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

45th Street Bike Blvd Violation: City Council Hasn't a Clue

Broken Government

Time for an Audit at City Hall

If We're Going to Make Public Policy, We've Got to Keep Proper Track of It

Opinion
Emeryville's Director of Public Works, Maurice Kaufman, revealed to the Tattler today that 45th Street east of San Pablo Avenue now has and for years has had more than 3000 vehicle trips per day, a condition not allowed according to the City's Bike Plan.  The Director has known the street is in violation of the Bike Plan "for years" he says ever since there was a traffic count conducted after the 'Triangle Neighborhood traffic calming' program a few years back.
45th Street was designated as a Bike Boulevard by the Bike Plan after the Triangle traffic calming program and the vehicle count conducted by Mr Kaufman's Department is necessary information for the City Council because that street is not allowed to have more than 1500 vehicle trips per day according to the Bike Plan.  After that number is reached, a series of ever more restrictive traffic calming measures is identified and called for by the Bike Plan.
Had the Council members known the street was in violation years ago, presumably they would have started the program of traffic calming that the Bike Plan calls for to remedy the violation.
The Triangle Neighborhood traffic calming plan has been completed and it's tangential to the Bike Plan and its provisions for 45th Street.  It should be noted the Bike Plan traffic calming metrics for 45th Street are more onerous than the Triangle traffic calming goals were.

In his defense, the Public Works Director stated he doesn't feel it's appropriate for Bike Plan traffic calming on 45th Street, "We've already done traffic calming there.  The neighbors don't want more" he said referring to the former Triangle traffic calming.
To that we say: It's not up to you, Maurice...nobody voted for you.  Your job is to provide objective analysis to the City Council.  If you have information the decision makers need to know to not be in violation of their public policy, you need to volunteer that information.

Which brings us to our greater point here: We don't want the Emeryville Tattler to be the entity to keep the City of Emeryville on track.  We're just here to report to the people.  We don't want this responsibility.  We want this city to stay on track itself.  We don't want the City to let its infrastructure fall into disrepair because there's no accounting going on.  We expect there should be somebody at City Hall keeping track of this stuff, not just a bunch of groping around in the dark.
If the City isn't aware of the violations with the Bike Plan, they probably are dropping the ball in other areas.  Obviously there needs to be an audit at City Hall to get a handle on this and to ensure there's a process moving forward to make sure we're not going off the rails.  The idea of planning to make it so we don't careen from crisis to crisis.  Let's hope the new Council majority gets it.