Caltrans and Coast Hwy
Bike advocates met with Caltrans officials to come up with a ‘want list’ for a Transportation Enhancement grant.
OC Bike Coalition President Pete Van Nuys runs a bike shop as his day-job; he’d been working on my Breezer fold-up bike and I was traveling to San Clemente to pick it up. When Pete called to say the store is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but that he’d bring the bike to me if I joined him at a Caltrans meeting scheduled for this morning it was easy to strike a deal. And am I glad I did.
This morning’s meeting was hosted by Romeo Estrella and included Caltrans District 12 folks and city representatives from Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and Newport Beach. The purpose of the meeting was to contribute to their ‘want list’ as they prepare for a Transportation Enhancement grant from the feds. It’s all part of their mandate to encourage non-motorized transportation options.
It was a great opportunity to influence this committee as they dream up improvements. Like Sharrows, for instance – what are the pros and cons of the green paint? Will Sharrows attract newbies onto PCH that maybe shouldn’t be there? Pete answered all the questions and everyone agreed, Caltrans would maximize the use of Sharrows along Coast Hwy. What about ‘Share the Road’ signs? When that came up I was able to whisper to the lady sitting behind me who controlled the giant display, “go to cdmCyclist,” so we could all see a recent post about the various signs:
When it came time to talk about bike lane striping I had more examples to share, like this bike lane in New York, but the best tidbit of the session was introducing the team to the NACTO Urban Bikeways Design Guide. I think they were seeing it for the first time. They liked it and why not? It was built precisely for these circumstances, where planners want to accommodate cyclists yet want to follow emerging standards.
As the next topic came up, Newport Blvd at Coast Hwy in Newport Beach, we used the NACTO site to show some lane striping options. They weren’t hard to find and one great feature – the photos rotate on the screen in a slide show, so we could see several alternatives that other cities have tried.
As the session wrapped up, Caltrans wanted to remind us that any city that’s interested, they are willing to relinquish control of Coast Hwy. Of course that’s what Newport Beach did and now they control PCH through Corona del Mar. Maybe at first the City was more interested in landscape beautification, today new transportation opportunities come to mind as we collectively imagine more livable cities, safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
Newport Blvd at Coast Hwy in Newport Beach. This intersection is a danger to cyclists in part because of the volume of traffic accessing the peninsula.
The CalTrans-CHP command center monitors 250 cameras to track volume flows on Orange County freeways.
Sunday, July 24th 2011 at 8:03 am |
It is encouraging to see that this meeting went well. Does this mean we are closer to Sharrows in Newport Beach?
Every summer tons of people ride their bike from the Dover Shores and Newport Heights locations to the beach (34th street and around). It is like an ant trail with 50% kids being part of the daily migration. Bringing more safety to this route with Sharrows and signs would be great. Same goes for the kids attending Junior Life Guards and riding from these areas down to the beach.
Sunday, July 24th 2011 at 11:35 pm |
Mark,
I used to be one of those kids. I grew up in Dover Shores, where we all rode our bikes to the beach, to school, to soccer practice, and everywhere else.
Think too of all those UCI students living by the beach, who could be riding to school (25min), instead of waiting for a bus, or running up their college debt with car costs. Not to mention clogging our roads with their cars.
More kids would ride those trips (and more of their parents would let them) if that short stretch of PCH through Mariners’ Mile wasn’t so scary. Traffic is heavier than it used to be, and when it’s not so heavy it’s faster. Sharrows and traffic calming would go a long way toward making it more bike friendly.
Monday, July 25th 2011 at 10:34 am |
One of the collateral values of sharrows on Pacific Coast Highway would be public education of Newport Beach’s motorists.
While Pacific Coast Highway is just another road, just about everyone in Newport Beach travels on it from time to time. Pacific Coast Highway is historical and has cultural significance in our community. The presence of sharrows there, more than on any other public right-of-way in Newport Beach, will remind motorists that cyclists are omnipresent and need to be anticipated when driving a car not just on Pacific Coast Highway but on other rights-of-way as well.
In any case, sharrows on Pacific Coast Highway are a textbook “fit” (cyclists from near and far viewing it as a prime destination, narrow travel lanes making it unsafe for cars to pass cyclists, motorists habitually and ignorantly tailgating and unsafely attempting to pass cyclists, a left lane which motorists may use to pass slower traffic and street parking posing a “dooring” hazard to cyclists) and should be installed to address the obvious hazard.