December
2000

Meetings kick off South Coast’s Safe Routes to School project



This is the third Safe Routes to School meeting showing participants writing down their thoughts. Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• Three meetings in early November started the Safe Routes to School Through Safe Communities Project. This was the first public step for the Bicycle-Coalition sponsored project and one that attracted about 30 interested participants.
• The meetings were managed by Dru van Hengel, Santa Barbara City's mobility coordinator. They started out with introductions and were followed by an excellent video Active and Safe Routes to School produced by the Canadian environmental group Go for Green (www.goforgreen.ca). The video showed school kids running across or biking in streets jammed with motorists. Then it showed a number of solutions that were being applied to increase safety and exercise.
• Van Hengel asked how many participants walked or biked to school as children—the result was that everybody had. The main part of each meeting consisted of two interactive parts:
• Recalling what most impressed participants going to school when they were young.
• Listing impediments that are currently preventing kids from biking or walking to school.
• The results of these initial meetings are being considered by the program committee, who is structuring future monthly meetings starting in January. These meetings will first consider overall problems that all South Coast K-8th grade schools have, then later break it into problems and solutions for each individual school. Only those schools that have representative participation will proceed to the individual study phase. Problem areas identified so far are the following:
• Traffic conditions and law enforcement in the community, school zone, and school parking lot.
• Traffic education for drivers and youth.
• Schools with large attendance boundaries.
• Health issues, like air quality, sedentary lifestyles, injury prevention, and weight of books.
• Attitude toward perceived auto convenience, and degraded status of alternative transportation.
• Risk analysis and risk perception of traffic, strangers, and in-school situations.
• Parent support, involvement, and schedule constraints.
• Infrastructure improvements.
• School policies toward curriculum, school traffic, and alternative transportation.
• The Safe Routes to School process has just started and you can still climb on board. Upcoming meetings have not yet been scheduled, but all interested teachers, parents, students, administrators and community members should get their names on the list by emailing van Hengel at dvanhengel@ci.santa-barbara.ca.us or phoning her at 564-5544.

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GVCC donates bikeway signs



Wilson Hubbell presents one of the new bikeway signs to the City Council. Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• On November 13, the Goleta Valley Cycling Club presented 19 bikeway signs to the Carpinteria City Council. The Club raised nearly $1500 from memberships and rides to pay for the signs. The signs will be installed by Carpinteria in order to demark the "Coastal Route" all the way now from Rincon to Ellwood.
• The presentation was made to the Council by Wilson Hubbell, an avid cyclist, GVCC member, and County alternative transportation coordinator. Members of the Club, including president Hildy Hoffman, filled the front row of seats.
• Our gratitude to the club for helping local and visiting cyclists enjoy the scenic 20-mile Coastal Route. Watch for the new signs any day now.

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Bike Week 2001 features Einstein

• Jonathan Humfrey, Bike week coordinator, announced on November 14 that we have obtained use of Albert Einstein for Bike Week 2001. That's not his brain, but use of a photograph that shows Einstein on a bicycle during a visit to Santa Barbara in 1933. The image will be used as our logo for all promotion.
• Humfrey is currently soliciting support from organizations and businesses. Bike Week will take place the fourth week in May, 2001. Next meeting is December 12, details on page 3. Join us!

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Bridge repair considered



The popular bridge not only provides a transportation connection, but also offers views of the preserved Goleta wetland habitat. Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• The Goleta bridge that carries pedestrians and bicyclists between Old Town Goleta and the UCSB campus is being considered for resurfacing. The old asphalt layer on top of the boards had deteriorated and was removed earlier this year.
• UCSB has asked the Bicycle Coalition members for ideas on a surface treatment that will smooth out the irregularities of the old planks and lumps of adhering asphalt, all for less than $4000. The bridge is 250 feet long and about 8 feet wide.
• Good suggestions have been made by Bruce Murdock, Chuck Anderson, Robert Bernstein, Mike Lawler, Art Gilbert, Jamey Wagner, Mike Hecker, and Ralph Fertig. The thought of screwing plywood to the top seems to dominate, although concern of slipping when wet has not yet been resolved. If the job is too expensive, UCSB will forego the project.
• Any suggestions that you might have should go to Jamey Wagner at UCSB, phone him at 893-5475.

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SB City project planning progresses



This is the Mission Street undercrossing of Highway 101 and the Union Pacific Railroad. It was ranked second overall in bicyclist project priority. Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• In order to present transportation project lists to the Santa Barbara City Council in December, the City's staff organized the proposed projects into tables and ranked them by desirability.
• As explained by senior transportation engineer Rob Dayton, the projects have been separated into categories such as walking, bicycling, transit, promotion, or street beautification. Members of three City groups—staff, the Transportation and Circulation Committee, and the Planning Commission—were asked to select their top projects in each category. They ranked only within given categories, not across categories, because funding sources often limit applications to a given category.

This graph shows the City's nine currently-proposed bicycle projects ranked by three groups in overall order, top to bottom, of desirability. The length of each bar in the graph represents the favor that each group placed the projects in. From left, rankings are "Staff" (Santa Barbara City staff), "T&C" (Transportation and Circulation Committee), and "PC" (Planning Commission).

• The City's bike projects were taken from its Circulation Element, Bicycle Master Plan and from public input. Since projects were described in the November Quick Release, three new bike lane projects have been submitted and ranked: they are for Gutierrez/Haley, San Andres, and Milpas Streets.
• It was noted that there was more variation in ranking of bicycling projects than for other categories. Other factors will eventually enter into the actual implementation of projects—cost, community need, public acceptability, and environmental issues.
• This is a 20-year project list and the goal was to dream big. There will be more opportunities every two years to add to the 20-year list.

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Bus bike racks

• Forty percent of the United States might be ahead of Santa Barbara, but we're finally catching up.
• Forty percent of all public transit buses in the US, it is reported, are now equipped with bike racks. That's roughly 30,000 buses nationwide, noted Andy Clarke, U.S. Department of Transportation's chief for bicycle policy.

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Bike-to-school numbers down

• In 1994, Bicycle Coalition member Steve Morris went around to all South Coast elementary and junior high schools. He counted the number of bicycles in bike racks, then obtained the school enrollment numbers. Last month, he repeated the count. It shows that there has been a general decline in bicycle numbers at schools, as shown here:
• The year 2000 data show that there were 579 bikes at schools with a total enrollment of 18,680; that represents only 3.1% of the students. The highest percentage of bikes-to-enrollment this year was 12%, at Vieja Valley Elementary School, where there were 52 bicycles. Overall, there were nine schools out of 38 on the South Coast that had over 5% bikes. In descending bike percentages, they are the following:
• Vieja Valley Elementary 12%
• Foothill Elementary 9%
• Isla Vista Elementary 8%
• Monte Vista Elementary 8%
• Cold Springs Elementary 7%
• Carpinteria Junior High 6%
• Goleta Valley Junior High 6%
• Kellogg Elementary 6%
• La Patera Elementary 6%
• These numbers will be useful by the Safe Routes to School project that has just started. And it should make us all ponder the future of bicycling when the leaders of tomorrow, for whatever reasons, are not experiencing the pleasures of biking to school today.
• Our thanks to Morris for his time and dedication in providing us with data that nobody else has obtained.

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Executive Director

• Last month, we asked whether we should hire an executive director. A very encouraging reply came from Walt Seifert who holds that position in the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates (SABA). He also added three California groups to the four listed in Quick Release as having executive directors: SABA, Marin County Bicycle Coalition, and Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition. "I would definitely urge you to hire someone," he said. "The benefits for SABA have been substantial."

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George Amoon makes bicycling plans
by Wilson Hubbell



Here's George Amoon with his commuting bike inside the County's fenced-in, but outdoor bike parking area. Photo by Ralph Fertig.

• So, who in the County Planning and Development Department is interested in finding opportunities to make life better for local cyclists? Answer: Just about everybody! But who in the Planning and Development Department has a primary responsibility to make life in Santa Barbara County better for bikies? Meet George Amoon.
• With a resume that includes work experience in the private and public sectors, and an education that includes a BA in Environmental Studies from UCSB (in addition to an MA in City and Regional Planning and a MS in Engineering from Cal Poly SLO), George's background is well suited for his current tasks. These include a leadership role in the production of the Goleta Transportation Improvement Plan and the Orcutt Transportation Improvement Plan, as well as the Gaviota Trail Planning Project, the San Jose Creek Bikepath Project and more.
• Because of his background in engineering, George is a planner who can understand the intricacies of individual Public Works projects and also see how each can fit into the Big Picture of regional planning within the County. This ability to wear two hats simultaneously has made him an invaluable asset to the Planning Department in their efforts to coordinate with other County Departments, and get non-motorized transportation projects out of the planning phase and into the construction phase.
• Working with Wilson Hubbell from the Public Works Department, George has been instrumental in helping to attract several million dollars of outside transportation funding for the County. This outside funding directly offsets the use of County Transportation Funds and County General Funds for capital improvement and planning projects.
• Needless to say, George is also a local cyclist—with a stake in his own success!

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County video cameras sense cyclists

• The September issue of Quick Release had an article about Santa Barbara County replacing in-ground sensors with video cameras at controlled intersections. It was seen and repeated by at least three other bike advocacy groups.
• The system manufacturer, Iteris, will start marketing them on the basis of detecting cyclists as well as motorists. Itaris has been talking with the Bicycle Coalition's Wilson Hubbell and Ralph Fertig. According to Linda Schulte, Marketing Communications Manager for Iteris, they will include information about Santa Barbara County's systems with a press release or article in their next newsletter.

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We’re doing fine

• There are hundreds of bicycling-related discussion lists on the Internet, and we have three of them. How do ours compare in numbers, for example, to the other advocacy groups in California? Quite favorably, it turns out.
• Looking at Topica.com, the main list management service, there are only five California advocacy groups that have greater subscribership than our main sbbike list that was started in April 1998. Here's a comparison:
• Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, 102
• Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition Liveable Streets, 24
• Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition Bike Week, 12
  
  
• San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, 337
• California Bicycle Coalition, 201
• San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, 139
• Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, 129
• Bicycle Trails Council of Marin, 118
• Sacramento Area Bicycle Coalition, 102
• CA Assoc of Bicycling Organizations, 101
• Marin County Bicycle Coalition, 45
• LA South Bay Bicycle Advocates, 40
• Regional Bicycle Advocacy Coalition, 13