Bicycle Injustice

Can't wait to read this new book by two researchers at UCR. Here is a link: Bicycle Justice.

Here is a paragraph about it:

"Policymakers and urban planners in much of Southern California – where a car culture dominates – are not highly receptive to rascuache cyclists, the researchers said, noting the lack of secured bicycle-parking areas at shopping centers, commuter rail stations and college campuses; bike paths that are designed with recreational users – not low-income commuters – in mind; and bike-safety legislation that negatively impacts cyclists who can least afford helmets and reflective clothing."

"Rascuache" is a term these researchers use to describe low income citizens who rely on their bicycles for transportation. That could have been me at one time -- trying to get to school, and a job, living on Top Ramen and no car. My bike? A freebie from a dumpster in Santa Ana that I rescued and coaxed back to life with a little WD40, a screwdriver and a crescent wrench.

So what does my hard luck story have to do with Temecula, one of the most affluent cities in the county?

If you live in Temecula, cruise Rancho California Road some time and watch the men and women who work at the car washes, grocery stores, and restaurants pedaling their 38 pound department store bicycles to work every morning, and home late in the evening. They have jobs, but no cars. 

Look for the students among them who are carrying heavy backpacks or worse, carrying books swinging in plastic bags tied to the handlebars. They need to get to school. They have bikes. But unfortunately, they live in a city that is openly hostile to cyclists. Their leaders spend nothing out of the millions they collect in taxes each year to make cyclists safer. 

Why is this so important?

Because they are cyclists. They are Temecula residents. 

And a lot of them are riding on the sidewalks, where they are dodging pedestrians, moms and dads pushing strollers. It's not a healthy mix. 

Yes, Temecula is affluent, but it is such a dangerous place to cycle these commuters are not about to venture out in the three skinny (probably not even up to code) car traffic lanes squeezed into Rancho California Road, because the city wiped out the bicycle lanes there! 

Now the city says it is "impossible" to have bicycle lanes on Rancho California Road. How is it impossible when they used to be there? They would still be there if you had left them alone. And a lot of us would be safer for it.

I've talked before at City Council about connecting Old Town to Wine Country for tourists via Rancho California. Their $150,000 consultants from San Diego want tourists to ride out of the south end of Old Town and up some gnarly hills, turning a 15 minute ride into hours. Tourists bring money to Temecula, but most of them don't try the bike to wineries trip more than once. Ask the bike shop owners what these cycle-tourists say when they return their rental bikes. Yikes!

But I have also reminded Council that a lot of their constituents who do a lot of the work in this town use Rancho California Road to get to work. Do your San Diego consultants have answers for them? Do they think they should ride out the south end of Old Town too? Where are they supposed to ride?

The sidewalk.



  

Valley News Prints Letter to Editor on Temecula Cycling

The Valley News has printed my letter to the editor about the Temecula City Council's lack of support for creating infrastructure that makes cycling safer for Temecula families.

In http://myvalleynews.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-28/

Temecula City Council Candidates -- Any cycling advocates in this bunch?

Just got the list of candidates or potential candidates for Temecula City Council. Three of the names on the list are former city managers or incumbent councilmembers  (marked in red). I will leave it up to you to determine how effective you think your current city leaders have been in addressing our concerns as cyclists. If you need help, peruse previous posts here and comments from actual cyclists -- not city hall insiders or paid consultants from San Diego.


There are others on the list. So if you are one of the names on the list, or you have information about these candidates and their views on cycling, please contact me.

I do not hide behind anonymous web pages, like our consultants from San Diego (HikeandBikeTemecula.org, please, really?) or fake names on Facebook or Twitter. My name is Rick Peoples, I have lived in Rancho California (now Temecula) since 1987, and my personal email is rickpeoples@hotmail.com. And thanks to each and every one of you who took the time to comment about previous information here and at BicycleTemecula on FB and Twitter. Your comments are important to me, whether you agree with my ideas or not. We are a community, one that is being ignored by the city of Temecula, and that has to change.

I will be visiting City Hall to obtain contact information (unlike the county and other government agencies, the city does not put contact information or biographies about our potential civil servants online for constituents to peruse until the election roster is set, which is probably not the best way for us to see who is interested in leading us or get more people involved in the process of sending new faces into leadership ranks) and I plan to contact each of them about cycling issues ASAP.

But we, as a cycling community, need to get involved as a group in vetting the people who control hundreds of millions of dollars in capital improvement project monies coming to Temecula. If we were to get even a tiny percentage of those millions, think about the projects we could fund.

And do we really need more massive City Hall buildings, parking structures, or decorative fountains?


What would it be like in Temecula if we took the money for that fountain and other Council paid projects and spent it on desperately need signalization to help cyclists get through red lights, on-street bike lanes that connect and get us through particularly dangerous roadways like Margarita Road or Rancho California Road, off-street bike lanes (we can dream), or (please) a police force that is pro-cyclists and is busy out there cracking down on Temecula motorists who make roadways unsafe for cyclists.

We should be asking people who want to serve as leaders if they agree that these things are minimum requirements for Temecula cyclists. Just remember, half of the city's population throw a leg over a bicycle saddle this year and go for a spin. What are we facing out there?


Here is the list, current or former leaders in red. Like I said, you decide, but please help me update.

Thanks in advance:

Nomination Papers Filed

Ronald Bradley -- former Temecula city manager

James Cooley

Michael McCracken -- incumbent council member

Michael Naggar -- incumbent council member and mayor

Adam Ruiz

James Stewart

Nomination Papers Issued

Jeffrey Frichner

Skylar Tempel

Angel Garcia

Found: The $500,000 Bike Sharrow!!!

What you see here is a bike sharrow painted by the city in Old Town Temecula. The Mayor, Council and city staff have purported that they have spent $500,000 on bicycle infrastructure improvements. Since this is the only thing I have seen new in town, and since the city paid its San Diego cycling consultants (Why do we need some guys from out of town who don't live here, don't ride bikes here and don't have any stake in how this all turns out for cyclists to tell us what we see with our own eyes every time we ride a bike here?) more than $150,000 to create a slick new web page featuring -- you guessed it -- this bike sharrow, I have concluded that the city leaders must have spent $500,000 on this sharrow!

And you thought finding Pokemons was fun?

Just kidding. The city hasn't spent $500,000 this sharrow. The city hasn't spent $500,000 on ANY cycling infrastructure, despite what the staff, our Mayor and Councilmembers say in front of the television cameras at public Council meetings. 

In private, responding to my requests, they admit they have spent a few thousand dollars on a little striping and, of course, this cool looking sharrow. I hope you like this sharrow, though, because the city staff, our Mayor, our Councimembers, have no plans to spend any money on cycling infrastructure next year either.

As a cyclist why should I care?

Because the city of Temecula is spending literally hundreds of millions of OUR dollars on new freeway interchanges, parking garages and of course, a very cool looking City Hall, and nothing on cycling infrastructure. And because riding a bicycle in Temecula doesn't have to be so dang dangerous, if we make a few changes.

Our bike lanes in Temecula start and then stop in the most dangerous places and ways, don't connect in any systematic way, and are filled with trash, broken glass and dead animals. 

Our signal lights don't recognize bicycles (lots of cities around this county, this state, this country, and the world have figured out how to do that Mr. Mayor), and what is our police force doing to stop the daily harassment of cyclists by motorists?

That's my point. OK, so why should you care? 

Because we are cyclists, and cyclists care about other cyclists. We stop when we see someone with a flat -- do you need anything? We ride in groups inches apart and by being polite, it all works.

Even if you are one of those John Wayne types -- I go where I want, do what I want -- that may be fine for me, or for you, but what about new riders, what about our young people, our children? What about families that want to ride together but are too frightened of Temecula traffic? They load their bikes into their Suburbans and drive to the park, or to the beach, or to cities THAT HAVE BIKE LANES!

In a city of 100,000 people, where half of them old enough to ride will jump on a bicycle at least once during the next 12 months, why is nothing being done to make cycling safer?

Temecula has had plans for bicycle lanes and paths since its first Parks and Recreation plan. The city has had some kind of bicycle trail master plan since at least 2002. A group of us representing cycling clubs and others under the umbrella of the Temecula Bicycle Coalition met with Mayor Naggar and staff  10 years ago to urge the city to make our streets safer. We will get right on that, they said. You are our eyes and ears, they said. And now a decade later, with another $150,000 of our hard earned taxpayer money flung to the wilds of San Diego, we have yet another master plan and no projects.

When I spoke at City Council, I said quit making new plans and start building what you promised a decade (or more) ago. The Mayor, Mrs. Edwards, and other Councilmembers took turns telling me how wrong I am. My own eyes, and the numbers prove me right. $2,000 or even $10,000 is not $500,000. We have one new bike sharrow and a web page.

So what's to be done? Cut and paste, copy, repost, retweet, talk about, yell about, print this out and hand it around, I don't care, but get this message out to anyone who rides a bike and has a stake in this game. We pay city taxes, we pay fuel and other transportation taxes, and yet the city of Temecula spends none of it to help make us safe as cyclists. That's wrong.

Forget your new "pump track" at Ronald Reagan Park, it doesn't make cycling safer. Forget your plans to spend $10 million to put a new bike path under the 15 Freeway at St. Gertrudis Creek, we don't need it. If I am going to ride somewhere, I go the same way you do in your car -- the shortest route. And tell your San Diego consultants that we don't want to ride miles in the wrong direction out of the south end of Old Town to reach Wine Country. 

You can really tell someone who doesn't live here came up with that one. The shortest route is straight out Rancho California Road, where, I keep reminding our $150,000 consultants and city staff, there used to be some very good bike lanes and two normal motorists lanes until the city paved over the bike lanes and squeezed in three narrow lanes for cars. Now they say bike lanes on Rancho Cal are "impossible." Really? They were there!

Connect our on-street bike lanes. Give us back the Rancho California Bike lanes. Spend some money on off street bike lanes -- you will really see cycling numbers skyrocket with that one. Fix our signals so we can get through red lights without getting off our bikes and using the pedestrian buttons. Tell your police officers to watch out for motorists trying to squeeze us into curbs, right hooking us at intersections, tossing bottles, cans or even coins at us, yelling out windows -- get on the sidewalk!

Our Mayor is running for re-election and his campaign material includes a vision of a hiking path from Temecula to the ocean. Great! But Mr. Mayor, we think you should turn your attention to how difficult it is to find a safe cycling path around your own town.

Again, repost this. Retweet it. Share this information. The Mayor and City Council are not listening. Their city staff is giving out misleading and completely erroneous information. 

And what are we doing? Do we just keep taking this mistreatment? Do we let the Mayor and city staff meet with us every 10 years, pat us on the heads and tell us to go away?

It's up to us. I went to the Council meeting alone -- they had their way with me. OK. I can take it. I know I'm right, and I know they are not giving out accurate information. I have eyes. I know it.

The question is, do YOU want Temecula to be a city known for its beer bars and bikers (not cyclists, the Harley Davidson kind) that crowd Front Street in Old Town, or do you want to be known as a progressive, green city, with an active population, amenities for cyclists, pedestrians, hikers, a place with a bicycle culture where motorists harassing cyclists face the wrath of the entire community?

Share this -- please.