I was interested in motorist reaction in today’s article on new bike lanes on Decoro Road in North Valenica.
First off, credit where credit is due: the city has expanded bike lanes throughout town in recent weeks. There’s a new one on Tournament road, a winding road in Valencia. They reconfigured and expanded the lane on Rockwell, perhaps in hope that more COC students will feel safer and ride to class (and avoid the nightmare of parking at the college). They’re rebuilding the path on Soledad and now they’ve added a bike lane in both directions on Decoro, which provides a good east-west route for cyclists in the north valley (prior to this, there really wasn’t a lane for cyclists going frome ast to west up there.)
But now they’re taking heat from motorists for the addition on Decoro because they took away a vehicle traffic lane. Decoro used to be two lanes in each direction, now it’s one. Here’s a sampling of the outrage from the Signal article in today’s paper:
“The lane now is so narrow, my minivan won’t fit,” said Heide Prinsze, 52, who drives along the street daily to shuttle her kids to and from school. “It’s a nightmarish road as is. We don’t need bike lanes that no one would use.”
“I feel like I’ve been ambushed,” said Prinsze, who has lived in Valencia for 12 years.
…
But Prinsze’s husband, 60-year-old Glenn Prinsze, said the plans show the city isn’t pedaling with both feet when it comes to traffic engineering.
He said swapping an automobile lane for one dedicated to bicycles will just squeeze the car traffic into one lane and add to congestion.
“The city has taken a road that is a collector street and turned it into a local street,” he said. “We take the same amount of traffic and cut the amount of lanes in half.”
So we have a couple of complaints here. First of all, I’m sure the single traffic lane is wide enough for a single minivan. That claim is just silly; traffic lane widths are standardized (I believe they are either 10 or 12 feet wide per city or state code).
So what about the other arguments?
First of all, it’d be useful to drop the hyperbole. Decoro is hardly a “nightmarish” road as it is. It’s a shortcut through North Valencia. And it’s lightly traveled compared to other east-west routes in the area, according to the City’s traffic flow map.
For instance, Decoro has an average of 15,600 vehicle trips in the section between McBean and Seco Canyon road. That’s less than half what Copper Hill to the north gets (36,000) and just about half of what Newhall Ranch Road to the south gets (31,000).
In other words, traffic on Decoro is similar to traffic on Wiley Canyon Road or Haskell Canyon Road and just a bit more than on Creekside Road, which is one lane each way.
As for the “you’re squeezing us all into one lane argument!” well, yeah…if the road has excess capacity it makes sense to appropriate it in other, more useful ways. Decoro doesn’t need the extra lane since it only has half the traffic of Copper Hill, so why not use that extra lane for something that’s currently lacking altogether: a fully marked, east-west bike lane for North Valencia?
What’s more, the motorists aren’t considering that by installing a bike lane, it may encourage people to give cycling in that area a try, which could lead to even less traffic on Decoro. What if, for example, a family decided to try out riding their bikes on the new lane to that elementary school at Decoro & Seco Canyon Road during the morning rush hour? Or what if they wanted to ride from their neighborhood north of Decoro on a paseo, then connect to the shopping center at Decoro and McBean?
The new lanes provide a much easier and safer way to do that, and that just might encourage fewer people in that neighborhood to hop in their cars.
If that doesn’t change your mind, how about I invoke a financial reason to welcome the bike lanes? Bike lanes in a neighborhood are yet another amenity a person can list when selling or renting their property. It’s another bullet point on the real estate flyer, and as more and more people incorporate cycling into their lifestyle, the more attractive a house near a bike lane becomes.
I understand it must be shocking to see a road you drive on everyday restriped and reallocated, but come on. This is 2009. We as a community are trying to encourage alternate forms of transportation in order to reduce traffic, to improve health, and to help the environment a bit.
So to the two people in the article: if you’re unhappy with how things have changed, maybe you ought to give bicycling a try?