News, Links, and Other Views
City of San Diego
- San Diego’s bike share will be delayed, and the delay is costing the city money.
- A rider was seriously injured on Pershing Drive and the I-5 ramp. Meanwhile, Portland is already exploring how to redesign its intersections. When is San Diego going to step up its traffic engineering game?
- Pacific Beach is now home to some neighborhood-themed bike corrals.
- Want to be more involved with your community but don’t know where to start? If you live in the Downtown/Uptown/Mid-City neighborhoods you may find one or more groups that suit your particular cause or concern.
- San Diego has sent out its pitch to be a host city to the 2024 Summer Olympics. The Olympic boosters may want to reevaluate their claims about our transportation system. Do they think that the world’s best athletes sitting in vehicle traffic is worthy of praise? The boosters also got dinged with a “misleading” label by the Voice of San Diego fact checkers.
- A week ago, a woman walking her dog in Ocean Beach was a victim of a hit and run collision.
- Jay Porter, one of the first people to be profiled by BikeSD, was instrumental in 30th Street’s rejuvenation and wrote about why he left San Diego for Oakland. One of his complaints is about the lack of bike infrastructure that has been implemented in San Diego in the last 15 years as compared to nearly any other city in the country.
- Voice of San Diego’s Ana Ceballos writes that Uptown may be warming to bike infrastructure, and yet some business owners are panicking over the worst case scenario once floated by SANDAG representatives (up to 10% of parking spots could be converted).
- Meanwhile, Jacob McKean the CEO of Modern Times Brewery, is desperately wishing for a bike corral, a parklet or a bike lane. Actually, he sounds a little more than desperate to be anywhere but in the midddle of a sea of vehicle parking.
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84% of randomly sampled San Diego residents support improving bicycling infrastructure; 62% still support improving bicycling infrastructure even if it means removing a lane of traffic or parking, with the highest levels of support among non-Whites and Latinos.
- If Caltrans or SANDAG isn’t willing to acknowledge the importance of implementing a balanced transportation system, a group of advocates are going to teach that importance using legal remedies.
San Diego Region
- Want to experience some of the Temecula area’s most scenic routes on a bicycle? Sign up for the Temecula Valley Century. Routes range from a 7-mile Family Ride to any one of the four other distances: 104, 66, 52 and 31 miles.
- What would the construction of a local casino mean for local ridership and traffic? Our local opera and long-distance aficionado pens down some thoughts.
- On a related note to Jamul’s proposed casino, our elected officials are also showing some gumption and have stepped up to fight Caltrans, as led by County Supervisor Dianne Jacob who filed a lawsuit against Caltrans.
California
- The state of California has not increased its minimum insurance coverage in 40 years. In California a driver is only required to carry $15,000 in liability insurance coverage.
- Our very own Sam Ollinger was honored to be profiled along with some of the most extraordinary leaders in the bike movement in California.
Elsewhere
- Our new Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, has pledged to make bicycle and pedestrian safety a priority.
- Foxx also pledged to have the U.S. Department of Transportation post details about the Highway Trust Fund Balance which is mere months away from going broke. Keep that in mind when you think about whether the majority of drivers are paying their full share of keeping the roads in a functional state.
- Citibike in New York City has been a great success, but some New Yorkers don’t find that the service meets their needs.
- Atlanta got its first cycle track last year, and now the city has plans and an implementation strategy to construct an entire network of “high quality bicycle facilities” in the core of the city. Meanwhile, San Diego’s first road diet on 4th and 5th Avenue in Banker’s Hill (originally scheduled for January and then postponed to February) still hasn’t been installed.
- “Want to know how it is that we spend so much money on transport infrastructure and get so little value? It’s because far too many of our highway dollars go into boondoggle mega-projects ginned up through political pressure … instead of into projects that make transportation sense.” This comes to us from Oregon, but state DOTs seem insistent on demonstrating how wasteful they are with public funds. For example, see Ohio.
- Things have gotten so bad on our streets that race car drivers have resorted to pleading with drivers to be nice to cyclists.
- Philadelphia’s Jon Geeting has mapped out the city’s most dangerous streets for walking. Preventable road deaths have still not become a rallying point around the country.
- What do protected bike lanes (cycle tracks) cost compared to the mega projects that the DOTs are eager to push? Some perspective from Seattle.