San Antonio is asking you where to put new bike lanes

A decade in the past, a nationwide survey of city bicycling put San Antonio among the many backside third of the 50 largest U.S. cities in such benchmarks as fatalities per capita, miles of motorcycle lanes and the share of inhabitants who bike to work — for this metropolis, a measly one-tenth of 1 p.c.

At present, dozens of miles of motorcycle lanes have been added and a metropolis bike/pedestrian czar (“pedestrian mobility engineer”) has been on the job a full yr. However many avid cyclists nonetheless consider San Antonio’s driving community is disjointed and infrequently harmful in visitors.

Now the Public Works division desires individuals to make use of its new, interactive web site to inform town, amongst different issues, particularly the place it ought to construct its subsequent bike lanes, funding for which was permitted by voters within the 2017 bond program.

Most essential, mentioned bike czar Timothy Hayes, is getting citizen enter on the choice of some 4 to 6 downtown and midtown corridors the place cyclists wish to see new bike routes.

The web site accommodates 21 pre-selected corridors and other people can select those they consider ought to turn out to be priorities, he mentioned. A couple of half-million {dollars} is obtainable for the development program, he mentioned, which may construct a mixture of motorcycle lanes, both striped or protected by curbs, and park paths.

“I don’t assume I’ll hear many surprises,” mentioned Hayes in an amused tone that advised he already will get loads of suggestions from fellow cyclists. He takes a bicycle to work every morning over a patchwork of Flores Road sidewalks,

The choice on the place to construct or designate a motorbike lane just isn’t so simple as determining if there are apparent customers and logical locations the place they might wish to go. Typically town owns very restricted rights of manner on a particular avenue, and companies and residents are reluctant to lose on-street parking that is perhaps compromised by a motorbike lane.

“We’ve got to make choices which can be truthful and equitable to everybody,” mentioned Hayes, a civil engineer who was employed in 2019 from throughout the Transportation & Capital Enhancements division, now referred to as Public Works.

One other activity he hopes the survey will information is figuring out which roads needs to be placed on a “street weight-reduction plan,” that’s, trimming four-lane streets into three lanes with a middle flip lane, a preferred plan in some circles that federal research present can scale back accidents.

Amongst some aggrieved cyclists in San Antonio, the announcement of a brand new survey didn’t advantage a lot applause.

“I really feel like there’s been plenty of research and studies, however not a lot motion,” mentioned Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales, an avid bike owner who usually plans holidays primarily based on how bike-friendly the locations are. She chairs the council’s transportation committee.

“I used to be actually disillusioned that this (web site survey) was not shared with council,” Gonzales mentioned. “It’s strictly employees pushed and in my expertise, whenever you do that you simply received’t get a great end result. We’ve got not made a lot progress in any respect within the core of town.”

Bryan Martin, vice chairman of Bike San Antonio and the founding father of Bronko Bikes, which builds and sells electrical bikes, referred to as town’s progress on bike lanes “abysmal.”

“If you wish to see a metropolis that takes bikes critically, go to Austin,” he mentioned.

Martin mentioned he really welcomes the survey, however mentioned cyclists have come to count on “bait and swap” ways from town in relation to placing bikes and pedestrians forward of automobiles.

In keeping with Public Works maps and paperwork, town had 34 miles of bicycle “amenities” in 2000 – which means bike lanes and paths, some organized as routes. By 2004, that grew to 66 miles, then 136 miles in 2009.

When the present bike grasp plan was completed, in 2011, there reportedly have been some 200 miles which meant 0.4 miles, on common, for each sq. mile of San Antonio. The nationwide common among the many largest 50 cities was 4 occasions that.

Gonzales mentioned Public Works is perhaps “too engineering heavy” and will maybe velocity up its decision-making and building if it used extra bike-friendly city planners and fewer engineers, who’ve primarily labored on easy methods to accommodate automobiles.

“I do know Tim Hayes is an avid bike owner. I see him driving round city together with his youngsters,” she mentioned. “However he’s an engineer and he makes use of that very same lens to make his choices. … It simply appears that San Antonio is so gradual on all this. We’ve made good progress in the previous couple of years on sidewalks. Not a lot on bike lanes.”

Final yr, throughout a Metropolis Council assembly on contentious plans to develop the Broadway Hall, Martin mentioned stakeholders mustn’t see the dialogue as “automotive individuals versus bikes, buses and pedestrians,” and that metropolis corridor “should not take a look at pedestrians as objects for automobiles to go round.”

Councilwoman Ana Sandoval bought applause from the bike crowd that day when she requested an engineering agency’s principal, after viewing an elaborate aerial mannequin of Broadway, “Do you may have a mannequin for what it appears to be like prefer to be a bicyclist?”

“I do assume we’ve some robust (vehicle) bias in a few of these shows,” she mentioned.

The town survey will be discovered right here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SABikes