San Luis Obispo needs to rethink bike lanes

San Luis Obispo could create bike routes that respect human and property rights of neighborhood residents and protect neighborhood quality of life from degradation. Our city, however, refuses.

The “North Broad bike boulevard,” which I initially supported for our street, has become a collection of dumb ideas. With three options being offered, all are million dollar schemes to kill neighborhood quality of life to allegedly benefit a small biking minority.

These “alternatives” would remove all the much-used street parking from my block and more from other blocks, massively increase through-traffic on Broad, Ramona and Murray, rudely inconvenience drivers from Foothill to downtown with myriad unnecessary “traffic calming” schemes, endanger bicyclists, inflict huge monetary costs on residents and so on.

The option recommended by the Bike Committee, the most abusive and costly of the three, would turn Broad and Chorro into skinny, one-lane, one-way traffic thoroughfares and force many Chorro residents to park in the middle of the street with drivers opening car doors into a bike lane and passengers into the traffic lane, then scampering across a two-way bike lane to the sidewalk. Imagine safely handling kids, groceries or someone in a wheelchair!

On Aug. 15, this fiasco goes to the City Council, never having been vetted by the Planning Commission, which has a broader perspective than the Bike Committee, which represents only the interests of bikers — not residents, drivers, pedestrians, children, the elderly, the child-laden or the handicapped.

This is rotten planning, and it needs to be stopped.

This story was originally published July 29, 2017 at 4:23 PM with the headline "San Luis Obispo needs to rethink bike lanes."