8th Ave Project Summary
8th Avenue City Commission Meeting Summary
1 May 2013
by James Thompson
Advocacy Director
Gainesville Cycling Club
(comments, corrections, additional analysis to jtexconsult@gmail.com)
The City rarely gets to decide exactly how to repave or re-imagine roads infrastructure, since most roads are owned by the County and State. So, this was a wonderful opportunity to rethink how and for whom we pave.
The NW 8th Ave project will be repaved (for cars mostly, which Commissioner Bottcher reminded bike ped opponents) from 6th St to 43rd in three sections.
The nearest town section runs from about 6th to 22nd Street (the top of the nasty hill) through mostly residential neighborhoods. The main jist of repaving this section under the current approved planning is to eliminate or move some of the on street parking and create better bike ped infrastructure, including adding a bike lane through this strip.
The next section is virtually uninhabited residentially or commercially and runs through Loblolly preserved area between the hill at 22nd Street and up to 34th Street. This is a vast “launch pad” heading west to east for cars merging from its four lanes into the two on the the first section. As many pointed out, this road should never have been built with four lanes in the first place, there is no reason for it. As the plan was put through at this stage it looks like we are going to de-lane the autobahn to two lanes, put in some kind of (hopefully zero-scaped) median, put in a good size and widened multi-use bike ped sidewalk and use some of the old auto lanes to create a semi-segregated (perhaps by rumbles or paint and reflectors) bike lane. While Commissioner Chase and some East Side residents reminded us that we need some bus infrastructure in there, the engineering doesn’t forbid it and since there will likely be few stops in this section no reason we can’t add that to the final design. I actually spoke to this because I felt like Chase was (perhaps unintentionally) using this as a reason not to move forward with the design of this section. My comments were in keeping with the nascent bike-ped-bus transit coalition idea that all these things are mutually agreeable.
The final section is where we kind of lost, so to speak. From 34th to 43d is going to stay four lanes with no bike ped unless we mobilize and organize and get them to change it to two lanes with a turn lane and bike lanes. Sharrows were also discounted on this section because the road is too narrow. BTW, Chase followed Swift Cycles owner Tim Hayes and his friends outside the meeting as did I and used our conversation improperly. He went back in and told the Commission and the media that “a bunch of the bike shop owners say sharrows are a bad idea.” Actually, we had an intelligent conversation in which I happen to agree with Tim and others that sharrows are not a great idea, but as I pointed out that is all we could get on 16th and 23rd. Sharrows are a poor compromise and we shouldn’t settle for them on the final section--that was the gist of our conversation. While Tim did say that he wouldn’t use a sharrow lane (and he does own a bike shop), he wasn’t speaking out against other infrastructure on that final section. Indeed, Tim spoke eloquently to the need for bike ped along the whole project’s length. Chase misconstrued the conversation. In fact, there were not multiple or plural bike shop owners there, and we didn’t say what he said we did. I’ll forgive Chase the error in thinking that I was perhaps a bike shop owner (I work at one, but I adamantly do not speak on its behalf at government meetings). However, I do think it was a little clever, Mr. Commissioner, to use an honest discussion about the undesirability of sharrows to make a larger argument against bike ped infrastructure on the final section. We desperately need it there to connect the dots. If we don’t get it now, we’re going to get it later. I promise you that.
So the final section is where we have work to do, but I am worried that the planning for this section precedes or was done during the rise of bike advocacy in this metro area many years ago, and that we are coming in late to the game. A bike-ped-bus coalition would have designed all of this project very differently, and I think if anything the inorganic nature of the 8th ave project (it came from well-meaning bike ped staff and elected officials, but not from a coalition of people on the ground) suggests the need for such a coalition. This is not to disparage our pro-transit City Commission, just to say we should have been better organized early on to help them design a more radical project.
As a point of order, I am less familiar with city than county meetings, but I do hope Mayor-elect Braddy will ask the jerks in the back of the room to stay quiet while others are talking. I plan to stand up and say it myself if no one else will. As another FYI, the cameras point right at the podium in the city room, which I didn’t realize until halfway through the meeting. If you don’t like your picture being broadcast for four hours to the public access, sit to stage right or left.