December
1999

Youth bicycling to school emerges as safety & health issue



Bike racks were thrown out of student reach when construction on Ellwood School traffic signals started. Why weren't they placed where students could use them? Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• "Vieja Valley School was a school with a traffic problem that decided to do something about it," wrote Bicycle Coalition member Eva Inbar in the October 27 issue of the Santa Barbara News-Press. "The only thing that would work, we felt, was to try and reduce the number of cars going to the school. As simple and common sense as this may sound, the idea had never been proposed."
• Like Inbar, other parents and educators are becoming alarmed not only by the traffic jams around schools, but also by the decline of self-sufficiency and increase in obesity among today's car-dependent students.
• Lisa Finerty in Montecito has been similarly active in questioning the increasing traffic near Montecito Union School each school day. She has been active in Santa Barbara County in pursuing passage of AB 1475, California's "Safe Routes to School" bill that will make about $18 million a year available for communities to increase the safety for children who walk or bike to school. She recently was circulating a preliminary questionnaire for Montecito Union students to complete, asking how they commute to school and what they like about their trips.
• The Santa Barbara Middle School uses bicycling as part of its core curriculum. The students go on bike tours and bicycling is promoted into their life-style. But this is the exception rather than the rule.
• Awareness of conditions may be our main ally. Inbar and Finerty and many others are raising questions that nobody asked before. As Inbar writes, "We wanted every family to take a good look at themselves and then decide what they could do to help their school in this regard. This has to be a truly communal effort: If every-one helps, everyone will enjoy the benefit...most of all our children."

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SBCAG votes “NO” on Ellwood bike bridge

• At their monthly meeting on November 18, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG) did not fund the remaining $400,000 needed to build the $2.75 million Ellwood bike/pedestrian bridge.
• Several letters from the Bicycle Coalition and others that encouraged funding failed to persuade the 12-member association. And significantly, the Technical Transportation Advisory Committee (TTAC), which advises the SBCAG Board, voted in favor of the bridge.
• The vote appalled many. The funds were made available to SBCAG because other local projects failed to use $991,000 that had been previously allocated. This was money that could either be spent locally or returned to the State of California. They voted to give it back to the state instead of finishing the bridge.
• We're pleased that all five South Coast representatives (Naomi Schwartz, Susan Rose, Gail Marshall, Richard Weinberg, and Elinor Langer) and Russ Hicks from Buellton voted for the bridge. Those who opposed were all from the North County, including Ed Andrisek from Solvang who is running for Gail Marshall's job in the upcoming election for the Goleta district.
• Located west of the Glen Annie Road over-crossing of Highway 101, the new bridge was funded in part with $600,000 from $5.4 million in Transportation Impact Mitigation Fees that the Camino Marketplace paid. The bulk of the mitigation money went to the huge, new Highway 101 overcrossing and MTD buses.

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The benefit of the Tour

• "The TV ratings of the last week's coverage of the Tour de France were higher than everything else on TV that weekend; it out-rated golf, it out-rated baseball, it out-rated auto racing. Those are good things for the sport, those are good things for the business, they're good for the industry, they're good for bike shops, they're good for developing young riders. And from everything that I've heard, since the end of the Tour de France, bike shops are packed...and people are out."
• — Lance Armstrong, Nov/Dec 1999 Bicycle USA

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New California bike bills

• In addition to the important "Safe Routes to School" bill passed in the recent California legislative session, Governor Gray Davis signed others that effect us when they start January 1st:
• The state's Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program (EEMP) is now permanent. The last $10 million allocation from the state gas tax would otherwise be made next year. The EEMP has been a good source of funding for bike facilities.
• AB 1650 is this year's omnibus transportation bill, a collection of noncontroversial measures intended to pass through the Legislature without debate. One provision of the bill allows bicyclists to wear reflective shoes or ankle bands in place of pedal reflectors that are currently required.
• SB 441 defines and establishes laws and equipment regulations for motorized scooters. It limits these scooters to daylight hours on roads with a speed limit under 25 MPH unless there's a bike lane there. Users will have to walk through left turns. These restrictions were inserted at the insistence of the Highway Patrol, and create a potentially disturbing precedent that some may try to apply to bicyclists.
• Thanks to Alan Wachtel, CABO legislative liaison, for the above information.

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El Capitan bikepath to be completed

• Years ago, funding was obtained for completing a section of the Coastal Trail between El Capitan State Beach and El Capitan Ranch, about a mile east. It turns out that much of the work has been finished, but a bridge over Cañada de la Destiladera was needed and endangered species habitats were encountered, so construction was stopped. Now, however, work is moving ahead, the contractor is ready to start, and the trail will be finished in the next two-to-six months, depending on just when our winter rain falls this season.

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Caltrans bike positions cut

• Caltrans planner Pat Mickelson offered some bad news about the proposed budget for Caltrans next year. As Caltrans director José Medina recently proposed, it contained provisions for 14 new bike-related positions. Twelve of them were likely to be for the 12 Caltrans district offices that have been without bike coordinators since the positions were eliminated in 1983.
• Unfortunately, the 14 have already been pared to four positions and may undergo further reduction as the funding process moves forward. We will be watching.

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New members

• We welcome our new Bicycle Coalition members and express our gratitude for their support for better bicycling within our County: Kevin & Dana Brown, Benjamin Ellsworth, and Amy Nett

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Public health policy and physical activity

• "Automobile trips that can be safely replaced by walking or bicycling offer the first target for increased physical activity in communities," states an October 27 article on American's health published in the influential Journal of the American Medical Association.
• Some of bicycling's new and powerful allies are turning out to be public health officials. The thrust of the medical article "Caloric Imbalance and Public Health Policy" quoted above deplores the decline of physical activity and its resultant major national health impacts.
• The article says that many communities in the US already have the infrastructure to support physical activity, such as sidewalks and bikeways, and work-sites, schools, and shopping areas near to residential areas. Such infrastructure makes walking or bicycling to school, to work, or to shop part of daily physical activity.
• Recent data indicate that approximately 25% of all trips in the US are less than 1 mile, and 75% of these are by car.
• In addition to replacing motorized travel with bicycling and walking, community recreation areas or facilities can promote physical activity during leisure time. Such facilities clearly improve the desirability of communities. A recent survey of new home buyers indicated that almost all of the amenities that made communities desirable places to live were features that promoted physical activity, such as multi-purpose trails, outdoor swimming pools, playgrounds, and parks.
• Within Santa Barbara County, we certainly see that communities that have a bike-friendly infrastructure and homes closer to jobs and other destinations have much higher bicycling ridership than sprawling, car-oriented, bike-hostile communities.
• It's good to see the public health and medical workers recognizing the relationship between community structure, transportation mode, and public health. We will likely benefit from working closely with them in the future.

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Old Town Goleta gets bike logos on the street



Hollister Avenue in Goleta now has bike logos located in the wide outer traffic lane. Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• There just isn't enough room curb-to-curb on Hollister Avenue for parking, traffic lanes, and full-size, five-foot bikelanes. So the County Planning and Public Works departments did the best that they could for bicyclists by narrowing the parking as much as possible, narrowing the fast lanes to a minimum, and reserving the rest for outer-lane traffic and bicyclists to share.
• "It's the very best we could do," stated Wilson Hubbell, alternative transportation coordinator for the County. Our thanks to Hubbell, Jeff Knowles, Matt Doberteen, and Gail Marshall for pursuing better conditions.
• Perhaps later when a remake of Old Town Goleta is planned, one with off-street parking, maybe then we will be able to move the on-street parking, install full bikelanes, plant trees, and increase sidewalk width. In the meantime, bike along Hollister and see how much safer it feels.

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SBCAG approves Los Carneros bikelanes

• Although they voted against $400,000 needed to complete the Ellwood bike bridge on November 18, the Association of Governments did approve funding $144,000 for Los Carneros Road in Goleta. The money was made available because winter storms washed out a section of land near Fairview Avenue where a bikepath had been previously proposed and funded.
• County Alternative Transportation Coordinator Wilson Hubbell said that the Los Carneros project entails roadway widening and striping bikelanes between Cathedral Oaks Road and Calle Real. The work will be done next spring.

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Caltrans places planner in Santa Barbara

• We're pleased that Caltrans District 5 administration has decided to locate a planner in Santa Barbara. Pat Mickelson, an Associate Transpor-tation Planner, is now working out of an office in the Traffic Solutions' space, in the same building as SBCAG. Mickelson says that she was located here in order to provide a local liaison for handling Caltrans' problems as they arise.
• It turns out that Mickelson, after receiving a masters' degree from San Diego State University, worked as the assistant bicycle coordinator for the City of San Diego. An avid runner and bicyclist, she especially enjoys bicycle touring.
• If you do see problems with any roadways or structures under Caltrans' authority, please contact Mickelson by phone at 560-8756 or by email at pat_mickelson@dot.ca.gov.

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Harris Grade is signed

• Harris Grade Road north of Lompoc is the second road in our County to receive yellow warning signs that say "Share the Road" on a post below the "W79" bike logo sign. Two months ago, Ortega Hill Road in Montecito was the first to be posted. Thanks to Wilson Hubbell for both of these safety improvements.

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Bike sober

• "Alcohol may have an even greater impact on cyclists than on motorists," concluded Dr. Guohua Li in a 1997 Johns Hopkins University study. "Riding a bicycle requires more physical coordination and concentration than driving a car, and biking performance declines more rapidly as the riders' blood-alcohol level increases."
• The results of studying 316 serious bicycle accidents in Maryland between 1987-1994, among cyclists age 10 and older, showed that 30% of the 63 fatalities had been drinking, while only 16% of those seriously injured had been. The data are probably conservative because blood-alcohol tests are frequently not given to cyclists until hours afterward. Even then, three out of four of those who had been drinking were legally drunk when the test was conducted.
• "Previous research on bicycling injury was conducted predominantly in children and focuses on helmets, but our results suggest that preventing intoxicated biking should be incorporated into helmet campaigns and other bicycling safety programs," commented co-author Susan Baker. The message seems simple. Don't mix your drinks with bicycling.

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Coalition’s web site attracts more viewers

• Because our web site was moved last August to WestHost, a web hosting service, we have had access to statistics that we never had before. In fact, we have vast quantities of statistics for the 12 weeks since they started.
• Perhaps most significant has been the increase in access to our site. The table shown here reports the number of "hits" that we have received. A "hit" is one request from the user's browser for a single graphic image or page of text; several are typically needed to show a complete page. The main point is that demand has doubled over just these 3 months:
• Another change in our web site has been the inclusion of an Atomz.com search engine that looks for requested material within our site. People have used it 52 times since it became available 11 weeks ago. The most often searched word was "map." Other words are: trail, gears, bicycle shop, paths, bike transportation, bicycle safety classes, sponsors, repair, UCSB, archive, Bicycle Project, rental, membership, and brochure. Some of these requests yielded useful matches, but others came up empty. All this is helpful in showing us where we can help supply information that people are seeking.

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FasTrack has web site

• Out of all the bike shops in Santa Barbara County, none that we know of has had its own web site until now. Owner and Olympic cyclist Dave Lettieri just announced that FasTrack Bicycle is now online: www.fastrackbicycles.com.
• It's a very impressive site with loads of useful information about road cycling. Some extra pictures will be added shortly, Lettieri tells us.
• Just how the web will play out over time for independent bike shops remains to be seen, but with burgeoning online use, business is changing fast and a web presence may become a vital component of future success.

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CREF decisions delayed

• Awards for the Santa Barbara County's Coastal Resource Enhancement Fund (CREF) have been postponed from December to January due to delays in other programs. Normally, County staff would have prepared its evaluation and ranking of the 34 submitted projects by mid-November. This year they did not because 9 of the 34 projects have based their funding needs on what they may or may not receive from California's separate Coastal Resources Grant Program, which has been slow in announcing its awards.
• CREF is especially important this year because the Bicycle Coalition has its own proposal called Bicycling the Coast. If we get the requested $11,700, we will produce a brochure and enhanced web site that will help both residents and visitors enjoy coastal locations by bike. On November 22, Ralph Fertig spoke before the Supervisors in support of the proposal. Then by early January, we should find out what the County staff recommends, and finally, on January 18, we'll see what the Supervisors approve. Stay tuned.

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Coalition meetings change to Tuesday

• Since November, 1991, the Bicycle Coalition has held its general monthly meetings on the first Wednesday of each month. Now, however, it will change starting in January 2000 to the first Tuesday of each month. This is because the County Public Works meeting rooms have been altered and are now either too small or otherwise committed to the noon time. So we will be shifting to the larger, downstairs, first floor Public Works meeting room on January 4th.
• This still leaves the question of whether to deal with bicycle advocates who cannot attend our Downtown Santa Barbara noon meetings. The time and location, or both, make attendance impossible for them. Years ago we tried evening meetings to augment the daytime ones, but they died out for lack of interest. Perhaps it's time to reconsider the idea. Comments?