City Decides Behind Closed Doors to Stop Conducting Traffic Counts Meant For Bike Safety

 Bi-Annual Traffic Count for Bike Safety Quietly Ended

Done Without Public Input

City Won't Say Why 

(But Councilman Priforce Knows Why)

Sometime between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2021, government officials at the City of Emeryville secretly met behind closed doors to stop and retract long standing bike safety public policy spelled out in the City’s Bike Plan that counts the number of vehicles using the bike boulevards in town, the Tattler has learned.  City Manager Paul Buddenhagen revealed in a recent email to the Tattler, there was a private meeting or series of meetings between undisclosed City employees at City Hall that took place where the decision to overturn the City’s Bike Plan and stop the bi-annual vehicle counts was made.  The meeting(s) were conducted before Mr Buddenhagen was hired he noted and he said he had no knowledge of of it until recently, regardless that the Tattler inquiry request for information started a year ago.  Mr Buddenhagen did not offer anything more about the meeting(s) but he did say he thinks the traffic counts are unhelpful because bike boulevards are not very good and that he prefers protected bike lanes. 

From Emeryville's Last Official Traffic Count, 2019
Every bike boulevard was unsafe because of too many cars.  It's gotten a
lot worse since then.  The City can't be held to account if it doesn't take account. 
Business owners' concerns take precedence over bike safety.

The counting of vehicles on the bike boulvards is meant to provide a Bike Plan backstop over which a regimen of traffic calming provisions are to be implemented for bike safety, often seen as an inconvenience for vehicle drivers and anathema to businesses. 

The Bike Plan was certified by the City Council in 2012 at a cost of $200,000. However bike boulevards have been ignored by the City since the beginning, as the bi-annual traffic counts show.

Council Member Kalimah Priforce
Traffic data is no longer being collected
because it shows too many cars on the
bike boulevards is "bad data" and is
 "embarrassing" for Emeryville.

Bike boulevards are described as streets where cars are allowed but bikes are preferred.

The surprising email from the City Manager came after a protracted year long Tattler fight to learn why the City’s bike boulevard bi-annual traffic count policy was not being followed anymore.  During that time, nobody at City Hall could or would answer our questions about it.  The last time the bi-annual traffic count was conducted (2019), it showed an excess of traffic on all five Emeryville bike boulevards and consequently, the City is on the hook for providing more traffic calming infrastructure.  Increased traffic calming measures on the bike boulevards have been strenuously objected to by several businesses in town, especially Wareham Development who have offices on the Horton Street Bike Boulevard.  Rich Robbins, CEO of Wareham, has been a contributor to many City Council members' re-election campaigns over the years.

Mayor John Bauters
Our bike boulevard network is not a priority,
"I've been doing a lot of other things" he said.

Use of the California Public Records Act has not brought any documents to light, bolstering Mr Buddenhagen’s suggestion that the non public meeting(s) conducted were meant to be secret.

Bike Safety is the stated reason why no bike boulevards should exceed 3000 vehicle trips per day according to Emeryville’s $200,000 Bike Plan.  The City says the 3000 number was incorporated by recommendations from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities.  The Horton Street Bike Boulevard had 4127 vehicle trips per day on it in 2019.  With the Sherwin Williams housing project now nearing completion and over 1000 new renters using Horton Street, that number has likely gone up considerably and bike safety has commensurately suffered.  But because the City has stopped the traffic counting, it remains an unknown quotient. 

Emeryville’s Bike Plan makes it clear that bike safety goes down on bike boulevards as the volume of car traffic goes up. From the Bike Plan:  

Volumes of motor vehicles determine the frequency of passing events; at 1,000 vehicles per day, cars pass a bicyclist approximately every two minutes, while at 3,000 vehicles per day, cars pass a bicyclist every 46 seconds. The rate of automobiles passing a bicyclist indicates the number of potential conflicts and affects the comfort of the bicycling environment.  Bicycle boulevards with volumes higher than 3,000 vehicles per day are not recommended.

The Bike Plan continues,

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.

Mayor John Bauters, who regularly likes to display how much he likes bicycling on his X (Twitter) feed, told the Tattler he doesn’t take our bike boulvards very seriously.  After he was informed at a recent public bicycling event, bicyclists are unsafe because of too many cars, he indicated he had other priorities, “I’ve been doing a lot of other things” he said.  He said he didn’t know why the bi-annual traffic counts had been stopped and didn’t express any interest in finding out.  Council member Kalimah Priforce on the other hand was quite forthcoming.  He said the traffic data is embarrassing for the City and that’s why the traffic counting has been stopped.  “Showing too many cars on bike boulevards is bad data for the City” he said.  He added, “It would be embarrassing if we’re telling a narrative that’s different than what the data reveals.”

Mr Buddenhagen for his part refused to say if the City would go back to following the City’s Bike Plan and resume the traffic counting. 

27 Calls to Police, One Vehicle Ticketed: Why Our Bike Lanes Are Blocked

Blocked Bike Lanes:

Emeryville Doesn't Care About Bike Safety

A Combination of Lax Enforcement and Low Fines is a Recipe For Injured/Killed Bicyclists

News Analysis

Amid a growing prevalence of bike lane blockages and in response to a Tattler public records request, the Emeryville Police Department recently released citizen complaint driven data on vehicles illegally blocking the city’s bike lanes and the Department’s enforcement management to address the problem.  The numbers revealed show a city beset with dangerous bike lane blockages and a disinterested police department.

Over the six month period from March 1st to September 30th, a total of 27 citizen calls were placed to the police department complaining of vehicles blocking bike lanes resulting in one citation issued.  The lack of enforcement combined with the low cost to drivers for the infraction, $59 as we reported last August, puts bicyclists in the precarious position of having to cross the solid white line and swerve out into traffic, a move that has been identified by bike safety groups and the insurance industry as extremely dangerous.

Will Emeryville wait for a bicyclist to be killed
or severely injured before action is taken?

Twenty seven calls and one ticket written; those are the kinds of odds that make people willing to break the law.  That’s nearly the same odds as being dealt a first hand flush in seven card poker.  And that’s calculated only for the cars that receive citizen complaints.  If nobody calls the police to complain about your illegally parked car, a likely thing, your odds of getting a ticket for blocking a bike lane drop to something much lower than one in 27. 

This information reveals an Emeryville Police Department that places bike safety very low on its list of priorities.  By definition.

Vehicles blocking bike lanes isn’t relegated only to Emeryville of course.  In fact there’s a growing social movement to stop the dangerous practice.  Many cities are responding to the calls by increasing the fines and increasing patrolling for violators, as Chicago did in 2017.  In 2018 in Virginia and Maryland tickets for blocking bike lanes averaged over $220 and $260, respectively.  In Emeryville however, no such concern for bike safety exists and the deadly combination of low fines with lax enforcement spells future calamity.  

Police Department Purposely Doesn't Cite Violators

An Emeryville Police Department employee, wishing anonymity, told the Tattler he doesn’t see the dearth of tickets issued as a sign the Department isn’t taking bike safety seriously.  Upon learning that the public records request information was going to be made public by the Tattler, the police employee used a classic appeal from ignorance fallacy, stating, “The fact that we didn’t ticket these violators shows that we value bike safety.  These violators were asked to move along, solving the problem of the [bike] lanes being blocked.”  He added, “The priority is to get the vehicle out of the bike lane”.  Taking him at his word, none of this acknowledges the fact that drivers are typically not in the vehicles that are blocking the lanes and the obvious fact that police asking drivers to move is not solving the problem that parking in the bike lane is a good solution for drivers (especially if there aren’t any police visible).  

If police asking drivers to not park in bike lanes (without writing tickets) were having a palliative effect on bike lane blockage in Emeryville, there would tend to be fewer vehicles blocking bike lanes over time.  What we’ve seen is the opposite.  Indeed, to expect that issuing a ticket would not have a deterrent effect is to overturn the most basic precept upon which the whole paradigm of crime and punishment is based.  Bike lane blocking drivers that don’t have a moral compass and can’t seem to see the havoc they cause and the recklessness of putting bikers’ lives at risk will find the havoc on their bank account after they get a ticket for doing so.  

If Emeryville starts taking bike safety more seriously, fewer drivers will block our bike lanes and bikers will be safer.  As it stands now, drivers have a better than 96% chance they won’t get a ticket for blocking a bike lane and a $59 fine if they are among the unlucky 3% that do get a ticket.  The remedy for Emeryville is easy but so far the will is lacking.