MPO Needs Your Input

Our Local MPO is asking for Input on proposals for bicycle and pedestrian facilities across the region.  They Are....

Hillcrest/Babcock Intersection Improvements: $1,000,000
Converse Greenway Trail:  $1,382,725
Ackerman Sidewalks and Bike Lanes: $1,742,763
New Braunfels Citywide Pedestrian Connectivity: $1,516,711
Zarzamora Pedestrian Improvements:  $5,000,000
Schertz Pedestrian Routes & Bike Lanes: $1,158,266
Seguin, Walnut Springs Trail Extension Project: $2,801,246
Alazan Creek Linear Hike and Bike Trail: $6,000,000
Martinez Creek Linear Hike and Bike Trail: $3,125,000

If you add all the amounts together, you get $23,726,671.  Unfortunately, there's only $15,000,000 available for projects. The Alamo Area MPO wants you to rank these projects as to which ones are the top 3 (click here) and here are those projects and the reason why I put them in the priority.

5. Martinez Creek Linear Hike and Bike Trail:
    Cost:  $3,125,000
    Project Description:  Consists of 1.4 miles of 10 foot wide shared hike and bike trail along
    Martinez Creek beginning at Cincinnati Avenue and extending to Mario Farias Park.

 As a person who uses the linear Creekway for commuting and a person who violates the law that states such trails can't be used after dark, I am for the expansion of such trails.  These trails will only help the police go underneath and chase away the homeless that sleep underneath these bridges.  It

4.  Converse Greenway Trail:
     Cost:  $1,382,725
     Project Description:  Construct 1.2 miles of 10' wide concrete linear greenway trail between
     Converse North Park and Converse City Park.

If this trail is ever completed, it will serve a basic need of being able to connect two places. It will provide residence who don't own a car an alternative across Gibbs-Sprawl Rd (an aptly named rd by the way).  I don't know if Converse will ever allow this trail to be used after dark, but it would be really cool if they did.

3. Schertz Pedestrian Routes & Bike Lanes:
    Cost: $1,158,266
    Project Description:  Construct 10’ shared-used path. Construct 6’ sidewalks, including curbs, curb ramps, and drainage. Stripe 6-8’ bike lanes along two connector streets. 6.97 miles total.

When I wrote my post, Where 2 Live in SA W/O a CAR, I wrote it with the personal experience of not owning a car.  I'm always asked if other areas of Bexar County could be an area to live with out a car and my answer is only if there's proper infrastructure is available to be able to walk or to bike.  Schertz is such an area not only lacking basic pedestrian infrastructure, but VIA bus services.  I can attest with personal experience that the reason why VIA is so loathed even though they do a lot of things right is because many areas of San Antonio lack basic pedestrian infrastructure.  People would rather wait for a bus to go around a block than to walk there all together.  Having Schertz improve sidewalks and add bicycle lanes will help provide the residence with alternatives to go to the grocery story and compete with more walkable areas of San Antonio.  But take my advice Scherts, putting in protected bicycle lanes will help with the traffic problem way better than any painted bicycle lanes. 

2. New Braunfels Citywide Pedestrian Connectivity:
    Cost: $1,516,711
    Project Description:  Construct sidewalks, ramps, and other pedestrian-related infrastructure in the
    Seele Elementary School area and on key segments of San Antonio Street, Walnut Avenue, and
    McQueeney Road (2.2 total miles).

As a member of Strong Towns, I understand that improving sidewalks is the best investment that any municipality can make to receive the biggest return.  If you ever been to New Braunfels, you would know the community is lacking sidewalks. They could use some sidewalks. 

1. Zarzamora Pedestrian Improvements
    Cost: $5,000,000
    Project Description:  Install missing sidewalks, repair existing sidewalks, remove unnecessary
    utility poles, install pedestrian crossing infrastructure, implement ITS strategies, and perform road
    diets along Zarzamora Road and SW Military Drive (4.5 miles).

Out of all the the projects posted, this is the one that is number one on my list.  The project stretches from Fredricksburg Rd all the way to SW Military Dr.  It is a 4 lane corridor of speeding cars, impassable sidewalks on the west side.  It's also where VIA wants to put its next Primo route for the 520 is the second busiest route in the city. It is also no coincidence that the Diabetes Institue is located at 701 S Zarzamora St.  Offering alternatives to driving and to people who are using wheelchairs to get around would help the west side out greatly. 

Total Cost for all 5 projects:  $12,182,702

Now some of you are probably asking me, why didn't you include Alazan Creek Linear Hike and Bike Trail or Hillcrest/Babcock Intersection Improvements.  Well the reason why I didn't list them is because our MPO now includes New Braunfels, Seguin and Beorne, so when deciding the priorities on this list, I thought of those places too.  If It was being San Antonio centrist, I would have made Zarzamore, Alazan and Martinez the top of this list.  Also the other reason why I left out the project in Seguin is because I don't know enough about the project at all to give my two cents.

Remember, all comments are due February 28, 2017.

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.

67.2 

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

The 1st Step of Making W Commerce into a Street

Sorry folks for the delay, but as usual my life got in the way.  Merry Christmas Everyone.

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On Saturday morning December 13, a workshop was held at the Central Library by Centro San Antonio with The Urban Land Institute/ San Antonio on redesigning W Commerce from S St. Mary's to Santa Rosa. The budget for this project is $9M with options on trying to improve the entire stretch from Alazan Creek to I-37.

The room was packed (Image 30-1) and every one was asked what could be done to improve this section of  W Commerce. Many people came up with wider sidewalks, benches, the type of planters that you see on Houston St in front of the Majestic. Everyone agreed that the traffic goes by there too fast. What I found unfortunate was the fact that some said cyclist should find some other route. 

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I'll be using several cross sections of the planned project area. I got these measurements in front of 345 W Commerce and all illustrations are looking east. Currently this is how W Commerce looks like along the project area. (Image 30-2)

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So far the city has its own plan, take out the right side bus lane and put that space from the bus only lane to the sidewalk next to the bus lane. They'll reduce the two remaining drive lanes to 10ft. (Image 30-3) There's two problems with the city's design proposal; It doesn't solve the problem that VIA buses face everyday when they are parked picking up wheelchairs.  Commercial vehicles are 10ft wide and those 10ft lanes will complicate matters when one bus is trying to go around a parked bus. Another problem is the fact cyclist in San Antonio want a protected bicycle lane down W Commerce. Despite the city's plan for 10ft lanes, my gut feeling is that the final design will have 11ft lanes, defeating the purpose of having 10ft lanes which have shown to do a good job of slowing down the traffic. The reason for my gut feeling is the city's current law, Sec. 19-66. Conformity with state manual which by default will force the lanes to be 11ft wide.

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To fix W Commerce, is to identify the problem which is that W Commerce downtown isn't a street, but a stroad. (Image 30-4) I have always used the word "stroad" and maybe some of you thought I've been misspelling the word street, but in actual fact it is a word created by Charles Marohn, a recovering traffic engineer and the founder of Strongtowns.org. to describe the problem we're faced with trying to create walkable productive places. We have the stroad because we want a road to move cars quickly, but we have places along the road to try to make it a street to capture value. It fails to provide both for if you look down the stretch of W Commerce (Image 30-4) that they want to improve, it lacks places that could be generating tax revenue for the city, meaning for the regular person, it could have businesses that people go to. In the video provided above, we learn that to make a street from a stroad, we need to slow down cars, we need to make pedestrians, cyclist, and public transit greater, MORE IMPORT than moving cars faster. This is where the city's design fails for even though it makes the lanes narrower, it fails to account that their design still keeps cars having priority over people. You have to remember, the street is a dynamic place and a place to go to, not so much a corridor for traffic.

30-5

The problems that people identify at the workshop including VIA, is that there's not enough room for the bus stop and people on the sidewalk walking by, that cars go faster as they approach Santa Rosa, and cyclist complain that there's no safe place to ride your bicycle.  Now I cannot talk about the other tables, but at the table I sat at also wanted on street parking. Despite what people might think, on street parking does provide a barrier between the moving traffic and the people on the sidewalk. But if we were to provide on street parking, we're going to have to reduce the number of drive lanes down to two.  On street parking is a cheap and easy way to provide a barrier of moving traffic for a bicycle lane.  So in my cross section illustration, I decided to include it to show that if they decide to remove a drive lane, they'll have room for both parking and a one way cycletrack. (Image 30-5) Also having on street parking has also demonstrated to slow down traffic.

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At the workshop, there were two paintings from Jorge Cortez.  One showed his concept on how the riverwalk connection should have looked to Main Plaza (Image 30-6) and the other one showed a lively W Commerce St with people eating lunch, local businesses in every building and a way better sidewalk for both sides.  (Image 30-7) As I studied the painting and talked with Jorge, it reminded me that his vision for W Commerce which he dubbed "Zona Cultural" is just like that of Greenville Ave in Dallas that I wrote about in "No Need for Streetcars Down Broadway. His painting was created in 1994, and he expressed his desire to remove the problem that was being, that the cars were given all the space for he expressed that in his riverwalk painting, (Image 30-6) he didn't want to paint one car. After studying his portrait, I created this cross-section of what his vision would look like if it was ever built.  For reference, the Artesias Mexicana building in the portrait, (Image 30-7) well that building is current location of the Dollar General.  I can agree with Jorge's painting, W Commerce needs to be treated better than the stroad it is today.

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Although Jorge Cortez's portrait lacks a protected bicycle lane, I couldn't help but notice that his very large sidewalk next to the people dining, (Image 13-7) that part at least to me looked a lot like the protect bicycle lane that everyone I know wants to have. It also looks like that he wanted only two lanes of traffic. I have said before that we need a law to make sure that our stroads have no more than two lanes of traffic in one direction, not these three lanes of traffic that TXDOT and the City of San Antonio likes to build.  Examples include, Broadway, Babcock, and Fredricksburg Rd.  After much work of studying the painting, I came up with this cross section showing that if his painting was ever made reality, it would look something like this without the protected bicycle lane. (Image 30-8)

Despite what I heard during the workshop that cyclist should find a different route is not what cyclist want, but shows on how San Antonio is dependent on driving to get around. People want a place to ride their bicycles safely without having an angry motorist trying to kill people while they're on a bicycle, so here's my recommendation, (Image 30-9) but don't count on this happening because we're never ever going to do this.  The reason behind it is the fact that the city values cars over people.  We see this over and over again with cars parked in the numerous bike lanes across town and the failure of the city to properly make bike lanes the needed 6ft width which is recommended by NACTO. In my recommendation, (Image 30-9) I have two 12 ft lanes to provide enough room for buses to get around a parked bus that just happens to be picking up a wheelchair and for any 18 wheeler delivery trucks that use W Commerce daily.  Now if the city or VIA is afraid that the bus lane is going to get clogged with cars, then here's my advice, issue some traffic tickets.  But don't count on it.  Through either actions or inaction, VIA and the city will will constantly show  how cars are more important than the buses trying to stay on time.  This is what I mean when I say "Keep San Antonio Lame."

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Now other parts of W Commerce was also talked about such as the one way section that is west of Frio. Now if you read my other blog about the green bicycle lanes that are going to be put in, you would have come across this cross section (Image 30-9) which should be done to the one way sections of W Commerce/Buena Vista anyway regardless to prevent the problems that I highlighted before. The discussion at my table at least wanted this part to be open up for locals on foot or bicycle to be invited into Downtown, to make "Zona Cultural" not just for tourist, but a place for locals.

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Other things were talked about including Market Square treating W Commerce like an alley way (Image 30-11) and how the stuff underneath I-35 needs to be more than a place for parked cars as well which I suggested a great place for a skate park, as well as uses for the abandon buildings that currently line the stroad.  The problems I heard at the workshop, at least at the table I sat at, is that we want to see a street, not the current stroad.

If you feel that you can do a better job with improving W Commerce St, I invite you to visit the cross section of 345 W Commerce Current at streetmix.net and create your own.  Remember the project with is 66ft.  (Now I'm sorry  Scott Gustafson, Centro San Antonio, but I have to do this.)  Send your recommendation to  Scott Gustafson, Centro San Antonio sgustafson@downtownsa.org.

Scott Gustafson, Centro San Antonio
210.225.3862  sgustafson@downtownsa.org
- See more at: http://sanantonio.uli.org/events/detail/reimagine-west-commerce-street-design-workshop#sthash.o2HaKceI.dpuf

What ever the city decides to do, I can only hope that they at least put in a protected bicycle lane along the route and reduce it to two lanes.  Knowing how the city continuously builds to the standards of Keep San Antonio Lame, I doubt that we'll see what cyclist want or create a place that people feel comfortable walking because if the city's current law, Sec. 19-66. Conformity with state manual is any indication, the standards are there to make sure that cars keep moving, not a place for people.

Images:
30-1: Jorge Cortez speaking for his table at the ULI W Commerce St Workshop on Saturday, Dec 13, 2014
30-2:  A cross section looking east showing the current state of W Commerce in front if 345 W Commerce which is currently in the project area.
30-3:  A cross section looking east showing the City's recommendation on how W Commerce should look like after they remove the bus lane.
30-4: A picture across the street from 345 W Commerce looking east where I did the measurements for the cross Sections I created for this blog. 
30-5: A cross section looking east showing if they were to put in parking instead of two drive lanes with a NACTO standard 6ft protected bicycle lane. 
30-6:  Jorge Cortez painting on his concept of the riverwalk connection to Main plaza.
30-7:  Jorge Cortez painting on his concept of the project area discussed at the ULI workshop
30-8:  A A cross section looking east showing if the city were to ever make Jorge's painting of W Commerce (Image 30-7) a reality
30-9:  A cross section looking east showing my recommendation on what many cyclist would like to see on W Commerce and Dolorosa as well
30-10:  A cross section looking east showing what the city should do to W Commerce St and Buena Vista.  It was featured in my last blog of "Green Lanes Aren't Enough."
30-11: A picture of the El Mercado driveway gate blocking the sidewalk on W Commerce looking west.