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King Street may become bike boulevard | Print |  E-mail
Written by Sefira Bracha Fialkoff   
Monday, 22 December 2008

The public discussion on how to improve bike safety on Mission Street is underway

Bike

The City of Santa Cruz held its second public meeting to discuss traffic solutions for King Street on Dec. 10. The meetings are designed to get community feedback on five different proposals for increasing the street’s biking capacity while decreasing its automobile traffic.

The first meeting was held in June and attended by about 150 concerned citizens. At that meeting, community members requested more information from the Public Works department about cost estimates, bike counts, parking usage and more.

A draft report for a King Street bicycle boulevard has been available on the city’s website since the first meeting. It outlines a conceptual plan to enhance the effectiveness of King as a bicycle through route and alternative to Mission Street.

In October, the City of Santa Cruz received a $170,000 grant from Caltrans to provide safe routes to school. A Caltrans spokesman said the money had been requested to create “alternative adjacent routes to Highway 1 for bicycles and pedestrians.”

There have been three recent truck versus bike collisions at the intersection of Bay and Mission. Two were fatal, and one landed a woman in the hospital with serious injuries.

“As a biker you have to always be on your guard and it’s always intimidating being in the road with cars, so if we could provide a safe portion for bikes I think we’d all be really grateful,” says Tim Muldoon, a UC Santa Cruz student.

In addition to concern about biker safety, the city is hoping to address development and congestion concerns in the Westside neighborhoods. ”If you don’t take care of arterial streets you ruin your neighborhoods and you’ll also see less economic development,” says Chris Schneiter, assistant director of public works, who facilitated the meeting.

”At this stage we’re still presenting the preliminary concepts and hoping to get comments and ideas from the community,” says transportation manager James Burr.

There are essentially five options if change is demanded on King Street.

The first involves time-restricted parking on both sides of the street. The likely cost would be $70,000 and would prohibit parking from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. This plan would allow for bike lanes without diverting motor traffic to other streets.

The second is the most expensive plan, approximately $900,000, to create parking bays by removing portions of the planter-strips. This plan would also allow for bike lanes and some parking, and also not divert motor traffic to other streets.

The third is the least expensive at $25,000: to add ‘sharrows’ to King Street. Sharrows are shared lane markings painted onto the road. There are a few already in place in Santa Cruz, such as the steep hills on San Lorenzo Boulevard near the train trestle, and on Soquel Avenue approaching Ocean Street from Branciforte Street.

The fourth alternative is a hybrid of the above plans, which would prohibit parking on one side only of King Street. This would allow for a bike lane on one side and sharrows on the other. It could cost about $30,000 and is not projected to reduce car traffic.

The fifth idea is to install street diverters that would allow only pedestrians and bikes to use King as a through street. These barriers would cost approximately $100,000 to study and $200,000 to install. The concern of many individuals is that this plan would increase motor traffic volume on adjacent streets, including Escalona and Mission.

The general consensus at the second meeting was that none of the above plans were immediately palatable to the community. The community members in attendance wanted more information and a more holistic approach to the traffic issues. “We need a broader transportation plan to get people out of their cars,” says Jessie Lacy.

According to studies by UCSC and the city there has been a 50 percent increase in bicycle transportation this fall. People Power, a group of county advocates for human-powered education, predicts that by increasing safety for bikers and decreasing convenience for cars, bike usage would increase by around 10 percent daily.

Community members like Celia Scott would like to view the King Street changes within a “larger context related to climate control and UCSC development,” adding that, “we need to think more about alternative transportation. Instead of just transferring traffic from one street to another, the city should focus on reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled.”

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