Thursday, November 19, 2015

notification: No PBAC meeting tonight ! Also, the Bike Master Plan study


This is to notify you all that PBAC's monthly meeting scheduled for
7:30 tonight has been cancelled, due to other meetings & priorities.

One priority, or  more correctly Priority One, being the Bike Master Plan.

You may have read the front-page article in Town Topics this week:


It says "the most heated exchange of the evening arose among homeowners
and bicyclists concerning a plan that had been presented and widely debated
before being tabled about ten months ago; the proposal was to eliminate on-street
parking and create a bike lane on Hamilton Avenue between Harrison Streets
and Snowden Lane."

It seems to me, the vast majority of our bikers are also homeowners AND motorists;
it just so happens, they desire a safer biking experience, via improved infrastructure.

More on this to follow. Anyway, it's true about that topic, which came right at the very
end of the Q&A session, being "the most heated exchange".

If you look at what's being captured on the BMP wikimap, you'll see this comment:

       This section of Hamilton was designated for bike lanes, which were opposed 
       by some local residents on the basis that the lanes would not connect into a 
       wider network.

And then this "I disagree" rebuttal:

         This Hamilton segment is not a current or future bike route in the approved 
         Master Plan and as such is NOT OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED for bike lanes.
         The initial statement is completely false.

The above is from "Anonymous", well-known around town as COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS.

Anyway, let's try to clarify the "mastery" and recent evolution of this section of Hamilton.

2010 - there was the "bikeways and sidewalks" map in the Master Plan.

Dec 2010 - the pedestrian/bicyclist advisory committee published its Sharrows Report,
    which specifically requested (this document is in PBAC's online archive):

East-West sharrows, on Nassau Street - from Harrison to Bayard

            and on  Paul Robeson / Wiggins / Hamilton - from Bayard to Snowden Lane

Summer 2011 - the sharrows were installed, except (a) they were incorrectly 
                       positioned along Nassau, and (b) omitted on that stretch of Hamilton,
                       for some unexplained or maybe arbitrary reason. With (a) being urgent.

2012 - the "sidewalks" and "bikeways and sharrows" are now separate maps, wherein
          the location of sharrowed streets, at least those which got installed, are specified.

2013 - the maps get ratified in the new edition of the Circulation Element.

2015 - the new "bikeways and sharrows" map, basically as created thru PBAC efforts,
          gets used to help make PBAC members understand what the master plan says.
          Meanwhile, Hamilton gets repaved, and finally gets its sharrows, 4 years later.

By the way, we do appreciate the citizen who stood up at the meeting and rhapsodized
about how sharrows had made his daily commuting experience so much better/safer.






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