Our Board of County Commissioners is once again being asked consider ELIMINATING BIKE LANES from future road works projects.

If this action (amending our current Comprehensive Plan) moves forward, future road repaving projects will not be required to include bike lanes or shoulders where they currently are required.  Some in our County government see bike lanes and shoulders as an unnecessary expense when roads need repaving. I disagree.

Our County currently has just $1.5 million on hand to use for road resurfacing.  Remember that figure.  Why?  It's a very small amount of money in a County with a lot of, frankly, abysmal roads that have been sadly neglected for far too long. The $1.5 million is important when you see that our County is considering making a major, very difficult to reverse change in how we will repave roads in the future based on what is essentially smoke an mirrors.

How so?  Please look at the attachment, in which County staff attempt to show how much money our County will save by putting a layer of asphalt on top of our worst roads, without adding bike lanes.   

When you look at the spreadsheet, remember the $1.5 million figure. Keep in mind that the $1.5 MILLION is all the money our County currently has available to spend on ALL needed road repaving projects.  Then realize that our County is considering changing our Comprehensive Plan, that will guide future road projects for DECADES based on how much money they could (theoretically) save by NOT putting bikes lanes on roads that we CURRENTLY HAVE NO MONEY AVAILABLE TO REPAVE, anyway! At most, the available $1.5 million could fund ONE road resurfacing project.  The rest?  I guess they'll just have to wait.   Are we really ready to adopt new rules that exclude bike lanes, based on saving money that isn't available, anyway.  I'm not.

If you think that roads, including current high-priority roads such as:

- Tower Road

- CR 236 (between High Springs and Traxler)

- CR 234 (Angle Road, from the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail to Micanopy)

should be repaved properly, safely, and with bike lanes so that they meet  the needs  of all road users, when funds are available (which they currently ARE NOT).   If it means we wait until we have funding for proper road repairs that will include safe bicycling infrastructure (like bike lanes or shoulders), I would rather not change our Comprehensive Plan in a way that could keep bikes lanes off the table for decades, or longer.   

Please join me tomorrow, TUESDAY, MAY 10th, downtown, at the Jack Durrance Auditorium (where County Commission meets) in the County Admin Building, to speak at public comment and voice your concern that roads are for ALL citizens, not just car drivers, and that changing our Comprehensive Plan is not the answer, and NOT ACCEPTABLE!

The meeting starts at 5:00 p.m., and this agenda item is #3 on the slate, so probably won't be heard before about 6:30 p.m. at the earliest.

Whether or not you are able to attend, please send an email ASAP to xxxxxx@alachuacounty.us to let our County Manager and Commission know that safe bike travel is NOT negotiable. 

See you at the Commission meeting,

-Ally Gill