N St Mary's, There will never be enough parking.

80.1

On Tuesday night, October 30, 2018, (Image 80.2) instead of attending the weekly SATX Social Ride, I decided to go to the meeting on what's being plan for the N St Mary's Strip, from Josephine to Mulberry and I have to say, I'm a little disappointed because in trying to please everyone, San Antonio Transportation and Capital Improvements, TCI, isn't pleasing anyone, accept the fire department. There's no plan to collect fees for parking to create an improvement and maintenance fund for the strip. There's only a lousy compromise to have parking on the strip after dark and to allow bicycling in those parking spots during the day.  But in the end, it does nothing to slow the cars, create a walkable environment and fails to build upon what makes the strip great.

80.2

Lets start with the "parking problem," or in this case the result of having a great place.  When you have a great place, people will show up and because everyone is forced to own a car to get around. Well the residence don't like parking on their streets.  In our capitalist world, it is sacrilege to impose on our free parking regardless of the cost it imposes on everyone else.  The only solution that was floated by the chief of Staff for Trevino's District one office was to offer a plan that is currently in place in Southtown. But here's my question, why can't we charge for on street parking and use those fees that are collected to improve and maintain the neighborhood?  This is called a Parking Benifit District, where the fees of the parking are collected and go back into the neighborhood and you don't have to look far for there's one of these Parking Benifit District in Austin. But god forbid we do it here an actually put money back in the neighborhood that everyone is visiting because that's just common sense and we just can't have that in San Antonio.  This is why there's a saying "Keep San Antonio Lame."

80.3

When we look at TCI's plan, (80.3) we see everything that goes against good urbanism which are wide vehicle lanes, narrow sidewalks, and no protected bikeway.  What TCI does float as a solution to not planing a protected bikeway is parking during the nighttime and a bike lane during the daytime which I know from experience, there will be cars parked in the bike lane and don't be surprise that there's a food truck in that lane during the day.  The only thing that I can figure that the reason why we see this design with 12 foot lanes is because the need for our large fire and EMS vehicles to be able to get through fast. Yet these wide lanes only encourage speeding, the opposite of Vision ZERO. (Image 80.4)

80.4

Thanks to the courageous people who created a crosswalk last year on N St Mary's, TCI will be putting "Bulb-Outs" to many of the intersections along the strip.  These "bulb-outs" which are better known as sneckdowns in other places are extensions of the sidewalk into the street to slow down turning cars.  I posted a video called "Snowy Sneckdowns" by Streetfilms years ago on my Facebook page explaining how these "Bulb-outs" slow down turning cars. My biggest thing against this design is that TCI will not be cutting a 5ft way through the bulb-out, instead forcing cyclist towards the cars like they already do to the bulb outs on N Main next to the Fox Tech. (Image 80.5) Now TCI did build a bicycle cutout of a bulb out already a few years ago when they completed that useless protected bikeway on E Commerce underneath I-37, (Image 80.6) but having experience on how other projects turn out, I'm betting this project is going to live up to the saying "Keep San Antonio Lame." 

80.5

Bike San Antonio, (no affiliation to my blog) has come out for a full protected bikeway (80.1) either a two-way protected Bikeway on one side of the strip with parking on the other side or having a protected bikeway on either side of the strip.  And don't get me wrong, I'm way for this but I have a feeling that TCI along with the Councilman's Trevino's office and the Tobin Hill Neighborhood association will prevent this from happening.  So when you email the councilman and the engineers designing this project, (see at the bottom for email addresses) please let them know that you don't want to be forced out into traffic when approaching a bulb-out, that you want to be able to go through that bulb-out instead of around it.  Also having the bicycles go through those bulb-outs will force the cars to make slower turns, keeping with TCI's goal of Vision Zero.

80.6

But I'm going to make a prediction, I'm going to be posting a tweet of the bulb-out with my bicycle parked in the bike lane once it is build out saying "Thanks @sanantoniotci for Keeping San Antonio Lame and being anti #VisionZero."  Please Mr Trevino, prevent me from making this prediction a reality. 

As with Bike San Antonio request, I ask everyone here to take time out to send emails to the following address to tell them to support having not just a protected bikeways down N St Mary's but if they don't do that, have cutouts into the "Bulb-outs" so people don't have to ride close to the speeding cars, Thanks.
sean.strong@sanantonio.gov, james.wucinski@sanantonio.gov, joe.doctor@sanantonio.gov, district1@sanantonio.gov

Read the Rivard Report story on this meeting. (Image 80.2)
Images:
80.1: Bike San Antonio Recommendations compare to TCI designed.
80.2: TCI meeting announcement for N St Mary's.
80.3: TCI's crossection showing their recommended Design at the Meeting.
80.4: A Meme created by StrongTowns.org Illustrating how wide Lanes for emergency vehicles cause the crashes they are designed to help save the victims from.
80.5: An "bulb-out" N Main Ave with the bike lane between the cars and the "bulb-out."
80.6: The "bulb-out" at the South Bound Exit ramp to E Commerce which has a cut out for cyclist to get onto the Protected Bikeway.