Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
The city of Sunnyvale plans to add more bike lanes, like the one seen here on Homestead, to its city streets. Currently, when a traffic lane is too narrow and there's no bike lane, it's legal for cyclists to 'take a lane' to reach their destination.
Sunnyvale to improve bike accessibility
City plans 50-year implementation of its bicycle study
By Daniel Hindin
Spurred on by the city's new attitude toward bicycling, Sunnyvale residents can expect additional bike lanes on major arterial and connector streets in the coming years. At its Dec. 19 meeting, the Sunnyvale City Council accepted the bicycle capital improvement program (CIP) study as the outline for the long-term implementation of the bicycle opportunities study.
When the city says long-term, it means long-term. The CIP, which Sunnyvale's acting director of public works, Mark Dettle, calls "a really flexible sort of ranking of projects that identifies needs," will take 50 years to complete.
According to Dieckmann Wolfe, a city transportation planner, 22 of the 97 miles of major streets in Sunnyvale currently have bike lanes. The CIP calls for just a mile and a half of new lanes per year. And city officials stress they can't even guarantee completion of the entire plan.
City council has shown support for the CIP. Before their unanimous vote to approve the program, Vice Mayor Fred Fowler said, "Sunnyvale is very autocentric. I encourage my fellow council members to approve this program."
Councilman Manny Valerio echoed Fowler's sentiments. "Our city has become much too auto dependant," he said.
While the entire council enthusiastically supported the CIP and joked about the length of the plan, no one mentioned the possibility of trying to do more in a shorter period of time. The city will only make $116,500 available each year. When compared to the city's 2000-2001 fiscal year budget of more than $200 million, the money they plan to spend on the CIP equals 1/20 of 1 percent of Sunnyvale's yearly cash flow.
Fred Wiesinger, chair of Sunnvyale's bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee (BPAC), says, "If the city had more money or staff time, they could probably accomplish [their goal] in half the time. It's a sad thing for all of us, but it's something we have to live with."
Dettle explains, "City council has to evaluate projects. [Addition of bike lanes] is a need that has to be balanced with other projects. The CIP puts us in a position to get more outside funding as it becomes available; right now we're in a much better position to get outside funding than we ever have been."
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Fred Wiesinger, chairman of the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, gets ready to head off to work. Fred usually rides between his home in Sunnyvale and work in Downtown San Jose four days a week.
Wiesinger adds, "We can't expect instantaneous change. We're real happy to get moving on this. Nothing is guaranteed, but it's better than having no plan at all; people really have been waiting for a good plan to emerge. The city had a tunnel vision sort of focus [on auto transportation] for a long time, but now it seems to be turning around."
City staff used an elaborate system of seven criteria to prioritize and rank the importance of adding bike lanes to each main street. The criteria include rider stress, collision history, average daily traffic volumes, gap closure (projects that create links between existing bikeways), cost/funding, complexity of the project and connections to activity centers and other cities.
Dettle says that although it will take a long time to carry out the entire CIP, the city will complete the most important projects within a few years.
"As these projects are implemented," he says, "there will be an initial impact by linking paths and making continuous routes."
Wiesinger stresses the necessity of carrying the CIP out, no matter how long it takes.
"Some people may say that biking amounts to a very small share of the total transportation picture," he says. "They may wonder, since it's so small, why are we doing this. But to make things better, you need to improve the infrastructure to encourage people to use new methods of transportation."
Kevin Jackson, another member of the BPAC, says, "The 50 years shows you how far we need to go."
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
