Last week, the City of Austin Bicycle and Pedestrian Program released its staff recommendations for a Downtown Bicycle Boulevard. The League of Bicycling Voters was critical of the proposal, especially the recommendations for Nueces Street. It has all the signs of compromise as the opposition to the bike boulevard also seems unhappy with the recommendations.
Tonight will be the first step in moving the proposal to implementation with staff presentation at the Urban Transportation Commission. We encourage everyone who wants to see great bike facilities to attend and let the commission know your views on the recommendations.
Urban Transportation Commission
Tuesday, April 13
5:45 PM
City Hall, Room 1101 (Boards and Commissions Room)
on Apr 13th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
LOBV comments/questions/analysis of COA staff recommendation now online:
http://www.lobv.org/nueces/LOBV_AnalysisCOA_BikeBoulevardPlan041210.pdf
on Apr 14th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Any report?
on Apr 15th, 2010 at 10:26 am
I couldn’t be there for the whole meeting but I had the discipline(?) of watching the entire meeting; you could too at http://tinyurl.com/y3qxsto.
The meeting seemed to show the opposition opposed, once again, to the new plan. The bike community still has an array of opinions in regard to the staff’s plan; from full support to various degrees of opposition.
Annick tried to sell the idea of a virtual boulevard, saying that none of both streets will be a real bicycle boulevard but that “both streets together will work as such”. This is, perhaps, the easiest argument to debate; but apparently nobody in the meeting questioned it.
One lady from the opposition called the plan a “splitting the baby” solution as I myself had called it somewhere else.
The opposition seems to be grouping again around Sayers whose new argument is that if the CoA wanted to reengineer one street why is it now proposing “twice the problem”. It seems on the surface he is ready to accept a diluted Rio Grande alignment and nothing on Nueces. It does not look clear, from what I heard, that his allies would take that stance.