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Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  12/1/2010

Bike lanes and bureaucrats

There is an interesting situation in the works up here in the North Bay to which I would like to draw your attention. In briefest outline, this is about whether or not Caltrans will put dedicated, bike lanes along the shoulders of a highway that is being renovated. This is not intended as an indictment of that agency’s overall policies with respect to accommodating cyclists in the transit mix. I can't address that. This is just about one project and how it is being handled.

First we need some background and--forgive me--this may take a little telling. In case you’re from out of state, Caltrans is the California Department of Transportation, the enormous government entity that designs, builds, and maintains California’s state roads. The road in this particular case is Hwy 116, also known as Stage Gulch Road, which connects the two southern Sonoma County cities of Petaluma and Sonoma. In fact, it is the major--the only--significant arterial highway across southern Sonoma County. Anyone who lives in southwestern Sonoma County--residents of Cotati, Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Petaluma, and all the rural areas in between--will use that road not only to travel between Petaluma and Sonoma, but also--through 116's connection to Hwy 12/121--to travel onward to Napa County and Interstate 80. It is a very, very busy highway. (Just so you don't think I'm overlooking it, I will note that Hwy 37, even further south, connecting Novato and Vallejo, also carries a good deal of east-west traffic across the top of San Francisco Bay, but it's less significant for most Sonoma County residents and almost entirely irrelevant when it comes to cycling, as it is very nearly a freeway.)


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The section of Hwy 116 we're discussing here, between Adobe Road near Petaluma and Arnold Drive near Sonoma, is less than three miles long. It is a two-lane highway with relatively narrow lanes and absolutely no shoulders. It is winding, with many curves and at least one blind hilltop. Traffic is almost always non-stop, bumper-to-bumper, including a great deal of heavy truck traffic. Usually, unless it bogs down, it will be moving at at least 50 mph. Given the volume of traffic it carries, this little country road is very much overburdened as it currently exists. 

From a cyclist's point of view, it's a nightmare. Early in my years in the county, when I was learning my way around as a cyclist, I rode it twice, once in each direction. I'm not one to be bothered by mixing it up with traffic, but those were two of the scariest moments of my cycling career. I felt fortunate to survive those passages unscathed, and I've never had the least desire to repeat the experience.

And yet the road is tempting for cyclists, at least if you're just studying it on a map. As noted, it is the only reasonably direct route around the south end of the county. It makes fairly useful connections on both ends to local roads that can be bike-friendly and that in their own turn connect to many more good roads. This is true not only for Sonoma County cyclists but for those from Marin County to the south, from Napa County to the east, and even for long-distance cycle-tourists looking for a way around the north end of SF Bay. Cyclists see this meandering road on the map and figure it's just what they need…until they find themselves running with the 18-wheeled bulls. And for what it's worth, were we somehow able to eliminate all the traffic from the road, it would be delightful for bikes, for it's quite scenic: rolling hills of wild grasses and oak forest…not a bit of clutter along its whole length.

When you look at the map of the region and see all the good roads funneling into this one little section from both ends, and note further the total lack of any alternatives within miles, you see that it is the missing link, the one piece of the puzzle that fell off the table and got lost under the rug. If it could be made bike-friendly or even bike-useful, it would substantially improve the overall landscape for cycling in the North Bay.

For several years now, Caltrans and its local partners have been planning to improve this section. Obviously--and rightly--their primary focus is making it a better arterial for the volume of motorized traffic it carries. But as a collateral benefit (for cyclists), they plan to put fairly wide shoulders on the road, which means that cyclists will now be able to ride through this tight little gap, opening up all sorts of possibilities for bike routes around the south end of the county, and for the other counties noted above. So far, so good. That's your back story, and that brings us pretty much up to the present.

The problem that local cycling advocates are now grappling with has been the refusal of Caltrans' planners to designate those dandy new road shoulders as official Class II bike lanes. What's the big deal, you might ask? A shoulder is a shoulder is a shoulder, right? Not quite.

The nature of the problem was brought to my attention when I chatted with a member of the Sonoma County Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (SCBPAC) on a ride recently. After that chat, I got in touch with some other members of the same committee for more information, and I checked the minutes of the most recent SCBPAC meeting, where this was discussed at length. There are at least two and possibly three points of contention. Let's take these in order…

Part of the current difficulty might be described as Caltrans vs the County. Lou Salz, now a former member of the Advisory Committee, described the Caltrans vs County stalemate this way: “The main problem at the time I was involved was a chicken vs egg sort of problem. Ideally, we wanted to be able to designate Class II bicycle lanes on a route that went from Petaluma all the way to Sonoma. This would be possible once Stage Gulch (the Hwy 116 section) was fixed. Once we had that east/west path fixed up nicely, then we could add the designation on the whole route from city to city. But Caltrans was flipping the logic around, saying since the county hadn't designated the approach roads Class II on either side that it wasn't important. So the county wouldn't do it until Caltrans was willing and Caltrans wouldn't do it until the county did. Truly a bunch of government bureaucrats at their worst."

Vin Hoagland, a current member of the SCBPAC, put it this way: “Caltrans does not want to designate this route as a Class II bike lane. Their argument about Class II is that they don't want to ‘create islands of Class II lanes’ because although the revised county bike plan has Class II designations for Adobe Road and Arnold Drive which are at the ends of Stage Gulch, they are not yet painted and signed. Caltrans is being stupid about this but the Sonoma County Transportation Authority and the county have not vigorously objected to not having Caltrans put Class II signage and paint on the new section of road.” 

Steven Schmitz, staff member for SCBPAC, contributed this: “Caltrans has indicated throughout the process that they will not put any bicycle facilities on Stage Gulch Road (Class II or III) until the County of Sonoma has installed similar facilities on Adobe Road and Arnold Drive. It makes more sense to have Caltrans install the Class II bicycle lanes on Stage Gulch Road now in conjunction with the current project, to take advantage of economies of scale, rather than coming back later to stripe and sign for Class II lanes. In the meantime, the County of Sonoma will seek funding to install Class II lanes on Adobe Road and Arnold Drive to connect to Stage Gulch Road when the Caltrans project is completed.”

So that's the first stumbling block outlined pretty well: what appears to be a silly battle of wills between a bunch of red tape wranglers. But then, the shoulders are going to be there anyway…why get so bogged down over petty points of semantics? Part of that answer is that, if the road is eventually going to be designated as carrying Class II bike lanes, it had best be done in conjunction with the current project, as Schmitz notes. The additional expense of doing it later, not to mention the disruption to traffic, would be considerable. For the record, although both Sonoma County and the State of California are in difficult straits financially, Caltrans has deeper pockets than the county does, and has the budget in place for this particular project already, whereas the county does not yet have any money to do its part of the bike lane striping and signing. So for Caltrans to stonewall the county on this, when it has the money and the county doesn't…seems kind of hard-headed and, more importantly, penny wise and dollar foolish, as it will cost far more to do the job later than it will to do it now, as part of an on-going project.

Another part of the answer might have to do with rumble strips. You know what rumble strips are, right? The scoring in the pavement at the edge of the lane that wakes you up when you drive over them in your car? Caltrans likes to install these on the shoulders of some highways, and this project has them in the specs.

Cycling advocates generally dislike rumble strips. They are terrible to roll--to rumble--across on hard, skinny road tires. At the best of times, they're irritating, and at the worst of times, they can jolt a rider around enough to turn the front wheel or even knock a rider's hands off the bars, leading to a crash. If the shoulder is wide enough, the strips can usually be avoided, although inadvertent encounters are common even then. If the shoulder narrows for some reason and the rumble strip crowds a cyclist over against a guard rail or the edge of the pavement, things can become very perilous. So, in general, rumble strips and dedicated bike lanes do not coexist. You have one or the other. If the shoulders were designated as Class II bike lanes, Caltrans probably could not install rumble strips. Conversely, if they grind in the rumble strips now, they might use their existence to deny the possibility of the Class II designation later. 

But aside from the battle of wills among different groups of bureaucrats, and aside from the complication of rumble strips, there is another, more troubling undercurrent to this unresolved issue. There appears to be a mindset at Caltrans that bikes should be discouraged from using this road. I heard this first in my conversation with the Advisory Committee member on our ride: that Caltrans staff has stated they don't want to designate the shoulders as Class II bike lanes because they don't want cyclists to feel comfortable about using this road. I had some corroboration of this allegation from other sources. Lou Salz stated: “I talked with one of the lower level Caltrans engineers who seemed to be somewhat irrational about bicycles being on this roadway. He was fear-mongering about how dangerous it would be. I'm not sure how much actual influence one single individual like him may have on the way the project is done. But it seemed he had some sway.”

More significant perhaps is this memo from Seana Gause, Program/Project Analyst for the Sonoma County Transportation Authority: “Recently, Caltrans staff met with bicycle advocates (as part of the regular advisory group…SCBPAC). It has been reported that when advocates asked Caltrans to stripe Hwy 116 for Class II bike lanes, the Caltrans staff replied that it was ‘safer if the bicyclists were scared’ (by having to ride on the highway without signage indicating ‘share the road’ and ‘bicycle lane’). (To be fair, I want to state clearly that I recognize all three of the above observations are only second-hand hearsay. I have not got any of this directly and on the record from Caltrans staff. Personally, I accept the reports as essentially accurate, but you will have to judge for yourself how much truth there is in them.)

Now, I find myself in a bit of a quandary here. I have been contemplating another column for some time that argues that cyclists do not always need bike lanes; that they don't need money thrown at infrastructure “improvements” that only serve to segregate them from the general traffic mix, as if bikes were only trivial children's toys. It's the old bicycle apartheid argument that has been kicked around regarding bike paths for many years. The argument goes that we don't need more bike lanes or bike paths; we need motorists and cyclists who understand one another  and respect one another and know how to cooperate and share the existing roads, as is so often the case in Europe.

I still believe that…in some circumstances. Heck, I believe the bit about cooperation and understanding in all cases. We do need that, more than anything else. But as for designated bike lanes, there are some places where they really do make sense. And I don't think I've ever seen a more compelling setting than this little three-mile link on Hwy 116 for the installation of properly striped and signed bike lanes. No one is ever going to claim that this bit of busy highway is a delightful back road biking environment. But it's the only road we have in this region that ties the two halves of the county together. This is it. There are no other options. If bikes are to be considered a part of the transit mix, they must have safe access to this section of road.

Yes, the wide shoulders will be there, regardless of whether they're designated as official bike lanes or not. That's all well and good. But on such a busy highway, it's only reasonable to ask for that modest additional security that the appropriate striping and signing would afford. It is incumbent upon Caltrans to include bike infrastructure in such a renovation package. That is part of the overall mission statement from state planners: to include bicycle lanes and to recognize bicycle riding as a legitimate use of the highway transportation system. It is not supposed to be part of the Caltrans mandate to discourage cycling--to scare cyclists--and it's disturbing to learn that this is their attitude regarding this project.

Now…pause and count to ten…

I had written this column in a state of some indignation and concluded with a final dart at Caltrans….now missing from the end of this piece. I have now gone back and deleted some of that angry diatribe. Why? Because the day after I wrote it, I received a further e-mail from Steven Schmitz of the Bike/Ped Advisory Committee, and attached to that e-mail were two pieces of correspondence from Caltrans staff, addressing this issue. To cut to the chase, Caltrans is agreeing to meet the cycling advocates halfway on this. Apparently the constant pressure from the Advisory Committee and from others in favor of the bike lanes has paid off, to some extent. It's not a slam dunk victory for the cyclists, but it's better than it was.

The first item is a letter dated November 8, 2010 from Bijan Sartipi, Caltrans District Director, to Valerie Brown, 1st District County Supervisor (who had written to Caltrans in support of the bike lanes). Here is the crucial item from his letter, specifying what Caltrans has finally agreed to do: “The standard 8-foot shoulder consists of a 2-foot rumble strip, which has been designed and tested to be bicycle friendly, and a 6-foot clear width for both pedestrians and bicycles. To further enhance motorists' awareness of bicyclists, the Department will also install additional bicycle warning signs and bike route signs within the project limits.”

The second item is a letter dated November 15, 2010 from Ina Gerhard, Caltrans District Branch Chief, Bicycle Coordination, to Tim Gonzalez, Chair of the Sonoma County Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. In her letter, she notes that she had passed on the recommendations of the bike advisory committee (for the Class II bike lanes) to Caltrans management. She continues: “Ultimately, the decision was made to provide an ‘enhanced’ Class III facility with frequent Bike Route signage and additional bicycle warning signs, standard 8' shoulders…and shoulder rumble strips.”

So there you have it: a compromise of sorts. Caltrans retains its rumble strips but makes assorted concessions to enhance the visibility and viability of bikes on this busy road. For what it's worth, I have read some bike-forum discussions about these new, supposedly bike-friendly rumble strips. I don't believe I've encountered any in the real world yet, but others seem to think they're an improvement over earlier designs. We shall see.

I began this column with some sense of frustration and a need to vent about those unfeeling, unassailable bureaucrats, but I end up with a grudging respect for the process. I am impressed and grateful that the Caltrans engineers and policy makers were willing to bend on this issue. And I am especially grateful to the members of the Sonoma County Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. These dedicated volunteers give up many hours of their free time to act as watch dogs and advisors on all manner of roadway and bike path and bike lane improvements, reminding the engineers and bureaucrats of the need to factor bikes into their thinking and their plans. They rattle the cages of local politicians and remind them to go to bat for the interests of bikes and bikers. They have no real power. They only function in an “advisory” capacity. And yet they use what energy they have and what moral and ethical persuasion they can muster to keep these issues pointed in the right direction.

I see the minutes of their meetings each month. Like most meeting minutes, they make for very dull reading. But if you pay attention, you can see that, one small effort at a time, they are changing our cycling lives for the better. And in this case, their persistence will have paid off with a great boon to the cycling community: with the finding of that lost puzzle piece of Stage Gulch Road and all the possibilities it opens up for us.

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



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