Tag: bike lanes

Bonus! First 3 pm workshop, 1/21/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshop #1: Sessom Drive

In 2018, we updated the Transportation Master Plan. We noted a bunch of dangerous intersections, and put in a bit about safe biking lanes.  Since then, you’ve seen all sorts of bike lanes pop up.  

Academy and Sessom was flagged as one of the dangerous spots to improve.  This is the stretch we’re talking about:

It’s always seemed super dangerous to me! Drivers are so zippy through this:

wheeeee!

Here’s what was done:

Here’s a little before and after. Four skinny zippy, windy lanes, in 2021:

I worry for all the bikers!

After:

A light, bike lanes, single lanes, a left turn lane: so much safer.

Here’s another before-and-after:

Hopefully bikers don’t feel like they’re going to be run over anymore!

…

Did it work? 

Looks like it worked great! (“Level of Service” means how much traffic can you handle.)

The bikers have concerns, though. What are “vertical delineators” that the cyclists want?

These things.  You’ve seen them all over town.

The city was trying out different kinds, and it seems like the armadillos work best.  (The other kinds require extra maintenance – they don’t pop back up after awhile, or they get torn off and leave bolts sticking up in the road, etc.  The armadillos are just glued down.)

….

So this brings us to the next question!  We’re going to be improving Sessom down to Aquarena:

We just completed the yellow part. We are about to work on the blue part to the right. We have some choices:

  1. Go back and undo the bike lanes and safety measures in the yellow part.
  2. Keep them, and extend them to the blue part.

[Updated to add: I got this part wrong – there’s no option to extend the bike lanes to the new part. They’re just deciding on the yellow part, and if they should add armadillos. Also fixed below.]

Jane Hughson reminisces about when they agreed to try bike lanes on the yellow part. (This was the very first meeting I blogged publicly, back in 2022!
– Shane, Mark, and Saul all voted against the bike lanes on Sessom and Craddock. 
– Jane, Alyssa, Jude and Max Baker all voted to try the bike lanes out.
Jane was reluctant, but she decided since it’s just paint and easily reversible, we might as well try them out.)

So what should we do?

Undo the old bike lanes:  No one
Keep the bike lanes and add armadillos: Everyone

Hooray! That was a test, Council, and you passed. Good job.

There’s one more workshop after this! Keep going!

Bonus: 2/13/21 Mini-meeting and 2/21/21 Workshop

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

2/13/21 Mini-Meeting

Last Monday, the 13th, they met and appointed people to various commissions. The most visible of these is Planning & Zoning.

There were four positions to fill:

  • Matthew Mendoza’s vacant spot has two years left on it, since he moved to council
  • Zach Sambrano is cycling off, and it sounds like he didn’t re-apply. (As far as I can tell – they didn’t put a packet online.)
  • Griffin Spell is reapplying for another three year term
  • Amy Meeks is also reapplying for another three years

Both Griffin Spell and Amy Meeks were easily reappointed.  (In general, I’m highly reluctant to criticize individual P&Z members on this blog, since they are citizen volunteers who are still mostly-private, as opposed to council members who have stood for public election. So I’m not passing judgement on Griffin and Amy one way or the other. I appreciate their service!)

So there are two other spots to fill.  Total, P&Z has nine people.  Including Griffin and Amy, the seven filled spots are not very representative of San Marcos:

  • Six of the seven are white
  • Five of the seven are male
  • I’d guess five of the seven are probably over 50 years old.

The two remaining spots are filled by Michele Burleson and Mark Rockeymoore, which helps balance out the whiteness (although the Hispanic community is still underrepresented).   I’m not familiar with Michele, but they gave a long list of community activism and participation. Markeymoore is familiar to me, though! Hi Mark, congratulations on your appointment. You’re a great pick.

Alyssa Garza is concerned with the process, and how we keep perpetuating a mostly older/white/male pool of applicants for committees. She’s bringing something forward next month to look at possible reforms.

…

2/21/23 Workshop: Bike lanes on Craddock.  The trial period is over, so how do we like them? 

Fears of traffic snarls turned out to be overblown.  To his credit, Mark Gleason mentions his own opposition, and how his fears have not come to pass.

The biggest effect is traffic-calming: cars have slowed down.  You can’t swerve around someone who is going the speed limit when there’s only one lane. There still isn’t much bike traffic out there. Arguably, that’s because the lanes don’t connect to other lanes that would help you get places.  

Craddock is a weird road. It connects two major roads – RR12 and Old 12 – but not in a particularly useful way. Usually either Old 12 or Hopkins is going to be a more direct route, except for a few residential areas specifically along Craddock. It probably didn’t need to be made that big in the first place. (Which is to say: there’s probably not ever going to be a ton of bikers on it.  But that’s okay.) 

Bike lanes are also coming to Sessom Drive – painted, not with a physical barrier, and it will be one lane in each direction. I think the long term plan is for proper, separated bike lanes. But in the meantime, they are going to just paint on bike lanes, which help slow cars down, because the lanes are narrower. This is called “traffic-calming.”

It seems harrowing to bike down Sessom, period, unless there’s an actual physical barrier separating you from the cars. Drivers, please please please look out for bikers. We are all so fragile.