both sides.

Photo by Amsterdam Cycle Chic

Photo from Amsterdam Cycle Chic

This layout is not congruent with the ‘Main Street’ atmosphere, the high amount of pedestrians, and lends to a poor shopping experience. The sidewalks are so narrow people are forced to shuffle around each other. The trees provide a cozy ambiance but the parked cars benefit more from their shade than people. And the traffic is as noisy and distracting as those hideous blinking crosswalk signs. Plenty of bicyclists use the street but it’s unclear where they should ride or park their bicycles. This street (and many others) would majorly benefit from sidewalk widening on both sides, giving people more space to walk and linger – plus restaurants could place more seating outside where people can people watch and enjoy the full sun of that street. Parklets can provide a temporary solution for bike parking or restaurant tables or just more space for people to sit. Raised bike ways (or at least 6′ bike lanes with buffers for car doors) on both sides could allow for increased accessibility to shops as well as through movement while remaining low-stress, comfortable, and intuitive for all users. Again, there are great bones here and lots of space to play with!

How do you convince engineers? Or rather, why are engineers in the Netherlands already “doing it right”?

For 7,000 years streets were designed for people and by people. 100 years ago that all changed and our streets were engineered for the first time in human history. It appears as though engineers aren’t going away any time soon, so it might be time to inject some real life and real design into the engineering curriculum. In the Netherlands where cycling is an every day, mainstream form of transportation, engineers are also bicycling so they experience their work on a daily basis. That’s not the case in other cities and towns, especially in the U.S. It might be very difficult for an American engineer to imagine (and design, no less) bicycle infrastructure if he or she has never experienced best practice infrastructure first hand. I think that’s why study tours are so important. Feeling and experiencing comfortable, safe bicycle infrastructure that’s been around for a century – plus talking to the experts themselves – is better than any PowerPoint presentation.

If you’re interested in study tours check out the Copenhagenize Master Class or contact Meredith for a custom study tour in the Netherlands.

Do you think Cal Poly should play a role?

Absolutely. University decision makers need to make bicycles and mass transit clear priorities, but again linking these networks and nodes seamlessly with housing, daily needs and services, and connections to the downtown core. Bicycle parking should be ample, obvious, and intuitively placed. Policies also must limit students from bringing cars into SLO – but that has to be combined with land use decisions that provide for the daily needs of students.

Cal Poly is not the only stakeholder though. In addition to transitional city officials, key decision makers from local hospitals, SLO school district, developers, Old Mission Church and schools, major employers, and the Chamber of Commerce need to get on board. As I said last Wednesday, this isn’t about getting more bicycles on the streets of San Luis Obispo, it’s about giving people more choices for how they get around. It’s about balancing out our streets and giving more space to people. And it’s about building a better, happier, more livable town for the children growing up here.

Meredith Glaser is an urban strategy and mobility consultant. She is originally from San Luis Obispo, holds Masters degrees in urban planning and public health from UC Berkeley, and has been based in the Netherlands since 2010. Meredith holds a guest appointment at the University of Amsterdam, where she co-leads a summer program on urban cycling and conducts research on cross-national policy transfer and knowledge exchange related to mobility. She hosts other university-level student groups and international professional delegations for cycling and mobility study tours. Meredith also directs the Amsterdam office for Copenhagenize Design Co., which advises cities and towns around the world regarding bicycle urbanism, reestablishing the bicycle as transport in cities, policy, planning, communications and general urban design. In her spare time she blogs for Amsterdam Cycle Chic. She lives in Amsterdam with her husband, daughter, 4 bikes and no car.

Bicycle in Bike Lane on Santa Rosa St

SLO PD to focus on Bike Safety

Bike and Drive Smart on Thursday, February 4th (and every other day of the year…)

The San Luis Obispo Police Department will step up their bike safety enforcement operations on Thursday, February 4th, with focused enforcement on collision-causing factors bike safety stop signinvolving motorists and bicycle riders. Special patrols will be deployed to crack down on drivers and bicyclists who violate traffic laws meant to protect all roadway users.

The Police Department has mapped out locations from over the past three years where bicycle-involved collisions have occurred and noted the violations that led to those crashes. Officers will be looking for violations made by car drivers and bike riders alike that can lead to life changing injuries.

The following safety tips can save lives and should be practiced every day, not just on days of increased police enforcement, and not just in the City of San Luis Obispo:

Car Drivers:

  • Yield to cyclists at intersections and as directed by signs and signals. Failure to yield is the #1 reason for accidents when cars are at fault
  • ‘Share the road’ with bicyclists
  • Be courteous; California law now mandates at least three feet of clearance when passing bike riders
  • Look for cyclists before opening a car door or pulling out from a driveway or parking space
  • Be especially watchful for riders when making turns, either left or right
  • Be predictable, use turn signals
  • Obey traffic signals, speed limits and stop signs

Bicycle Drivers:

  • When cycling in the street, cyclists must drive in the same direction as traffic. Wrong way cycling is the #1 reason for accidents when bicycles are at fault
  • Don’t ride on sidewalks. People and cars aren’t looking for you there (and it’s illegal in the City of SLO)
  • Be predictable, signal turns and stops with your hands
  • When possible, make eye contact with drivers
  • Bicycle Drivers are considered vehicle operators; you are required to obey the same rules of the road as other vehicle operators, including obeying traffic signs, stop signs, signals, and lane markings
  • Bicyclists can increase their visibility to drivers by wearing fluorescent or brightly colored clothing during the day, and at dawn and dusk
  • To be noticed when riding at night, the law requires a front light and a red reflector to the rear
  • For additional safety, use a flashing rear light, and use retro-reflective tape or markings on equipment or clothing

Bike safety, and road safety in general, is something to strive for 24/7, 365. Let’s make the roads safer for everyone.

Like bikes? Join us! It’s free!

SLO City Planning Commission to Address Key Bicycle Projects this Week

The San Luis Obispo City Planning Commission is set to consider two important bicycle issues at their Wednesday night meeting, and the Bicycle Coalition would love to see your support! There is no speaking required, but you can if you would like. The two issues to be reviewed at the meeting include:
  • The preferred trail alignment of the Bob Jones Trail from Los Osos Valley Road to the Octagon Barn
  • The Draft 2013 Bicycle Transportation Plan

When: Wednesday September 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Where: City Council Chambers, 990 Palm St, SLO (map)

SLOCityCouncil_4.10.12

Your Bicycle Coalition has been hard at work with our team of advocates as we continue the positive progress of the Bob Jones Trail for users countywide. In addition to the future of this popular trail, the commission will also be considering the Draft 2013 Bicycle Transportation Plan – the blueprint of future bicycle facilities in the City of SLO. Both issues are key as we work together to make SLO County an incredible place for bicycles!

View the September 11, 2013 Planning Commission agenda.

Bob Jones Trail

There is no need to speak in support of the proposed alignment, just being there to show the bicycle community’s overwhelming support for the alignment along the scenic creek is very helpful.

If you would like to speak:
-Urge commissioners to support the preferred alignment along the creek and creek setback (read more about the preferred alignment).

Draft 2013 Bicycle Transportation Plan

The Bicycle Transportation Plan creates a guiding blueprint for increasing bicycle ridership and future infrastructure improvements to improve connectivity and safety for all road users. Your Bicycle Coalition will be asking commissioners to recommend approval of the draft plan to the SLO City Council.

If you would like to speak: (We encourage you to do so!)
-Urge commissioners to recommend approval of the plan to the SLO City Council.
-You can also view the plan online (planned projects start at page 52, Appendix A, all are sorted by area of SLO City) and take note of the specific projects that are important to you and your family.

If you cannot attend:
-Take a look at the plan online, and send a quick email the Deputy Director of Long Range Planning, Kim Murry (kmurry@slocity.org) the specific projects that are important to you.

 

Advocacy Alert

City of SLO Circulation Update: More Bicycles!

The City of San Luis Obispo is in the process of updating the Land Use and Circulation element of the City’s General Plan. These parts of the plan relate specifically to creating a guide for future development, preservation and mobility (how we get around) San Luis Obispo.

This Land Use and Circulation update is part of the City’s General Plan, the blueprint for the future. It is representative of the values and vision of the community, and your opinion matters.

Our local governments know we people are interested in more bicycle connectivity in SLO and beyond, but they might not know that a majority of people want these improvements. This is your chance to have your voice heard and help increase the number of bikeways locally.

Wednesday May 16th is the first public workshop for this update, and you are invited to attend and speak up on behalf of better bikeways in San Luis Obispo. The Bicycle Coalition will be there, on behalf of our 600 members, to share our vision for better bicycle facilities in the city.

If you can’t attend the workshop, we’d encourage you to take their online survey to share your support for bicycles in the city. All responses are anonymous, and can have a large impact on the update of the plan. Take the survey here.

When: Wednesday May 16th, 6:30 pm
Where: The Monday Club, 1815 Monterey St, SLO (map)
Why: Help shape the vision of connectivity in San Luis Obispo