| HN Mirror

Being around local government conversations in California, public and private, for mostly unrelated reasons, and only privately being interested in bicycle and pedestrian policy, I became enormously disillusioned and depressed about the chances of making real change. There was a sense that anyone arguing for good bicycle infrastructure was seen as akin to a militant political extremist who should be excluded from any real conversation: I once waited while a planning hearing for a major project was delayed for around forty five minutes while the simple request from a father that a single bike rack be put near a public park was met with a sea of concerned residents who seemed to describe him as everything from a likely outside invader, to a paid activist, to someone who should be investigated by CPS (Where was the mother of the children? Why wasn't she at the meeting?), to someone who wanted to make the park a place where murderous teenage bicyclists would run down senior citizens trying to walk on pleasant paths. Bicycle infrastructure was only really discussed in terms of getting funding, then placed in pointless locations, or left in endless planning. What seemed like a wilful misinterpretation of Vision Zero was used as an argument against any pedestrian safety improvements other than speed limit reductions and speed bumps, with a seeming focus on suburban single-family-home residential areas where, entirely coincidentally I am sure, residents were upset about traffic noise. I actually heard a transport commission member argue that the city should not consider improving crosswalk and pedestrian intersection safety, because Vision Zero showed speed limits were better for preventing fatal accidents. Even simply asking if police would increase pedestrian patrols instead of driving on pedestrian paths in even small parks in street patrol cars was met with enormous hostility.

At best, bicycle and pedestrian topics would get a question or two at local debates, usually along the lines of "Do you walk, or take public transport, or ride a bicycle in the area?", almost always answered along the lines of "Yes, of course, in [some rare situation], but I can't normally because it isn't suitable transportation when working". But as locals would primarily vote based on somewhat arbitrary senses of feeling and intuition, without considering direct local questions or any research, nothing really changed.

The same projects and funding, which out-of-the-way places to add patchwork bike lanes to, and whether those bike lanes should be painted, or maybe just "bike route / share the road" signs on the side of the road, are probably being discussed now, a decade later.