Mayor Ally Medina Finishes a Lackluster Term

Q: How Did Mayor Medina Do on 

Her Pet Issues of Bikes and Parks?

A: Zilch

Opinion
And so ends the downbeat tenure of Emeryville mayor Ally Medina.  Tuesday night Ms Medina hands over the mayoralty to Council member Christian Patz, ending the Medina era of …..what exactly?  Well, it’s not bike transportation or parks, the two issues that were central to her election campaign as she ran for City Council in 2016.  On those issues, she was a dud.  A non-starter.  Anything else?  What did Mayor Medina do for Emeryville during her term as mayor?  The readers will be forgiven if they struggle with this.
The answer is: very little.

Mayor Ally Medina Posing With A Bike
Irony alert!
Use agitprop to turn your
liability into an asset.

Truth be told, one could make an argument we’re being generous when we say Mayor Medina did nothing of consequence during her year long term.  On her two pet issues, conspicuously proclaimed on the campaign trail ("I am personally committed to taking the lead" she said at the time), she's actually taken us backward.
Regarding bikes, Mayor Medina has made it clear she doesn’t like our bike boulevard system.  It’s a stance we wish she had made clear before she made all her promises as a Council candidate.  Ten years ago, Emeryville spent $200,000 and countless hours of volunteer citizen effort formulating our Bike Plan, the central tenet of which is our bike boulevard network.  It would have been nice to know at the time that a candidate running for Council held it in such contempt.

Candidate Medina said she would implement our Bike Plan but Mayor Medina now says protected bike lanes are better.  So she set about ignoring the clear and mounting problems of excess traffic on the 45th and 53rd street bike boulevards, putting bikers in harm’s way.  The Bike Plan has a prescription for how to make boulevards safe for bikers….and a timeline.  There are too many cars and trucks on those two bike priority streets according to a traffic count conducted by the City more than two years ago.  As soon as that information was gathered, the City had two years to implement a regime of traffic calming as delineated by the Bike Plan.  Then the clock ran out for Mayor Medina to install the required traffic calming.  But it's not as if she didn't have enough time.  She simply let it languish during her entire term as mayor.  Inexplicably, she refused to even let the Bike Committee discuss the issue as she steadfastly refused to explain the inaction that has effectively taken the safety of bicyclists out of the purview of the City of Emeryville, at least on those two streets.

Mayor Medina’s experiment with protected bike lanes, her unilateral answer to our bike boulevard network, has been a disaster.  Horton Street, a street with a huge amount of traffic but still listed in the books as a bike boulevard (despite a final ruling against it by Council members Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue in 2016), has drawn her in.  Mayor Medina, who serves as the Council liaison to the Bike/Ped Advisory Committee, instructed Public Works to install plastic bollards near the Amtrak Station meant to separate bikes and vehicles instead of implementing the Bike Plan's traffic calming regimen.  Horton, like 45th and 53rd streets is a street with too much vehicle traffic to be safe for bikers, and the bollards have caused commercial vehicles to park on the sidewalks and in the bike lanes, trapping the cyclists and causing them to veer sharply out into moving traffic.  It’s an issue that a local TV news station highlighted as complaints poured into City Hall.
If Ms Medina and the City had simply followed the Bike Plan and installed its traffic calming measures, Horton Street would be safe for bicycling with plenty of parking spaces for cars and yellow curbs for commercial trucks.  But bike boulevards are an issue the Mayor and the City can’t seem to countenance, never mind all the crowing at election time. 

Regarding parks, another self proclaimed favorite topic of our mayor, Emeryville is epic: as in epically bad.  Our city is the worst in the entire East Bay as far as parks go.  Parks and open space service is measured in residents per acre and at some 500 people per acre of park, a number that keeps rising as we keep increasing our population, residents here are green space starved.
Meanwhile, our General Plan is very clear about this issue: parks are essential and it’s resolved: all new large residential projects are supposed to offset the degradation in the parks-to-residents ratio by providing no less than three acres per thousand new residents.  Unfortunately, Emeryville has failed utterly on this issue and Mayor Medina, who sanctimoniously said we could trust her on parks, has done nothing during her term as mayor to address the issue all while the condition continues to get worse.

The Sherwin Williams Tree Debacle
Council Member Medina sees what
the developer tells her to see: dead and
dying trees.
Everybody else sees healthy shade
giving trees, doing what trees are
supposed to do.

And then there's the issue of the Sherwin Williams street trees.  Ms Medina went down in flames with the City Hall staff and the developer of that impending construction project who wanted to kill every public street tree fronting it.  Without providing evidence, the developer told us they couldn't save the trees due to underground electrical cables they needed to install.  Besides, the trees in question are dead and dying they told us, over the objections from the City's own arborist.  The developer's performance was enough to convince the staff and Councilwoman Medina.
Ally's colleagues however could see the tree cutting scheme for the con job that it was; a plan to bolster the developer's profit margin at the resident's expense.  Only Council members Martinez and Medina were duped.  The others on the Council saw right through the obvious profit maximizing ploy being foisted by the developer.  Almost two years after calling their bluff, the City Council majority saw the developer and the staff, hats in hands, finally admit the trees could be saved after all.  And a chasented Ally Medina apologizing for her naivety.

While Mayor Medina has certainly been a disappointment, in her defense, it was her misfortune to follow John Bauters.  Mayor Bauters, whom we had our disagreements with during his term, nonetheless used his prodigious if artless political skills to escort Measure C, a $50 million affordable housing bond through to voters.  That plus other consequential policies he enacted made Mayor Bauters a tough act to follow to be sure.  But that doesn’t absolve Mayor Medina who, like them all, is charged with moving Emeryville forward during their terms as mayor.  We would have thought, at least on the issues she claims to champion, Mayor Medina would have made some progress.  We never would have imagined her to shut down the cause of government transparency and accountability as she has done on the issue of the 45th and 53rd street bicycle boulevards.

It gives us no pleasure to say Ally Medina has been a bust as mayor of Emeryville.

Mayor Announces No More Bike Boulevards, Yes to Protected Bike Lanes

Two Year Countdown Clock Runs Out For Emeryville to Build Bike Boulevards

Mayor Responds: No More Bike Boulevards

The Mayor of Emeryville has taken a missed deadline in the City’s Bicycle Plan yesterday to announce she will explore finally scrapping Emeryville’s entire bike boulevard system in favor of a system of ‘protected’ bike lanes.  Mayor Ally Medina, who also serves as Council liaison to Emeryville’s Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), made the surprising announcement in a recent interview with the Tattler in response to probing questions over the City’s recalcitrance providing traffic calming for the 45th and 53rd street bike boulevards.  The two streets are now past due to receive ‘Level Four’ traffic calming measures owing to an excess of vehicle traffic discovered during a City commissioned measurement of traffic two years ago.  Instead of providing traffic calming for the two streets, Mayor Medina indicated she will direct the BPAC to start discussions over amending the Bike Plan with an eye towards finally removing all bike boulevards, an idea she says has not worked well in Emeryville.

Mayor Ally Medina
She says bike boulevards'
time has come and gone
in Emeryville.

Bike boulevards are streets that allow vehicle traffic but are set up primarily for bike travel.  Vehicles and bikes share the street on a bike boulevard but vehicle speeds and volumes are managed by a traffic calming infrastructure.  Streets with protected bike lanes by comparison, are regular streets with physical separation between the vehicle traffic and bikes.  Usually, the separation is provided by bollards or concrete ‘K’ rail.
In Emeryville, the Bike Plan says the City has up to two years to move a bike boulevard up to the next highest level of traffic calming after a traffic count shows an excess of traffic on the street.  Bike boulevards here have routinely been moved up to Level Three traffic calming without incident but Level Four calming, a more rigorous push down against vehicles, has never been applied. The less restrictive Level Three traffic calming infrastructure involves corner intersection 'bulb outs' as well as signage and other such benign measures.

Ms Medina’s desire to finally kill Emeryville’s bike boulevard system comes at the end of a two year period in which the City should have installed temporary Level Four traffic calming for the two bike boulevards on 45th and 53rd streets.  Level Four traffic calming is defined by Emeryville’s Bike Plan as either ‘chicanes’ or ‘chokers’.  Both devices, using bollards, are meant to lower traffic volume to less than 3000 vehicle trips per day, a number that both streets have been in excess of as the Council commissioned traffic count from two years ago revealed.  A chicane is described as a “horizontal” traffic calming measure, a forcing of vehicles to wiggle side to side, whereas a choker is a narrowing of the street to one lane, effectively serving like a one lane bridge.

Level Four traffic calming has proven to be very unpopular with developers and the business community here although it is common in neighboring cities.  Developers, have publicly stated their desire to not have Level Four calming in Emeryville and it has never been used here.  Some Council members over the years have announced they will only go as high as Level Three calming on our bike boulevards despite the clear direction from Emeryville's Bike Plan that traffic calming goes as high as Level Five (traffic diverters).
The former Horton Street Bike Boulevard was removed from consideration for Level Four traffic calming in 2016 when the City Council signed a ‘Statement of Overriding Considerations’ (SOC) that posits the Sherwin Williams development on that street is more important than the bike boulevard and that the City has no interest in keeping traffic on the street less than 3000 vehicle trips per day after the development, with its 1000+ vehicle trips per day generated, was found by its attending Environmental Impact Report to be in conflict with the bike boulevard.  The street will have approximately 4000 vehicle trips per day including the traffic generated by Sherwin Williams.  Horton Street still has signs up claiming it to be a bike boulevard but the City Council, by signing away the Bike Plan’s provisions for it in the SOC, has said it will not place Level Four (or Level Five for that matter) on the street regardless how much vehicle traffic it has.

So 2019.

Mayor Medina used her influence to place bollards along Horton Street in 2018 it should be noted, after she received many complaints from bicyclists over vehicles blocking the bike lanes around the Amtrak train station at 59th Street.  The bollards themselves, consequently, have become a source of controversy as car and truck drivers complain they have no place to make drop offs or deliveries to businesses in the area.  These complaints, ironically, would not be happening if the City had enforced a bike boulevard for Horton Street because bike lanes are not to be used on bike boulevards and as a result, street parking, including yellow zones, could have been employed in that congested area.

Now that the two year clock has run out for the City for the 45th and the 53rd street bike boulevards, like the Horton Street bike boulevard earlier, Level Four traffic calming has been taken off the table with the announcement by Ms Medina.  The City Manager, Christine Daniel, whose job it is to place agenda items for the BPAC to consider, told the Tattler she will not allow the committee to discuss Level Four traffic calming for the 45th and 53rd street bike boulevards specifically but she will allow the committee to discuss Emeryville's bike boulevard system as a general thing, in October.  However, she did not say if the October meeting would be the time for the committee to take up the Mayor’s idea of eliminating bike boulevards in Emeryville.  Mayor Medina for her part, refused to explain the City's (and her) failure to implement the Bike Plan for traffic calming on the 45th & 53rd street bike boulevards, using the idea of eliminating the entire bike boulevard system as an indication the City has moved on and bike boulevards are no longer applicable here.

Emeryville's Bike Boulevard 'Treatment' plan may be viewed HERE.

The Tattler's 45th & 53rd Streets Level Four Traffic Calming Countdown Clock
This feature has been on the bottom of the home page for almost two years.
Yesterday it finally hit 00 days 00 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds.
The City couldn't or wouldn't install the traffic calming mandated 
by its own bike plan in that time.

Bike Plan Reinterpreted: 45th & 53rd Street Bike Blvds Languish

Bike Plan Unilaterally Reinterpreted

City Hall’s New Vision Means Traffic Calming Must Wait for Bike Boulevards

1,143 Cars Per Day Over the Allowable Limit

City Council Refuses to Protect Bicyclists

Level Four Goalposts Moved 

The City of Emeryville Public Works Department has announced it is unilaterally reinterpreting its Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan, adding additional procedures and making it more difficult to protect designated bike boulevards from excess vehicle traffic.  Elucidated in a recent letter to the Tattler, the City Hall staff generated reinterpretation changes the traffic calming ‘level’ system in the Bike Plan, adding many more steps to each level before a designated bike boulevard can move forward to the next level of traffic calming.

The new policy, revealed by the Public Works Department, states that “multiple iterations”, of a particular traffic calming level should now be conducted before the Council would be advised to consider raising the street to the more rigorous next level, theoretically adding decades before a bike boulevard would reach the highest level of protection (Level Five).

At stake is bicycle safety on our Bike Boulevards as the new interpretation hamstrings the City in effectively dealing with an unsafe amount of vehicle traffic sharing the road with bicyclists that the Bike Plan was formulated to protect against.  By adding new steps for each level of traffic calming, the staff presumes to speak for the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and the City Council that certified the Plan (without the stringent new metrics) in 2009.  It is informative that before the new staff interpretation, bike boulevards were moved up in level without these extra steps for each level. 

Indeed, several streets in our town have moved up from Level One to Level Three traffic calming over the years, where they now appear to be stuck, as is the case with the 45th Street and 53rd Street Boulevards. The new tougher policy now effecting these two streets will require more iterations of Level Three traffic calming elements be installed before they can move up to Level Four. 

If the City Council really wanted to implement
the Bike Plan, they could do it.  It's the
'stick to it' step they can't seem to accomplish.
It's either Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or 
Developer Surplus Disorder (DSD) indicated.
Symtoms are the same.
Remedies would be Ritalin or 
Electorate Reckoning respectively.

A recently conducted traffic count reveals those two streets are shown to have 1,143 (45th St) and 638 (53rd St) too many cars in Average Daily Trips (ADT) to be considered bike boulevards by the Plan.  But regardless of the excess traffic on these specific streets, the staff has ruled neither street is ready for a level ‘upgrade’ because of the new metric of “[up to] five elements” of Level Three traffic calming measures have not yet been installed.  
For a complete description of each traffic calming level, please see the chart below. 

The 45th and 53rd Boulevards join the former Horton Street Bike Boulevard in languishing; all three hitting a wall at Level Three traffic calming regardless of their excess vehicle traffic.  Notably, the previous head of the Public Works Department Maurice Kaufman and the previous City Council member Nora Davis both declared Level Four calming for any Emeryville street a ‘no go zone’; being too onerous for vehicles as described by developers wishing to build auto-centric projects near the Boulevards.  Accordingly, an earlier traffic count conducted by the developers of the Sherwin Williams project that also showed too much existing traffic on all three streets, was ignored by Ms Davis and the rest of the City Council.  Later, Mayor Dianne Martinez steadfastly and unilaterally refused to move the two streets, 45th & 53rd, to Level Four as the Tattler reported in 2016.

On Horton Street,  the City Council refused to institute Level Four traffic calming elements and instead issued a ‘Statement of Overriding Considerations’, stating the Sherwin Williams project is more important than the Horton Street Bike Boulevard and that the City would ignore the Bike Plan remedy for excess vehicle traffic.  The Statement of Overriding Considerations signaled to the community that the City Council has no intention of supporting bike boulevard status for Horton Street.  Regardless, before they were elected, both Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue promised Level Four traffic calming for Horton Street.

The 45th and 53rd Street Bike Boulevards have not been subjected to a statement of overriding considerations but the City Council is continuing to let them languish, unrealized as bike boulevards.

The Bike Plan calls for traffic counts to be conducted every two years, a fact the Public Works Department now acknowledges even though the Department was caught lying to the City Manager about that in 2014.  The Tattler uncovered an internal document by use of a Public Records Request that showed how the Department was going to extraordinary lengths to prevent a street moving to traffic calming Level Four by attempting to get the newly hired City Manager Carolyn Lehr to ignore the Bike Plan.  In the memo, the Public Works staff told the new City Manager the Bike Plan says traffic counts are not to be conducted every two years, but rather only if a substantial construction project happens on the street in question or if a large number of citizen complaints are registered; an outright falsehood.  The Bike Plan is very clear that traffic counts must be conducted every two years without conditions.

The new interpretation of up to five required applications of Level Three elements (up from one) being ‘required’ may be the latest attempt by the City to stall implementation of Emeryville’s Bike Plan.  The City has felt no compunction against moving any Bike Boulevard speedily forward through Levels One to Three but they haven't thus far been able to make the breakthrough to Level Four, forwarding different reasons that change over time as to why it can't be done.  The latest prohibition against Level Four in the form of the unilateral Public Works reinterpretation seems to be just the latest blockage offered up by an ignominious City Hall.  It would seem the admonitions against Level Four traffic calming by the assailing Maurice Kaufman and Nora Davis made years ago are still the modus operating principles at City Hall.  

Bike boulevards are supposed to be "cars allowed but bikes preferred" streets meant to maintain bicycling as a safe and convenient form of transportation by discouraging motor vehicle use.  Developers and the business community have long tried to dissuade the City Council from enacting effective traffic calming on Emeryville's Bike Boulevards.

From the Emeryville Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan
Level Four=street narrowings, Level Five= full and partial closures
Level Four (and Level Five) have been determined to be too effective 
so the City has resisted implementing them on any street.  The City Council however has not 
seen fit to amend the Plan to remove these two highest levels they don't like, probably because 
they don't want to be perceived by the public as anti-bike.

From the Bike Plan
53rd Street is at the top of the photo, 45th on the bottom with Horton Street to the left.
North is up, east right, south down and west is left.
The Average Daily Trip (ADT) is supposed to be no more than 1500 for the eastern sections of
45th and 53rd Streets.

53rd Street From the Latest Traffic Count
The eastern section of 53rd Street has 2138 Average Daily Trips or
638 over the maximum allowable amount.  Since the street is now at Level Three, 
that should mean 53rd Street is a candidate for Level Four traffic calming elements.
The Public Works Department says NO however.

45th Street From the Latest Traffic Count
The eastern section of 45th Street has 2,643 Average Daily Trips
or 1,143 over the maximum allowable amount.  A City Council
that cared about bicycling would impliment
Level Four traffic calming elements for the street.

A traffic count from years ago east of San Pablo Avenue

showed 45th Street with more than 3000 cars per day.
Note the vehicle speeds are too high also.

Earns Two Smiling Nora Davis's
Nora Davis smiles down on
the Public Works Department 
and the City Council!

Spur Alley Bike Path Betrays Emeryville's 'Bike Friendly' Claims

Coddling a Developer on Spur Alley

at the Expense of Bikes

City Refuses to Enforce Public Bike Path Easement

Bike Path Forsaken

News Analysis

There’s a bike path in Emeryville, putatively on private land but officially recognized in the City’s Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan and legally dedicated for public use by means of a City Hall mandated public easement that could nonetheless get you arrested for trespassing were you so bold as to actually ride your bike on it.  Welcome to Emeryville’s Spur Alley bike path…however ‘welcome’ is not really the kind of word that would be used to describe how bicyclists are made to feel on their bike path. 

 Illegal Sign 
The Spur Alley Bike Path can be used  by
the whole public any time without constraint.
It is not "subject to control of the owner".
Emeryville City staff wants this sign to
remain up, giving police the right
to arrest bicyclists using their own bike path.

The ‘preferred use’ north/south bike route running parallel with and a block east of busy Hollis Street was dedicated when the City placed the route in its Bike Plan in the 1990’s.  Conceived as a way to encourage bikers to use the former railroad spur route instead of the dangerous Hollis Street, the City subsequently secured an easement on the private land that guarantees unrestricted public use of the corridor.  The developer owner of the land sees the easement differently however and he’s placed signage there that tells bikers the land is private property and their use of Spur Alley is provisional. 

Public Use?

Bikers would be understandably confused by the plethora of signs informing them Spur Alley is an official City bike route at the same time threatening them with arrest at the behest of a private ‘controlling’ owner.  The Emeryville Police Department is not confused however and they have acknowledged that bicyclists will in fact be arrested if they fail to vacate the bike path if the owner tells them to leave.  It’s a conundrum; the City guarantees the right to pass unconditionally through the same piece of land its own police department says NO to.

This bike route starkly reveals how what the City of Emeryville says about bikes runs into the reality in the field; the deference City Hall pays not to bikes but to developers and the business community.   Citizens attempting to use this City recognized bike route could get a very clear correction for believing in the good faith of Emeryville and its Bike Plan with its oft repeated claims of bike love…as clear as a pair of handcuffs.  

Not A Bike Friendly History
The history of Spur Alley is a Cliff Notes summery of bikes in Emeryville in the aggregate, revealing a city that’s long on talk and short on action.

After the city attorney secured the use of the alley for bikes in a deal with the developer in 1998, the City with help from the Bike Committee, dedicated Spur Alley as a Class 3 bike path in the forlorn Emeryville Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan.  Unsatisfied, the developer wanted to increase the value of the leases to his tenants (among them the popular gymnasium Head Over Heels) who were clamoring for more parking. As a result, the City Council, under pressure from the developer, ultimately voted to allow private parking on the bike path easement.  The bikes, a tolerable nuisance to the developer at the onset, now turned into an unacceptable impingement on his bottom line and he appealed to the City Council, who voted 3 to 2 (Atkin, Fricke dissenting) to allow private parking on the public bike easement.  The public was still to be allowed use of the bike path, the City Council assured the public at their July 17th 2007 meeting, just not in striped bike lanes on the easement as was originally planned. 

This sign is also up at Spur Alley 
sending a conflicted message to bicyclists.  
The oft repeated trope about being a
"bicycle friendly city" is betrayed on Spur Alley.
Emeryville's actual views on bicycling are
more complicated.

Earlier, Councilman John Fricke noticed the staff wasn't taking Spur Alley seriously as a bike route, "second class status" he called it (in the normal parlance unrelated to official bike route class designations).  He noted in November 2006 the developer had closed the alley for construction but hadn't even gotten an encroachment permit as would be required for any public easement as he testified at a  Council meeting (see video below).  The staff responded that they had "forgotten" Spur Alley had a public easement and so that's why the developer shouldn't be taken to task for the illegal closure. 
Mr Fricke's charge that the staff wasn't taking bike use on Spur Alley seriously was further bolstered after they worked with Pixar to eliminate the southern section of the planned bike route.  Pixar, seeking a private campus expansion, twice re-routed the path jogging it over closer to San Pablo Avenue, rendering it useless for bike use.  The southern segment of Spur Alley disconnected as the City and Pixar made it, is now reborn as Joseph Emery Skate Park.

After the Council voted to allow the developer use of the public bike easement for his tenant's exclusive parking use in 2007, the developer, unsatisfied with his victory and wanting more, unilaterally ratcheted back his agreement and without permission from City Hall, put up the signs that deny the public the right to use their path and signal to police their right to arrest the public for so using it.

A City Seized With Inaction

Emeryville Likes These Signs
from the League of American Bicyclists.
They're posted all over town.  The designations
are based on a city's bike plans, not how the
plans are implemented (or not implemented in
the case in Emeryville).

The City has been alerted to the illegal signs for years but they have refused to act to protect the negotiated public easement on the alley.  The latest such attempt came in 2017 when then Mayor Scott Donahue told the staff at City Hall to direct Public Works to remove the signs that claim biker’s rights are constrained by private property on Spur Alley and warn the developer against putting up such signs in the future.  “The staff doesn’t appear to want to take the signs down” the mayor told the Tattler after it became clear there was no interest to do such a thing.  The signs are still up, warning bicyclists against using their own bike path and serving as a testament to who's interests are valued at City Hall.  

As our little city struggles with an image it likes to forward to the world about being a bicycle friendly community versus the actual on the ground conditions as directed by a not-so-friendly-to-bikes business sector the City is in bed with, a bike facility that was supposed to be built long ago serves as emblematic of a dichotomy, vexing an Emeryville that wants its bicycle bonafides but without having to deliver amenities for bicyclists.  
Spur Alley is the bike corridor promised but never delivered, a public right of way for bicyclists secured by City Hall but given over instead to business interests, the signs canceling the public easement serving to mock the City Council who gave away this public asset for nothing and who still refuse to make amends to the bicycle community. 

Video courtesy of the Emeryville Property Owners Association

"Spur Alley is being treated as though it has second class status" said Councilman Fricke in 2006.  "We forgot about Spur Alley" replied the staff, proving the Councilman's point.  Biking on Spur Alley: what was forgetful in 2006 later became something for City Hall to actively limit and constrain. 

Yet Another Year Passes, Still No Horton Street Bike Boulevard

It's déjà vu all over again

December 31, 2015 is like December 31, 2014;

Bike Plan Still Being Ignored

Today, the Tattler brings back our ongoing end of December yearly feature: We re-post our September 2012 story (below) on Emeryville's Horton Street Bike Boulevard every December 31st and will continue until City Hall stops stalling and implements our Bike Plan as they are required to do.  This end-of-the-year feature serves as an annual clearinghouse for any news on the hold up of the Horton Street Bike Boulevard over the previous year.   
Readers bored or exasperated with the ongoing story of City Hall inaction on Horton Street can simply read the year end (short) synopsis in the italics preceding the September 2012 re-post every December 31st:  

I wake up every day, right here in 

Punxsutawney, and it's always 

February 2nd (or December 31st 

in Emeryville), and there's nothing 

I can do about it.

2015 Synopsis-

In 2015, nothing happened to implement the Horton Street Bike Boulevard.

In 1998, Emeryville adapted its Bike Plan after years of study and $200,000 spent on it.  In 2013, the City Council agreed to spend $10,000 to study the Bike Plan to figure out how to implement the Horton Street Bike Boulevard required by the Plan.  This $10,000 study is referred to as the 'study of the study'.  The Bike Plan doesn't call for any studies to be done to implement its requirements, it should be noted.  In 2014 City Hall held two community meetings about the study of the study but no action on Horton Street was taken that year or through to the end of 2015.  The 2013 authorized study of the study still hasn't even happened, raising doubts that the 12/31/16 re-post of this story will be any different than today's post.  
Especially disturbing this year is the fact that Emeryville voters elected the progressive City Council majority in 2014 and they have done nothing all year by way of delivering the Horton Street Bike Boulevard even though both Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue both campaigned as being very pro-bike. 

As a side note: In 2014, City Hall found out another Bike Boulevard, the 45th Street Bike Boulevard is also in violation due to too many cars on that street.  Nothing was done in 2015 to fix that problem either.

Here then is the September 29th, 2012 Tattler story:

Major Traffic Calming Long Past Due For Horton Street

Emeryville's premiere bicycle thoroughfare, the Horton Street Bike Boulevard, has so much high speed traffic that it has become unsafe for bicycling.  So says Alta Planning, a Berkeley based urban bike network design firm that was commissioned by the City of Emeryville to study bicycling in town.  The $200,000 study, now incorporated into Emeryville's Bicycle/Pedestrian Plan and adopted into law by the city council lays waiting, ready to be implemented.

The question is, will it really be implemented or will it languish in some dusty corner at City Hall as so many other expensive studies have done?  Given the city council's baleful history of failing to calm the traffic on Horton Street for bicycle traffic and working to improve the street for vehicle use at the expense of bicycling, it seems likely it will be ignored and will remain a major automobile thoroughfare, unsafe for bicycles and becoming increasingly more so over time.  

Central to the Alta study is a limit on the number of cars that may use Horton Street, set at 3000 vehicles per day, before a mandatory set of traffic calming procedures kicks in.  The idea is that the traffic calming fixes will lower the number of vehicles that use the bike boulevard down below the 3000 maximum.  It should be noted Emeryville's 3000 number earmarked for bike boulevards is larger than any other city in the Bay Area. 

A choker is an example of a 'neck-down'
called for by level 4 traffic calming.

The prescribed traffic calming comes in a series of increasingly interventionist levels, one through five, that reduces traffic volume and speed, the last such level resulting in a total diversion for through traffic.  Each level requires two years to adequately assess its efficacy.  

At this point, Horton Street has already gone through the first three traffic calming levels; these involve street stenciling, signage and intersection "bulb-outs".  Now, since traffic has not subsided on Horton (it's actually increased), it's time for level 4 traffic calming to be implemented according to the Plan.

Level 4 calls for "significant traffic calming", specifically, 'neck downs' or traffic limiters such as 'chokers', designed to act like a one lane bridge permitting only one car through at a time.

Here's what the Bike Plan calls for on Emeryville's bike boulevards:

Level 1 Basic Bicycle Boulevard- signs, pavement markings

Level 2 Enhanced Bicycle Boulevard- way-finding signs, reduced delays at intersections

Level 3 Limited Traffic Calming- intersection bulb-outs

Level 4 Significant Traffic Calming- neck-downs

Level 5 Traffic Diversion

Level 5 calls for diverters: This
is called out only if level 4 doesn't
work after two years.

The problem is the Bike Committee has already twice voted on significant traffic calming for Horton Street in years past.  Both times the city council has overridden the committee's findings.  The last time the committee voted unanimously to add such calming, councilwoman Nora Davis explained her veto to the committee, "I have no problem putting paint on the asphalt [pavement markings]" but anything more dramatic than that would draw a veto from her and consequently also from the council majority.

In the intervening two and a half years since the last council veto shutting down Horton Street traffic calming, the city has commissioned and now encoded the $200,000 Alta study.

While we acknowledge Ms Davis' forthrightness in explaining to the people why they shouldn't expect safe biking routes in town, we call on the rest of the council to abide by the new Bike Plan they have adopted.  The fact that other such documents have been subverted in the past by the council should not serve as a precedent for inaction on Horton Street.  It's never too late to start working towards livability and rational public policy.  Let's make bicycling safe on the Horton Street Bicycle Boulevard.  It's time for a choker on Horton Street.

Council Majority Refuses to Implement the Horton Street Bike Boulevard

Emeryville's Progressive Council Majority:

Not Progressive on Bike Access

City Needs to Return Bike Plan Award
Received Under False Pretenses

Opinion
For more than 15 years, Emeryville's Bike Committee has been clamoring for traffic calming for Horton Street, Emeryville's premier north/south bike commuting corridor.  Using what leverage they had, the Committee forced the previous City Council majority's hand and a new document, the Bike Plan was commissioned and certified to the tune of $200,000 in 2012 after two years of study.  The Plan, officially part of Emeryville's General Plan, also called for traffic calming just as the Committee had been.  We're sorry to say that's where this story ends....with a plan...on a shelf.

Regular Tattler readers will attest the story of the problems this city has had bringing traffic calming to Horton Street are legendary.  The problem historically was a disingenuous City Council.  They would campaign for bikes at re-election time but they had no interest in following through with traffic calming for Horton Street.  We thought that once the old order was broken up and a new seemingly pro-bike progressive City Council majority was elected last November, the taxpayer funded $200,000 Bike Plan would finally be taken seriously and traffic calming would finally come to Horton Street.  We're sad to say we were wrong.

Almost a year after the new City Council ordered the Plan be implemented, Horton Street is now no closer to getting traffic calming; not even a little. There has been no action whatsoever on this and there is no sign of any action anytime in the future.  Meanwhile, bicyclists are continuing on, dangerously trying to share a street with more than 3000 vehicles per day as they have done for more than 10 years.  The Progressive Council majority has not made any move to rectify the situation and they seem happy with their empty vote to implement the Plan last year.

The problem now, if it even matters identifying it, is the head of the Public Works Department Maurice Kaufman.  Mr Kaufman, a traffic engineer, has long said his job is to make cars move more efficiently, the antithesis of a bike boulevard with its traffic calming meant to discourage efficient vehicle use.  The distance Mr Kaufman is willing to go to continue to stall Bike Plan traffic calming was revealed by the Tattler last August when we uncovered an internal document wherein Mr Kaufman lied to our new City Manager about it.
As Tattler readers know, temporary bollards, glued to the street, are what's called for in the Bike Plan so the effects can be studied on reducing the traffic below 3000 per day.  The Public Works Department routinely does this gluing down of bollards whenever there is a construction project and a developer needs to temporarily take a portion of a street.  The problem is Mr Kaufman says he can't do that now on Horton Street for bikes as the Bike Plan directs because he maintains (without evidence) that a whole new expensive study needs to be completed.  The Tattler has referred to this new study as the "study of the study"; a bogus and unnecessary time stalling tactic.  So this is where we are now...waiting on the study of the study to be commissioned by the Council.  We're no closer to implementing the bogus study of the study than we've ever been and there has been no action on even securing an author for it.

So here we are, no closer to implementing our long overdue Bike Plan than we were with the old City Council.  This new Council majority may be progressive when it comes to other things in Emeryville but as far as bike access goes, they're no better than the old right wing Council majority.

We call on this majority to make your decision now: implement or rescind so we can return Horton Street back to what it was, a regular high volume busy street without the dangerous purple bike boulevard signs and stencils on the asphalt giving bicyclists a false sense of security.
Council be warned however, if you move to rescind the Plan or if you stall for more time, we say Emeryville residents and regional bike commuters have waited long enough; the City of Emeryville must return the award it received for its Bike Plan in 2013 from the American Planning Association.  A letter should accompany the returned award saying this town doesn't like the idea of bikes on our streets.  We don't have the stomach to make a place for bikes here in Emeryville.

Emeryville's Award Winning Bike Plan
It was received under false pretenses:
Emeryville appears never to have had any intention to implement the Plan.
Time to return this to the American Planning Association.

Internal Document at City Hall Reveals Clandestine Attempt to Overturn Emeryville Bike Plan

Public Works Department Subverts Bike Plan 

Smoking Gun Document Shows a Department Bent On Torpedoing Settled Bike Policy

A damning internal City Hall document obtained by the Tattler Thursday reveals a rogue Public Works Department attempting to misdirect the newly hired Emeryville City Manager in order to subvert and ratchet back Emeryville's Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan.  The document, a letter from a Public Works employee to City Manager Carolyn Lehr, was sent in response to a public request to conduct a traffic count on 45th Street, a street designated as a bike boulevard, and was meant to assure Ms Lehr no such traffic count is prescribed by the Bike Plan, a patently false claim.

In the letter obtained by a Public Records Request, the employee falsely tells Ms Lehr other than in case of "significant community concern", the only circumstance when the City should conduct traffic counts on 45th Street or any other bike boulevard in Emeryville is when, "significant development occurs on or near that boulevard."  In fact the Bike Plan actually says unequivocally, "[Traffic] counts should be conducted every two years."

Noteworthy is that the Bike Plan prescribes a course of traffic calming action, as is the case for all seven bike boulevards in Emeryville that are found to have an excess amount of traffic, for the 45th Street Bike Boulevard that being a maximum of 1500 vehicle trips per day.  If the street were to be found to have more than this volume of traffic, a regime of traffic calming measures would be automatically initiated as called for by the Bike Plan.  The letter would remove Emeryville's capacity to determine when traffic calming is called for, leaving bicyclists in danger on bike boulevards with gross excess vehicular traffic.

The Bike Plan provides for up to five levels of traffic calming on bike boulevards meant to keep traffic volumes below the maximum allowable for each boulevard.  Traffic calming starts with simple signage and progresses up to level five traffic diverters.  The idea is that on bike boulevards bikes are preferred although cars are allowed so long as the maximum number of cars per day is not reached. Up to two years between each level are called for to study the effects on traffic.
The main north/south bike boulevard in Emeryville, the Horton/Overland Bike Boulevard has been in violation due to excess car traffic for at least ten years and has been a source of friction between the Bike Committee and bike interests versus the Public Works Department.  Decision makers at City Hall have not been able to move Horton Street past level three traffic calming even though the Bike Plan clearly calls for it.  The Horton Street recalcitrance has cast a pall on bicycling as a viable mode of transportation in Emeryville.

Public Works Dept: Increasing Traffic Not Possible
Besides misleading the City Manager about the need for a traffic count on the 45th Street Bike boulevard, the Public Works Department, by falsely presenting the requirement for development on or near bike boulevards to trigger a traffic count, a bizarre and unfounded finding of fact is presented that it is inconceivable that traffic might increase over time in the absence of a development project on or near the street in question.  This premise has been shown to be patently false in the Bay Area over the years.  What has been indicated is an increasing number of vehicles using city streets as the aggregate population in municipalities and the region increases.

Maurice Kaufman, Emeryville's Director of Public Works and the ultimate progenitor of the letter to Ms Lehr it should be noted, has expressed concern over bike boulevards in the past.  He has indicated to the Tattler his job is to make traffic in Emeryville flow more efficiently and he's noted although bikes are not a problem, traffic calming over level three would begin to severely impede the flow of vehicles, something he has said he is duty bound to prevent.
Mr Kaufman is on vacation and unavailable for comment for this story.

The letter to the City Manager omits the Bike Plan's direction for traffic counts every two years on Emeryville's bike boulevards and instead jumps to a section that adds on to that a further requirement to conduct traffic counts when development has occurred.  From the letter dated July 17th:

"...The plan says that the City should collect traffic data when significant development occurs on/near that boulevard or when substantial community concern is brought to the City.  Our last traffic counts on 45th Street were in 2008, and volume did not exceed the goal of 1,500 average daily vehicle trips.  There has been no significant development in the area that would suggest traffic has changed substantially."

From the actual Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan:

Monitoring
As noted in Chapter 4, Section 4.4.3, the City should regularly monitor traffic volumes, and speeds on its bicycle boulevards to determine if they are meeting the goals listed above or not. Counts should be conducted every two years. If a bicycle boulevard goal is not met, the City should consider treatments that will allow the bicycle boulevard to meet goals. If additional treatments are not possible, or if treatments are unlikely to result in conditions that meet the above goals, the City should consider a different type of bicycle facility. Emeryville should collect this data and evaluate each bicycle boulevard in the case of any of the following:

• Development occurs that is projected to increase motor vehicle volumes on the bicycle boulevard 

• The Pedestrian and Bicycle Plan is updated 

• Substantial community concern is brought to the City 

  public records request bike blvd 45th St

Yet Another Year Passes, Still No Horton Street Bike Boulevard

It's déjà vu all over again

December 31, 2014 is like December 31, 2013;

Bike Plan Still Being Ignored

Today, the Tattler brings back our ongoing end of December yearly feature: We re-post our September 2012 story (below) on Emeryville's Horton Street Bike Boulevard every December 31st and will continue until City Hall stops stalling and implements our Bike Plan as they are required to do.  This end-of-the-year feature serves as an annual clearinghouse for any news on the hold up of the Horton Street Bike Boulevard over the previous year.   Readers bored or exasperated with the ongoing story of City Hall inaction on Horton Street can now simply read the year end (short) synopsis in the italics preceding the September 2012 re-post every December 31st.  

I wake up every day, right here in 

Punxsutawney, and it's always 

February 2nd (or December 31st 

in Emeryville), and there's nothing 

I can do about it.

2014 Synopsis:
In 2014, the Bike Committee started really turning the screws on the City Council to stop ignoring the Bike Plan and start implementing it. 
After the Council spent some $10,000 in 2013 for a study of the Plan, what we called a 'study of the study', finally in 2014 that new study was completed and the Council held two public meetings so residents could weigh in on the new study.  As of today, the Council is still deciding the meaning of those public meetings, but they have agreed in principal to consider thinking about the idea of perhaps placing temporary bollards someday on Horton Street as the Bike Plan calls for.  For the record, Council members Nora Davis and Kurt Brinkman, their backs against the wall, voted against the implementation of the Bike Plan in November in a losing 2-3 vote.
In a Kafkaesque moment, the Tattler discovered in 2014 a different Bike Blvd, 45th Street, is also in violation due to too many cars, raising the specter of a whole new Tattler series of broken bike blvd promises from City Hall based on that street as well.

If the Bike Committee remains vigilant over 2015, perhaps residents next December 31st will be waiting on a study of the color options for the temporary bollards for Horton Street.  We'll just have to wait and see.  Check back on December 31, 2015 to get the latest report on Godot...uh...the Horton Street Bike Boulevard.

To view previous year end synopses click Deja Vu or Waiting for Godot in the labels below.

Here then is the September 29th, 2012 Tattler story:

Major Traffic Calming Long Past Due For Horton Street

Emeryville's premiere bicycle thoroughfare, the Horton Street Bike Boulevard, has so much high speed traffic that it has become unsafe for bicycling.  So says Alta Planning, a Berkeley based urban bike network design firm that was commissioned by the City of Emeryville to study bicycling in town.  The $200,000 study, now incorporated into Emeryville's Bicycle/Pedestrian Plan and adopted into law by the city council lays waiting, ready to be implemented.

The question is, will it really be implemented or will it languish in some dusty corner at City Hall as so many other expensive studies have done?  Given the city council's baleful history of failing to calm the traffic on Horton Street for bicycle traffic and working to improve the street for vehicle use at the expense of bicycling, it seems likely it will be ignored and will remain a major automobile thoroughfare, unsafe for bicycles and becoming increasingly more so over time.  

Central to the Alta study is a limit on the number of cars that may use Horton Street, set at 3000 vehicles per day, before a mandatory set of traffic calming procedures kicks in.  The idea is that the traffic calming fixes will lower the number of vehicles that use the bike boulevard down below the 3000 maximum.  It should be noted Emeryville's 3000 number earmarked for bike boulevards is larger than any other city in the Bay Area. 

A choker is an example of a 'neckdown'
called for by level 4 traffic calming.

The prescibed traffic calming comes in a series of increasingly interventionist levels, one through five, that reduces traffic volume and speed, the last such level resulting in a total diversion for through traffic.  Each level requires two years to adequately assess its efficacy.  

At this point, Horton Street has already gone through the first three traffic calming levels; these involve street stenciling, signage and intersection "bulb-outs".  Now, since traffic has not subsided on Horton (it's actually increased), it's time for level 4 traffic calming to be implemented according to the Plan.

Level 4 calls for "significant traffic calming", specifically, 'neck downs' or traffic limiters such as 'chokers', designed to act like a one lane bridge permitting only one car through at a time.

Here's what the Bike Plan calls for on Emeryville's bike boulevards:

Level 1 Basic Bicycle Boulevard- signs, pavement markings

Level 2 Enhanced Bicycle Boulevard- wayfinding signs, reduced delays at intersections

Level 3 Limited Traffic Calming- intersection bulbouts

Level 4 Significant Traffic Calming- neckdowns

Level 5 Traffic Diversion

Level 5 calls for diverters: This
is called out only if level 4 doesn't
work after two years.

The problem is the Bike Committee has already twice voted on significant traffic calming for Horton Street in years past.  Both times the city council has overridden the committee's findings.  The last time the committee voted unanimously to add such calming, councilwoman Nora Davis explained her veto to the committee, "I have no problem putting paint on the asphalt [pavement markings]" but anything more dramatic than that would draw a veto from her and consequently also from the council majority.

In the intervening two and a half years since the last council veto shutting down Horton Street traffic calming, the city has commissioned and now encoded the $200,000 Alta study.

While we acknowledge Ms Davis' forthrightness in explaining to the people why they shouldn't expect safe biking routes in town, we call on the rest of the council to abide by the new Bike Plan they have adopted.  The fact that other such documents have been subverted in the past by the council should not serve as a precedent for inaction on Horton Street.  It's never too late to start working towards livability and rational public policy.  Let's make bicycling safe on the Horton Street Bicycle Boulevard.  It's time for a choker on Horton Street.