After attending the 16th/23rd Ave meeting, I have composed and am planning on sending this letter to the city and county commissioners.  If anyone thinks this is a Bad Idea, please drop me a line telling me why and maybe some suggestions as to what you think should be changed.  Thanks.

Ed

Dear Alachua County and Gainesville City Mayor and Commissioners,

I attended the recent meeting at Littlewood school on the 16th/23rd Ave repaving project.  First, I want to thank all the council members for soliciting public opinion on this project and for "keeping their cool" as some of the public acted outrageously rude to you at the meeting.  I also want to thank those of you who have in the past supported some of the excellent off-street and bike lane facilities we DO have in this county, and for your continued efforts to improve these facilities where this is feasible, for the 5000+ students and permanent residents of this county who make use of them daily, while leaving their cars at home.  Your forward thinking and leadership in this regard is appreciated by this voter.

I am a 65 year-old recreational and commuting (daily) bicyclist.  I consider myself neither immature, crazy, nor suicidal for using my bicycle to ride my 10 mile round trip to a local gym every day.  I have never had a crash in a car, never received a traffic citation moving or stationary in my entire life, nor been hit by a car while on my bike or a motorcycle.  I think of myself as a responsible citizen just trying to live my life, improve my health, and save a tankfull of ever more expensive gasoline each month, while removing one more unnecessary car from our crowded roads during the morning commute.

As a retired engineer interested in energy usage and conservation, it is my belief based on available facts that we have reached "peak petroleum" production and that it is all downhill from here, and at an accelerated rate due to the massive growth rate of vehicular usage in China, which will also inevitably reduce the market share of the world's petroleum supply that will be available for us in the USA.  IF we are to continue to remain locally mobile in our society, it will be through the use of smaller less-powerful electric-drivetrain automobiles, busses, motorcycles and human powered bicycles.  As you correctly observed at this meeting, "the future is not going to be exactly like the past" and our major road projects should be designed for the future to the extent financially and technically possible.

After discussing the limitations of the existing infrastructure with your engineer at the beginning of the meeting, I feel that the "best" technical solution for this corridor, an expansion of the width of the roadway to accommodate full legal-width bike lanes, is not practical due to the cost of reworking the drainage and underground utility structures to add the additional curb-to-curb width to do this project "right", while leaving the residents 19.5' wide medians and curbs, wide enough to accommodate perpendicularly the long SUVs some of them seem to want to use as "commuter vehicles".  Your county engineer has proposed a good compromise, which is to reduce the medians to a legal 16.5' while adding less-than-ideal 3.5' unofficial bike lanes, which would probably work satisfactorily if edged with "Botts dots" and "rumble strips" on the white line to alert texting/dozing drivers if they wander out of their lanes; certainly these would be much better than nothing, which is what these roads present to bicycle riders now.

Unfortunately, even that "reasonable compromise" seems to be opposed by the most vocal and vociferous residents insisting on 12' Interstate-highway-width lanes suitable for the speeders they SAY they would like to slow down.  This seems illogical and self-contradictory to me, if not totally unexpected, but if public SAFETY is our primary concern, then such "traffic calming" features as an adjacent bike lane outlined with a haptically-assisted rumble strip SHOULD alert any drivers that this is a narrower residential URBAN roadway with bike riders and pedestrians close to traffic, NOT a 60 mph controlled-access Interstate highway that just happens to be surrounded by houses and businesses and unarmored people.  I know that *I* am always more careful when driving through areas where children are close by the roadway, particularly if I see them on skateboards, skates, or bicycles with adjacent lanes not barrier-separated from traffic.  A 3.5' bicycle lane with rumble strips would be a valuable and visible road feature separating unpredictable school children walking on the sidewalks from 40 mph car and truck traffic.

When cycling, the greatest hazard to me where I must ride on sidewalks is from cars that stop, not at the wide white STOP line, but which do not stop until they are parked right across the pedestrian/bike crosswalk at the edge of the primary arterial.  I see this every time I ride; fewer than half of the cars stop where they are supposed to and fail to yield the right of way to bikes and pedestrians in the crosswalk, causing me to have to either stop and wait for them to move while sitting exposed in the intersection crosswalk, or to have to leave the crosswalk and ride around and behind them to get by them.  This is both dangerous and distracting to the bicycle rider, and wastes time and momentum.  This is the primary reason why most cyclists at the meeting were advocating full legal bike lanes as part of the roadway rather than the sidewalks; car drivers seem to recognize bikes on the primary roadway as the part of the traffic flow, whereas they think of them differently and subordinately when they are riding on the sidewalk or in marked crosswalks.

A secondary hazard to me (and to them) are pedestrians using the sidewalks at their much slower pace than bicycles.  It seems that two of every four pedestrians and nearly all runners today have iPod earbuds in their ears as they jog or walk with their small children and leashed dogs along the sidewalks.  Even when I shout or make warning noises as I approach them from behind, THEY DO NOT HEAR ME!  My silent bike is going 15 to 20 mph when I ride on the roadway, but I have to slow and frequently stop and wait for the pedestrians when I am forced to use the sidewalks, as they reel in their dogs and children.  The rough slab intersections and joint-height-faults (every 4' !) make it very difficult for me to travel at anything approaching practical commute speeds on concrete walkway sections, which makes longer commutes impossible and teeth-rattling riding the norm.  Overhanging weeds and tree limbs (not a problem on the roadways) are a further hazard, particularly during the dark morning and evening commute hours when they cannot be seen.  In many of the areas of the city and county, and particularly along sections of 23rd Ave, the USEABLE width of the sidewalks is less than a foot or two, due to weeds and debris which overhang or overgrow the sidewalks.  Even some of our best bike lanes are useable only at the inner edge next to the paint stripe, due to grass which has been allowed to grow over the majority of their width; I won't even talk about dodging garbage cans left in our "bike only" lanes on trash collection days by the garbage trucks, forcing us out into the car travel lanes.  Like Rodney Dangerfield, we get "No respect!" by the general public when travelling on sidewalks, and frequently are treated as an intrusive and startling nuisance; they think we belong in the streets when travelling at commute speeds, and where safe to do so, so do we.

In conclusion, whatever the final decision is on the design of this project, I appreciate that you are collecting and considering public input and I trust that the final plans will make this currently dangerous arterial roadway a better link for bicyclists to the rest of the roadway system and improve bicycle rider access to the businesses and schools which are located on it and/or accessed by travelling along it.

Sincerely,
Edward M Gardner
Resident, Alachua County