Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutBicycle Advisory Committee - Minutes - 11/09/2009MEETING MINUTES of the BICYCLE ADVISORY COMMITTEE November 9, 2009 6:00p.m. Community Room 215 N. Mason Fort Collins, CO 80521 FOR REFERENCE: Chair: Dan Gould 970-482-1074 Vice Chair: Chris Gaughan 970-223-1146 Staff Liaison: Kathleen Bracke Staff Support: Dave “DK” Kemp 970-416-2411 BOARD/CITY ORGANIZATION MEMBERS PRESENT Transportation Board: Bill Jenkins Bike Fort Collins: Jeff Morrell Lands Conservation and Stewardship Board: Chris Gaughan UniverCity Connections: Rick Reider Economic Advisory Commission: Rick Price Poudre School District: John Holcomb Colorado State University: David Hansen Downtown Development Authority: Kathy Cardona Natural Resources Advisory Board: Clint Skutchan At Large: Kim Sharpe AT LARGE MEMBERS PRESENT Dan Gould Cathy Mathis ABSENT Fort Collins Bicycle Co-Op: Doug Cutter Air Quality Board: Greg McMaster Senior Advisory Board: Parks and Recreation Board: Greg Miller OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE Dave “DK” Kemp, FCBikes Coordinator Kathleen Bracke, Senior Transportation Planner Joe Olsen, City Traffic Engineer Lorin Scott-Okerblom, member of the Bicycle Education Coalition & CSU student in the Colorado School of Public Health Bjorn Swenson 1. CALL TO ORDER - Chair Gould called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. 2. AGENDA REVIEW Agenda was approved as presented. 3. PUBLIC COMMENT – None 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Oct. 12 minutes were approved with one correction 5. ACTION ITEMS a) Final BAC Work plan: the 2010 work plan presented by Chairman Gould was approved with no changes and a brief discussion. (The Work Plan is attached). 6. DISCUSSION/INFORMATIONAL ITEMS a) Safe Routes to School, Bicycle Accident Data, Bicycle Education Coalition Presentation Kathleen Bracke introduced Joe Olsen, City Traffic Engineer, who presented a review of the City’s school safety program on behalf of Matt Wempe (Matt was sick) and of the related but different federally funded Safe Routes to School Program. The goal with this is to present “the big picture school safety program” in the City. “Our goal is to promote safe travel to and from school and our other goal is to get more kids walking and bicycling to school. We’re talking about school safety and encouragement of kids.” The City is engaged in a number of school safety programs in cooperation with Poudre School District. The federal grant of $38,500 is from the Safe Routes to School Program in five schools. SEE THE ATTACHED POWER POINT PRESENTATION. Others include funding from Poudre School District, the School Crossing Guard Program, the BOB (Building on Basics) Pedestrian Plan and in cooperation with CanDo (Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity) and others. Transportation Planning takes the lead in coordinating the school safety project focused on the five “Es” – Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Evaluation and Enforcement. Education includes the curriculum of the League of American Bicyclists’ curriculum contracted to Bicycle Colorado. Engineering includes school crossings and more. Encouragement includes volunteers involved in Walking and Wheeling Wednesdays and more. He showed photos of “kids being encouraged.” Enforcement includes reduced speed zones with the participation of police services. This type of coordination and effort is ongoing even though we are not always doing a good job of telling our story. Evaluation engages the entire group, including accident data, benefits from the encouragement programs, the education programs, etc. A City wide evaluation of control devices has been concluded. We are looking at updating older systems with the new standards (old mustard yellow yield and pedestrian signs will be replaced with the fluorescent green/yellow signs, for example). This will cost about $40,000 to replace all the school signs. DK introduced Kim Sharpe and asked her to introduce the newly created Bicycle Education Coalition. She listed the group Fort Collins Cycling Club Safe Kids Larimer County Poudre School District (the Wellness Coordinator and a PE Teacher) FCBikes City of Fort Collins (Matt Wempe) Bike Co-op Healthier Communities Coalition Bike Fort Collins CSU Students CSU Police Dept. North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization CSU’s Colorado Injury Control Research Center Poudre Valley Health System Ambulance Service The group has decided to write a Safe Routes to School grant application. The City would administer the grant and handle reporting to the State. The Healthier Communities Coalition will convene the group and be general coordinator through the BEC. The Train the Trainer aspect of the grant and the curriculum would be handled by the Bike Co-op - that’s a longer term solution to the safe routes to school issues. In the interim education will be handled through the Safe Kids “snap and strap” program, the REI grant that the Co-op has received, and possibly others. The CSU Injury Control Research Center will provide evaluation and program development. Julie Gibbs from the CICRC and I will put the grant together once we have all the input from the stakeholders. The application is due Dec. 4. We’ll know if we get the grant in April and funding begins in August 2010. The funding will run through July of 2012. Joe Olsen explained that the City is looking at submitting an infrastructure grant in addition to the non-infrastructure grant. Bicycle Accidents in Fort Collins (Presented by Joe Olsen) Mr. Olsen reported on a recent analysis of bike/car crashes 2007 through mid-2009 based on police reports. They went through every report by hand and tried to classify the type of accident. From 2000 to 2008 there has been a general increase in accidents, especially in the last two years. It is not known if this reflects an increase in ridership or an actual increase in trends in accidents. The total miles cycled are not known, though they have begun to count people on bicycles in “turning movement counts” at all the signalized intersections in town (they do the entire City – 176 intersections – over two years). Those intersections are sampled during morning, mid-day and evening peaks (one hour each). They began including bicycles last year. Over time this will give bike data that can be used as a base line in the future. It still won’t provide vehicle miles traveled by bike but it will give more information. Olsen presented more detail on types of collisions. This material will be placed on the Transportation Services web site. The data reviewed involved car/bike accidents only (with a few exceptions), not accidents involving cyclists only or cyclists alone. Therefore, this doesn’t present all bike crashes. There are four types of accidents. See the web site report for details. Several BAC members (Price, Morrell, Reider) raised the question about the compatibility of data collected and reported, namely for comparison purposes with other cities or national data reports. DK and Joe will meet to discuss this and see if they might be able to make Fort Collins data compatible with other data collected. The value in it, according to Olsen, would be for educational outreach. But as we will be doing this annually it may be difficult to sustain an unnecessarily complex, standardized system. DK reported that in order to measure successful educational efforts over time, we might want to standardize these data. Bracke reiterated that when we collect data we try to identify a process that is sustainable over time. Single, one-time studies that don’t give us a record over time are great but not that useful over time. Gould asked about crashes that aren’t reported by the police. Sharpe suggested that any ambulance call collects data. These may add more information to this data set. Olsen reported that 90% of crashes that involve overtaking and right-turns (the so-called “right hook” are 13% of all crashes) occur where there is a bike lane. Both cyclists and motorists are confused by that handling of bike lanes. The traffic law stipulates that motorists should move as far right as “practicable” to make that turn. It is legal to move into the bike lane to do this. We’ve discussed striping bike lanes differently to address this. Other communities have dotted the line for the bike lane. We may try to find a location where we have problem with this attempt try some solutions. Olsen pointed out that if a car passes him with a right turn arrow on when he is in the bike lane he will pull out into the travel lane behind the automobile. Many cyclists aren’t comfortable with that, however. So when they stay in the bike lane it is to their detriment. Having the bike lane, therefore, may not be the best thing. And yet we want to encourage people to ride their bikes. It’s a conundrum and we may try some different experiments to see how we might remedy it. The state law doesn’t not address the question of using the bike lane for right turns (City ordinance does). Olsen shared a map of all the accident locations and we briefly discussed that it is surprising how some people will ride the sidewalks along South College without using the parallel Mason Trail or Mathews or Remington as they head south. Others in the group stressed, though, how complex south Fort Collins is for bicycling, especially if you don’t know the area. Bracke pointed out that way-finding is a problem in many areas and that when we prohibit cyclists from certain areas we should indicate where they can or should go. Kim Sharpe suggested we contact Vida Sana for educational outreach to the particular demographic they serve. Gould asked Mr. Olsen for a brief review of the traffic code relative to bicycles in crosswalks: 1412-10-c: “(c) A person riding or walking a bicycle or electrical assisted bicycle upon and along a sidewalk or pathway or across a roadway upon and along a crosswalk shall have all the rights and duties applicable to a pedestrian under the same circumstances, including, but not limited to, the rights and duties granted and required by section 42-4- 802.” “42-4-802-3: (3) No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and ride a bicycle, ride an electrical assisted bicycle, walk, or run into the path of a moving vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.” The cyclist is seen to be at fault in this insistence. Gould: Can you repeat what you said before the meeting so we can get this into our minutes? Olsen: 42-4-612 is about when signals are inoperative or malfunctioning. (1) Whenever a driver approaches an intersection and faces a traffic control signal which is inoperative or which remains on steady red or steady yellow during several time cycles, the rules controlling entrance to a through street or highway from a stop street or highway, as provided under section 42-4-703, shall apply until a police officer assumes control of traffic or until normal operation is resumed. In the event that any traffic control signal at a place other than an intersection should cease to operate or should malfunction as set forth in this section, drivers may proceed through the inoperative or malfunctioning signal only with caution, as if the signal were one of flashing yellow. Olsen: That means that if you don’t ever get a green light you can treat this as a stop sign. But you need to wait for several cycles before you proceed. b) Building on Basics Projects Presented by Kathleen Bracke. DK handed out a confidential memo from Kathleen Bracke and DK explaining the City Attorney Office’s position on the use of the BOB funds. They are to be used only for capital improvements per the ballot language which states that the project will “construct elements of the . . . Plan.” Bracke solicited ideas from the BAC on how to allocate funds from the BOB (about $125,000 per year.) $25,000 from 2009 are as yet unexpended. These can be rolled forward. Some of the 2010 funds are being considered for the grade separated crossing at the NRRC to Whole Foods. Bracke asked “what other projects should be we looking at?” The planners would like to build a list. Are there interim fixes or solutions that we should consider (As examples: signage? Restriping? Shared bike lanes and right turn lanes?) Please e-mail ideas to Rick Price, Dan Gould or DK and we’ll begin a list. 7) Final Comments Gould: I would like to wrap up with the idea that logistically we focus on our Work Plan, deconstruct pieces of it and begin to focus on what we care about. I’d invite agenda items in December and January that move us in that direction. Marcia Richards resigned from the Senior Advisory Board and no longer represents that group on the BAC. That Board is looking for a replacement at this point. Price: How do we place items on future agendas? Gould: “Suggest them.” Myself and staff will discuss this and decide. Price: I’d requested a final report on the Bike Library as an agenda item. DK: We can do that in January. ADJOURN Meeting adjourned at 8:08 pm Respectfully submitted, ____________________________ Dan Gould Bicycle Advisory Committee Chair