Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Council approves Boulevard plan with compromise for bicycle lanes

Narrower traffic lanes get one-year evaluation period

Recent studies inconclusive

By Jeff Kearns

The Town Council on Dec. 1 unanimously approved the Los Gatos Boulevard plan--minus the bike lanes. Instead of adding formal bike lanes, traffic lanes on the boulevard from Blossom Hill Road to Highway 85 will be slightly narrowed to provide extra room on the shoulder for bicyclists.

Although the comprehensive update for design standards along the boulevard enjoyed wide support, the issue of bike lanes lacked a clear consensus on either side, except for a large contingent of concerned bicyclists who all but demanded bike lanes.

The council voted 3-2 to leave the lanes unstriped for one year, after which a report will be prepared and the issue will come back to the council. The council originally considered the proposal in September but returned it to the General Plan Committee for additional study of some aspects, including bike lanes. After studying how other cities deal with bike lanes, the committee sent the plan back to the council with no major changes to the bike lane plans.

One after another bicyclists, including Mike Young, who said he had been in two accidents on the boulevard, came forward during the public hearing to plead for bike lanes.Seventeen-year resident Craig Steen pointed out, "If you're in a crosswalk downtown, it's one of the few places in California where people actually stop. A bike lane would improve the quality of life here so [Los Gatos Boulevard] wouldn't turn into Stevens Creek Boulevard and move us closer to L.A."

Councilmembers Steve Blanton and Joanne Benjamin opposed the plan to narrow traffic lanes without adding formal bike lanes, calling it a meaningless compromise. Both were reluctant to support narrower traffic lanes without striping bike lanes.

"I know the intent of narrowing the lane is to have a calming effect on traffic, but I think it will have an irritating effect," Blanton said. "We're talking about slowing traffic down on Los Gatos Boulevard and in essence creating more congestion."

"If we're going to be putting in lanes, I'd like to see them striped," Benjamin said.

Mayor Linda Lubeck, who recently attended a conference on traffic calming, said she favored the proposal to narrow traffic lanes on the boulevard from 12 feet to 11 feet. "The studies show that by narrowing lane width one foot, you lower the average traffic speed by 4.5 miles per hour."

Councilmember Jan Hutchins said he based his vote in favor of narrowing lanes but not striping them on research, citing a report called "Effective Utilization of Street Width on Urban Arterials" by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program that showed no complications resulting from narrowing lanes from 12 to 11 feet, according to research performed by several other agencies.

"In a debate when people are speaking from emotion and what they feel is the right thing," Hutchins said, "they can speak very strongly, yet it's my responsibility to find out what is real, and I can only depend on what I'm given in terms of facts and studies. The paradox is that [bike lanes] are unnecessary if you provide the space."

Trails and Bikeways Committee chairman Sheldon Smith told the council he didn't agree.

"I didn't believe my ears when I heard you discussing invisible bike lanes. You have to stripe it. I'm afraid we're compromising on safety, and an invisible bike lane is a hazard."

Councilmember Randy Attaway saw the compromise as the best solution. "The boulevard represents a very dangerous area. This is a way to make it safer for experienced riders but not encourage inexperienced riders to use the boulevard."

According to senior planner Charlie Denney of the Bicycle Federation of America, there is a lack of definitive research on adding bike lanes to roadways.

"Bike lanes aren't inherently safer than not having lanes, but more people will be out riding bikes if the lanes are there," Denney said.

San Jose's bike coordinator, Joanne Collins, says that San Jose eliminated bike restrictions on the expressways in the city a few years ago, and there hasn't been a rise in the number of accidents. Collins also said that, in her experience, adding bike lanes to a busy street would not encourage children and inexperienced riders to use the lanes.

"They're not suicidal people; they're not going to be riding on streets they can't handle. You have to give the bicyclist [credit for] some modicum of common sense."

Rick Blunden, Caltrans' chief of bicycle facilities, said the inconclusive research is due to the fact that there are so many variables that go into studying bike lane safety, making it difficult to come up with anything specific.

Dianne Bishop, the bicycle coordinator for Eugene, Ore.--a city with many bicyclists and many bike lanes--said that about 6 percent of commuters use bicycles there but that, for the city, adding bike lanes isn't exclusively a safety issue.

As part of the new urbanism movement, Bishop said, urban planners and transportation planners are starting to share the opinion that narrower streets and slower speeds create an environment where bicyclists and pedestrians feel they have options in how they travel.

"Lanes are a reminder to motorists that bicycling is important to a community," she added. "People who aren't traveling by car need to have their place on the roadway as well."

McHugh Lincoln-Mercury owner Jim McHugh said that he and other auto dealers along the boulevard oppose the plan because narrowing the lanes would constrict traffic and therefore make the boulevard more dangerous.

"It's majority rules. There are 22,000 cars a day that go up and down Los Gatos Boulevard, and not too many bikes. We're not opposed to bicycles; we're opposed to having bike lanes," McHugh said in an interview with the Weekly-Times. "There's no law that says that if a person wants to ride their bike on Los Gatos Boulevard, that they can't do it. We just think they should be in residential areas and along the creek bed."

McHugh rejected the premise that narrower lanes make for safer conditions as "just dead wrong."

Bike advocate Audrey Christensen saw the debate from a different angle. When she addressed the council, she said, "I think this whole issue boils down to money. The car dealers provide the tax base; we poor cyclists provide nothing. So it's very difficult for us to fight this, but we would really like to see bike lanes."

For Christensen and the dozens of other bike supporters who came to the meeting, it will be at least a year before they get another chance for their wish to be granted.

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