Response to "Cities can help extend bike riding enthusiasm" in the New Mexican

 I sent this in a week and a half ago. Posting it here, too although it was published Sunday, March 27th, along with Judith Gabriele's bike piece.

I thank the Editorial Board for its editorial support of making Santa Fe a more bicycle-friendly community. This is a complicated process requiring synergy in transportation design, land use planning and zoning, and tax policy.

Case in point. Some years back, the Bicycling Coalition of New Mexico strenuously objected to the rebuild of St. Francis Drive to three narrow lanes in each direction rather than installing bike lanes. This rebuild was done to increase motor vehicle level of service regardless of what effect that would have on transportation alternatives along this critical arterial. Another case in point. You can add "protected bike lanes" to a road like Cerrillos, but numerous turning and crossing points serve side streets and businesses while high speeds are posted; a bicyclist is only protected until, as a friend once quipped, the moment of impact. Thus two critical business corridors are bicycle-hostile. 

Santa Fe Bicycle Crash Map. Source, SFPD study published in the Santa Fe New Mexican

Urban sprawl is our enemy. Many European cities can more easily adopt mass transit and the bicycle as they have stayed compact. American cities have meanwhile sprawled because Americans like low density development and recent “arterial and cul-de-sac” designs for privacy. These designs rapidly create safety and distance hardships to the point where the bicycle is not viable for transportation. While e-bikes may change the distance factor, it is still a hard sell.

Creating an environmentally-sustainable, bicycle friendly city takes an enormous amount of work, and means synergistically looking at road design, land use planning, tax policy, and enforcing safe behavior. Our bike trails need to be well maintained and connect people to where they need to go. Distances must be managed by intelligent land use planning. Road speeds must not be so excessive as to create instant death to someone hit by a car. Do we really need 40-45 mph arterials in a city? Finally, citizens must be made aware, through tax policy, that low density development means each of us has a bigger bill to pay for the city services we take for granted.

One thing the city could do right now to show the way is declare that Canyon Road is a Woonerf, i.e., a European design where motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists have equal rights to share space without a hierarchy. Considering the foot traffic and narrowness of the road, it should be a no-brainer. Such a move would demonstrate a change in paradigm in how we treat mobility in our city. One has to start somewhere, and that's my suggestion.

 

More here: To Tunnel, or Not to Tunnel, That is the Question