Horton Street Bike Boulevard is Coming But Businesses and Council Members Say No

Who Are You Going to Believe on Traffic?

Independent Traffic Engineers or City Council Demagogues?

Davis/Brinkman Emerge as Would Be 
Climate Science Deniers
 to Stop Bikes on Horton Street

News Analysis/Opinion
Should public policy have a rational basis at Emeryville City Hall?  Most would say yes to this but Kurt Brinkman and Nora Davis have a different take.
So badly do council members Brinkman and Davis want to do the bidding of developers and the business community at the expense of the residents, they've now resorted to a similitude of climate science denial; rationality nowhere to be found.  The two council members are now publicly stating that independent traffic studies using the scientific method, prepared by reputable traffic engineering firms, and retained by the City itself, are not to be believed; "Hard to believe" they both said specifically after casting aspersions on engineers and the idea of a cogent polity emanating out of City Hall.  Instead of science we're supposed to believe their vague unsubstantiated impressions about traffic; an alternate view that, incidentally they would have us believe, would help their developer friends and businesses.
It's all being done by these two Council demagogues to try to stop traffic calming measures coming to Horton Street, an eventuality that favored developer Rich Robbins of Wareham Development and other connected business owners on the street say they don't want.

Nora Davis
Scientists have a hidden agenda.
They're not to be believed.

Traffic calming is coming to Horton because there are too many cars and trucks using the street.  This isn't an opinion, it's quantifiable...it's the law.  Traffic is controlled on Horton Street and other streets in town that have been designated as 'bicycle boulevards' by the City's Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan, a document ensconced into law by a vote of the Council two years ago.  The Bike Plan provides that certain identified commuting bike boulevard thoroughfares are meant to exist primarily for bikes (but motorized traffic is also allowed).  Central to this provision is the mandate that no more than 3000 vehicle trips per day be permitted to use bike boulevards for safety and to encourage bike use.  The 3000 number incidentally, was arrived at when the Bike Plan was drafted because Emeryville business concerns wanted a higher number than what our neighbor to the north, Berkeley allows for their bike boulevards (that being 1500).  The actual daily traffic counts on Horton Street as measured by the traffic engineers range from 4800 all the way up to 12,000 near the Amtrak station, a gross violation of the Bike Plan.  The Plan calls for mandatory traffic calming to be used to force vehicle traffic below the 3000 threshold.

Emeryville's new award winning Pedestrian/Bike Plan, completed in 2012, took two years to formulate.  It was vetted at many public meetings with the help of the Bike Committee, city staff, citizens and Berkeley's Alta Planning at a cost of $200,000.  It was certified by a unanimous vote of the City Council.

Kurt Brinkman
Who's your daddy?
Why believe scientists when you can
believe us and our developer friends?

Obstructionist Tactic: Deny
This Bike Plan however is something council members Kurt Brinkman and Nora Davis can't countenance now even though they themselves voted to certify it.  The two are using a well worn tactic of the right now that a regimen of traffic calming is (past) due: they're denying the traffic counts, denying the science.  Mr Brinkman said at the July 15th City Council meeting (on video below), "I drive that road almost everyday and I don't see very much activity on Horton Street.  I know there were some traffic studies that were done a number of years ago but I just question how much traffic is going on on that street.  It's hard to believe."  Nora Davis piped up,"It's hard to believe. You could shoot a gun down there most of the time".  Traffic studies, schmaffic studies.

As the Horton Street Bike Boulevard finally comes to a head, the two science denier council members are likely planning to deliver a crowd of pitchfork and torch wielding business owners and selected residents to loudly say NO! to traffic calming at a meeting (or two) scheduled for September.  They may wish for the political cover a hoped for angry mob can deliver.  This remains to be seen but one thing can be relied on; any move by the City Council to stop traffic calming for Horton Street will be met with a legal requirement for them to vote to change the Bike Plan (and the ordinate General Plan) to either increase the number of permissible vehicle traffic trips on the street (something considerably higher than 12,000 per day) or delete the Horton Street Bike Boulevard all together.  However lot's of people like the Horton Street Bike Boulevard and a vote by the Council against traffic calming there will not come free.  Davis/Brinkman demagogic rhetoric aside, accompanying a No vote will be a hefty political price that will be paid.

Video Courtesy of the Emeryville Property Owners Association 

Emeryville Wins Pedestrian/Bike Plan Award

Emeryville announces the receipt of an award of excellence from the American Planning Association (APA) for our newly enacted Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan.  The award issued May 17th is in the APA Northern Section Awards Program for 'Outstanding Planning on a Focused Issue'.  The APA notified Emeryville that the Ped/Bike Plan is also eligible for a California Chapter APA award to be decided this summer.

Award Winning!

Emeryville's Ped/Bike Plan was forged over two years with help from the Bike/Ped Committee and Alta Planning of Berkeley at a cost of some $200,000.  Professional planners have praised the new plan as forward thinking and practical, that will help to alleviate problems associated with excess vehicle traffic and make for a more livable city.  The plan earmarks certain identified streets as low volume, slow streets to help bicyclists commute along safe and direct routes.  These routes, designated as bicycle boulevards were planned with a mind to commuting between neighboring municipalities in a seamless way, something the APA noted was worthy of commendation.

Congratulations to Emeryville!

Will Emeryville's New Bike Plan Be Ignored?

Major Traffic Calming Long Past Due For Horton Street

Opinion
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.