Sent to LAB's State and Policy Manager Ken McLeod, Board President Karen Jenkins, and Exec Director Alex Doty
Hi, Ken, Alex, and Karen. I hope this finds you well and riding.
Thank you very much for considering the Los Alamos application to be a
Bicycle-Friendly Community. As a bicyclist who has made this community
my home since August of 2001, I appreciate this.
I wear various hats in these parts but am speaking for myself here.
Although on the board of the Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico and chair
of the Los Alamos County Transportation Board, these are my thoughts,
not either Board's. Now that I have that firewall out of the way, here
goes.
Thanks for the feedback; we discussed this last night (12/1/16) at the monthly
Transportation Board meeting. Frankly, I was a little disappointed in
the League's decision to award honorable mention instead of a metal
color. As former Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico President, the late Dr.
Gail Ryba, once told me as we rode through Los Alamos a decade ago, Los
Alamos is a great place to be a bicyclist--and it is far better today
thanks to the dedication of our county government and professional staff
at making improvements. The evaluation criteria on the League's
application cover a small slice of reality.
Bike lanes and analogous stuff seem to be almost a litmus test. A
decade ago as Vice-Chair of our County Transportation Board, I wrote and
got passed the 2005 Bike Plan so that we had guidance to rebuild our
major N-S arterial, Diamond Drive, with bike lanes and we did so with
full support of County Council. Those lanes are great and as I said at
several national meetings, connect many of our homes to many of our
destinations. We looked at various designs for our E-W major arterial,
Trinity Drive, for example, and adding bike lanes in most of the studied
configurations would likely have made the road more dangerous to
cyclists as there are numerous side streets and curbcuts that would
complicate traffic. Instead, we have extensively traffic calmed the
parallel street, Canyon/Central. The county has no control over the
design or build of roads on the federal facility, our national lab,
which is administered separately by the Dept. of Energy and its prime
contractor, Los Alamos National Security. As far as urban design, we
passed the 2010 Policy for the Design of Streets and Rights of Way that
explicitly calls out multimodal transportation, including bicycling.
We are adding a mix of more pathways and quiet onstreet facilities.
We just spent over a million dollars to bridge a canyon so that we can
expand the coverage of the Canyon Rim Trail. This will add a key
separate pathway to allow cyclists who are riding from downtown to new,
eastern developments a safe way to avoid the 50 mph State Route 502.
Ribbon cutting is not too far off. A set of bicycling facilities in our
historic district is being designed as a result of a citizen initiative
blessed by County Council.
The criticism of not enough Bike Month activities is a good one but
will involve someone figuring out a way to get the county and the
Federal facility that makes up half of town and provides many of our
jobs on the same wavelength. I brought it up recently with the associate
national lab director since I work at LANL.
I am perplexed by the criticism to "Improve public decision-making
processes for transportation improvements, including bicycling
improvements" as we have a very transparent decision making process
involving a Transportation Board that holds monthly meetings, takes
public comment on all planning and policy decisions, and advises
Council. The last several board chairs have either been dedicated
bicyclists such as myself, who act not only as board members but as
subject matter experts on cycling matters, or dedicated multimodal
transportation advocates who support cycling. Bicycling improvements
have been a key part of this planning process for as long as I have
lived here--2001. I've been on the Transportation Board for more than a
decade (with hiatus for term limits) and simply disagree, as the guy in
the trenches, that this process is problematic.
Does the League still have a guy like Steve Clark on board who
actually goes out and evaluates communities? I worked with Steve on the
Santa Fe re-evaluation and am not aware if a League rubber meets the
road staff evaluation was ever performed here as part of this
application.
Once again, thank you and wish us luck. I suspect we will be back!
Khal Spencer
Chair, Los Alamos County Transportation Board
Board Member, Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico
League Cycling Instructor
