News, Links, and Other Views

San Diego

  • We received a $10,000 grant from PeopleForBikes for our campaign on El Cajon Boulevard, one of the city’s eight most deadly corridors. Our campaign, Complete the Boulevard, will focus on reducing all traffic deaths and serious injuries to zero by 2020.
  • Leo Wilson, chair of Uptown Planners, and also a representative for Bankers Hill Community Association (not Bankers Hill Community Group) has sued the city of San Diego for implementing the newest segment of buffered bike lanes on Fifth Avenue between Upas and Laurel. Wilson states he’s worried about the “process” in which the city implemented the bike lanes while his lawsuit alleges vague concerns over how CEQA, the state’s environmental law, was implemented.
  • Meanwhile, there is nary a peep about the “trail of damage” being left behind in Uptown’s Hillcrest by drunk drivers.
  • Bankers Hill Community Group (the pro-bike group in Bankers Hill) is petitioning the city to make Sixth Avenue safer.
  • A new blog, by a (anonymous) resident who says YES. San Diego Yimby has some ideas for some low hanging fruit that San Diego can pluck before it goes rotten.
  • Theresa Lynn Owens, the driver who drove the wrong way on Fiesta Island last summer and injured several riders from the San Diego Bike Club including  Juan Carlos Viñolo who now has permanent paralysis from the waist down, has been deemed mentally competent to stand trial. Viñolo, after spending 103 days in the hospital, went home before Thanksgiving.
  • An excellent piece on how building more roads doesn’t ease (vehicle) traffic congestion, but instead makes it worse.
  • San Diego’s own Cycling Camp has assumed ownership of the Great Western Bicycle Rally in Paso Robles.
  • Air quality in San Ysidro is terrible, and SANDAG has plans to make it better by encouraging more residents to travel by bicycle or by foot.
  • We’ve endorsed the Frost Plan for University Avenue in Uptown. What is the Frost Plan? Walt Chambers has the writeup.
  • Hutton Marshall of Uptown News, wrote about protected bike lanes.
  • Road Bike Party has made its way to San Diego and the video is pretty amazing. Pretty neat to see San Diego featured so well. Unlike Road Bike Party 2, there is no footage of riding on our city streets (let alone backwards on a slope as Martyn Ashton demonstrated). Maybe there was a reason for that editorial decision.

San Diego County

  • Brian Grover, chairman of the Encinitas Bike and Pedestrian Committee, has been tapped to head Encinitas’ traffic and public safety commission.
  • Vista plans to create a safe network  to encourage, promote and provide safety for residents who want to ride but come face to face with the fallacious arguments by residents too attached to free parking even at the cost of public safety.
  • The appellate court has ruled that San Diego County’s Climate Plan is illegal.
  • The SANDAG board voted 20-1 to appeal the appellate court ruling over their $200 billion transportation plan. Here is more about the one person who voted not to. There seems to be some explanation behind why the board almost always votes unanimously on decisions.
  • Recent protests stemming from anger over the decision in Ferguson and New York City have resulted in protesters blocking traffic on freeway interstates, including here in San Diego. The story of building interstates is about creating segregation and vaccums of economic disparity, to move vehicles quickly at a high societal cost. But as Alex in NextSTL writes, there is something powerful when protesters shut down a freeway to express their message. As Chuck Marohn writes, “Ferguson is the natural byproduct of this auto-based, government-led development experiment we have undertaken. Failing suburbs are where the power shifts of our time are concentrating desperation and discontent
  • San Diego didn’t make the list of resilient cities despite the city’s proposed climate action plan which includes increasing bike mode share to 18% by 2035.  Perhaps San Diego is not aiming high enough?

California

Elsewhere

  • When discussing fatalities (and thus plans to eliminate road traffic falities), fatality rates is not the same as fatality numbers.  Here is the League’s take.
  • The Netherlands (a place not known for its sunny weather) has opened a bike path that converts sunlight to power.
  • Paris plans to ban cars from its city center.
  • Among the many reasons shared spaces is not a panacea for traffic crashes, the challenges they post to the blind. Separated bike infrastructure, not shared space, benefits all users – where they ride a bicycle or not
  • In news about mayors who aren’t leaders, the Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has ordered the removal of the city’s first protected bike lanes.
  • Now that Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford is gone, the city plans on implementing a road diet to increase safety and provide safe spaces to walk and ride a bicycle.
  • The history of the automobile began with bicycles

The plan was to take a small break while we finish up some administrative work, but too many of you missed these roundups and so they are back earlier than planned. Hope you have much to think about with this week’s edition.