San Antonio Removes Bicycle Lanes Again

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I'm starting to notice a frightening trend here in San Antonio. Bicycle lanes are being removed from parts of San Antonio. The two so far that I am aware of is the northbound lane on Broadway at Jones and the second one, not a bicycle lane, but a shoulder nonetheless on Fredricksburg Rd.

If you read my previous posts on improving Broadway, you would have seen my cross-section on that part of Broadway which I called it the 281 Section.  Today, the new development decided that we don't need a bicycle lane. (Image67.1) That on street parking is more important than providing a safe place for `people to ride their bicycles.

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I contacted several people and since I was talking off the record , I am unable to provide contact info. This is what I learned when I talked to these individuals. City Council had no way to stop the removal of the bike lane. San Antonio Transportation and Capital improvements are designing a pretty sign to tell you, the cyclist to go onto the sidewalk. I didn't get a chance to ask if SAPD will give us tickets if we go onto the sidewalk but I'm assuming no. If you happen to get a ticket for riding on the sidewalk, please contact me. The main thing that will make this lousy solution not work is that there will be no ADA ramp back into the bike lane that is already left. (Image 67.2)

If you want to complain at somebody, call the district 1 Councilman Robert C Trevino (Info at the bottom) and the private engineer firm (Image 67.3) that said that removing a bicycle lane was okay.  That's the only thing I can tell you what to do in protest.

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The second is the new park at the intersection of Fredricksburg and De Chantle (Image 67.4). Where there was a shoulder to ride in safely, now a curb and a tiny sidewalk was built. For the record, they only removed the northbound shoulder. Instead of leaving well enough alone, they decided that the space surrounding the left turning vehicles needed extra protection, so they created these painted barriers directing traffic around the center turn lane. (Image67.5) I find it ironic that if you go up just one block to Williamsburg, (Image67.6) you'll see the original paint pattern, and there seems to be no need to remove a shoulder to protect left turning cars. 

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As Halloween rolled around I came across this picture tweet from David Killmon.  He wanted to dress up in the most frightening costume he could think of, so he dressed up as a construction sign saying the bicycle lane is closed. (Image67.7) I have a saying that goes, it takes a dead person to put in a traffic light and a crosswalk.  I can only hope that it doesn't take a tragedy  to fix this mistake.

District 1 Robert C Trevino
City Hall
P.O. Box 839966
San Antonio, TX 78283
Office Line: 210.207.7279
Constituent Office
1310 Vance Jackson
San Antonio, TX 78201
Field Office Line: 210.207.0900

Images:
67.1: Viewing South on Broadway showing newly constructed parking where a bicycle lane use to be.
67.2:  Showing the end of the sidewalk construction where no ADA ramp was installed. 
67.3:  The Engineer Consulting firm info advertising their destructive work.
67.4:  Viewing North on Fredricksburg Rd showing the Shoulder disappearing.
67.5:   Viewing north on Fredricksburg Rd Showing added painted lines around the center turn lane at De Chantel.
67.6:  Viewing north on Fredricksburg Rd Showing the intersection at Williansburg.
67.7:  Tweet from @kohidave with him wearing his Halloween Costume. Link to tweet: https://twitter.com/kohidave/status/792946517443092480

No One Lives in La Villita.

With being active and working long hours, I rarely have time to catch up on the news.  So it's sad that I came across this story from the Rivard Report only now that was written back in February.  I forgot who shared it on Facebook or who tweeted it, but I read it and I can't believe that I missed such news on La Villita.

According to the commentary quote:

"All reports concluded that re-imagining the retail mix and the quality of goods and services, improving infrastructure, programming public spaces, and better marketing were equally necessary. In short, La Villita is a historic treasure, but much is needed to bring it up to 21st century retail standards. We agree."

So the problem seems to be that not enough people are coming in.  It's walkable, it's quaint an such a nice place, so why aren't people coming in?  The answer to that isn't because there's no coffee shop with wifi, it is because there's no people living there.  Now I'm not saying destroy a few historic buildings and build a apartment complex, I'm saying that no body lives there and we're currently treating it like a suburban mall.  So like every other suburban malls, it has a bunch of vacancies and eventually even the kiddos stop hanging out and the mall closes.  You can point to the success of North Star and Wonderland, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.

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As you look on Google Maps, (Image 47-1) you see an area surrounded by parking lots, those dead areas where we store our motor vehicles.  This is why they're referred to as Parking Craters by advocates like me, because they're a blight on the urban landscape.  This is one of the main reasons why people aren't going there. It's because it is so far away from where they live and there's these wide stroads surrounding it such as S Alamo.  As long as we have this undeveloped spaces being used as blighted storage areas called parking lots, the problems will continue with the historic downtown and downtown viability as a whole.  Because if you don't live there, you have no real vested interest in the place.  If an opportunity arises, we should look into having housing inside the historic La Villita. Parking Lots are simply areas with no activities what so ever.  This is why they're referred to as "Parking Craters."

Now some of you will say, hey, didn't you say La Villita Should be a model for the redevelopment for Hemisfair?  And that I did, but it wasn't about how La Villita was being treated, it was how there's no cars there.  There's a reason why I'm so against cars and that's because cars have more rights than you or I do when we're walking or riding our bicycles.  I don't know how many times I've heard getting hit by a car and the driver just driving off and just getting a slap of the wrist.  And if you don't believe me, Freakanomics did an episode on how to get away with murder, and it was about how you can kill with your car and get away with it.

When we built towns, we use to build them like La Villita, small places where everyone could get to where they were going by walking.  We're now coming back to this original design as we rebuild Hemisfair and redevelop areas in the inner city. La Villita has a heads start in being walkable  because the streets are too narrow for motor vehicles. As the development continues in Hemisfair, we'll see a bleeding effect from people calling Hemisfair home.  Now we don't have to destroy anything in La Villita, but we should work on making housing opportunities available with in the historic neighborhood and around it especially in those parking craters.

Images:
47-1:  A Google Satellite Map image of La villita and the surrounding area. 

The Latest Useless Bike Lane

The latest Useless bicycle lane is now open.  Has been open for almost a month now and you can use this latest uselessness on Arsenal along the HEB headquarters. (Image 43-1)

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To understand why this was built, you're going to have to listen to a awesome podcast called 99% Invisible, episode name Arsenal of Exclusion.  It talks about how infrastructure can be used to funnel and control human behavior.  In the case of this useless protected bicycle lane, it is used to encourage people on bicycle to not ride down S Flores, but to choose S Main instead and connect with the protected bicycle lane that was build behind the new grocery store.

In the end, by not putting it down on S Flores, the people who live in the new apartments along S Flores will choose to drive to the new HEB grocery store instead of doing the environmental thing to do which is to ride your bicycle or walk.  If you don't think that putting bicycle lanes where they're not needed don't have an effect on the rest of us, just look up into the sky, we're not in compliance anymore. 

Now it's not completely useless after all, it provides space for joggers and people walking who live in the King William area.  Only time will tell if this useless bicycle lane becomes a parking lane during fiesta.  Then the rubber barriers will be destroyed and thus the joggers will loose out on their new jogging strip. 

In the Netherlands and Denmark, they don't put protected bicycle lanes down streets like Arsenal, instead they lower the speed limit to about 20 mph.  The Author of Copenhagenize.com, came out with a chart on where to put  bicycle lanes. It clearly shows in kilometers per hour on where to put the bicycle lanes.  (Image 43-2)  By using this chart, it clearly shows that a street like Arsenal don't need a protected bicycle lane, speed limit is just too low. 

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Images:
43-1:   The protected Bicycle lane on Arsenal between the San Antonio River and S Main Looking East.
43-2:   The chart that Mikael Colville-Andersen created can be found on his blog:  http://www.copenhagenize.com/2013/04/the-copenhagenize-bicycle-planning-guide.html