The recent bike ordinance approved by the Santa Barbara City Council has been in the news enough lately, but I’d like to add my two cents.
The ordinance is indeed a step in the right direction to control some of the unwieldy e-bike behavior we’ve seen on our streets.
I dislike speeding, wheelies and illegally modified bikes as much as the next person, and maybe even more. This behavior gives a bad name to all cyclists in the city, including myself.
However, there is one main sticking point I have with a clause in the ordinance: the blanket ban on riding on sidewalks. Before you protest, hear me out.
Obviously, riding on the sidewalk on State Street downtown is totally inappropriate. There are crowds of people meandering between storefronts, children in strollers and on foot, and waiters carrying food to parklets.
Riding here should indeed be banned outright. But let’s take a look at the rest of Santa Barbara.
Usually, riders such as myself ride on sidewalks outside downtown to avoid the dangers of threading our way through high-speed traffic on busy streets outside the State Street promenade.
An initial draft of the ordinance recognized that fact, and would have allowed cyclists to ride on the sidewalk to avoid a danger in the roadway.
During the Feb. 25 City Council meeting, I shared that I actually ride on a segment of sidewalk daily to avoid 40 mph traffic and reach a safe, marked crosswalk.
Mayor Randy Rowse referenced my story as a mere “anecdote” but there’s more to it than that.
In September, when I gave a presentation on bikes on State Street in conjunction with Strong Towns Santa Barbara and the Community Environmental Council, I went into detail explaining the “four types of cyclists.”
The gist is this: dozens of surveys from across the country have found that around 60% of the population simply will not ride a bike if they feel unsafe and are forced to ride alongside high-speed car traffic.
Only about 8% of people will take this risk (while another 30% say they’ll never ride at all).
Though we are making great progress building out bike infrastructure that the 60% would feel comfortable on, there are numerous gaps throughout the city; this is where sidewalks come in.
Check out this picture of the West Carrillo Street underpass at Highway 101:
Where would you want to ride your bike here? Where would you want your children to ride their bikes?
I know where I want to ride my bike in this area: the sidewalk. And my intuition isn’t wrong.
A majority of off-freeway roadway fatalities occur at intersections, and “vulnerable road users,” or people outside a car, are most likely to get hit where there isn’t dedicated infrastructure for them, aka no bike lane.
And the Carrillo underpass isn’t the only spot like this. A brief and by no means comprehensive list from Strong Towns members includes:
- West Mission Street between Castillo and State streets (0.4 miles)
- State Street between Constance Avenue and De la Vina Street (half-mile)
- Castillo Street between West Montecito Street and Highway 101 (500 ft)
- Calle Real between West Pueblo Street and Treasure Drive (quarter-mile)
- Las Positas Road between San Onofre Road and Stanley Drive (quarter-mile)
- Modoc Road between Las Positas Road and La Cumbre Junior High School while cars are parked on Modoc even between 7-9 a.m. and 4-6 p.m. (quarter-mile)
- Cliff Drive between Salida Del Sol and Mesa Lane (0.6 miles)
- Cliff Drive near Santa Barbara City College (0.6 miles)
The City of Santa Barbara has multiple adopted goals that we are striving for.
One of these is Vision Zero, a goal of zero traffic fatalities on our roadways. Another is a reduction in carbon emissions. Yet another — and perhaps the most popular — is a reduction in traffic.
Sure, we can ask cyclists to push their bike along the sidewalks where there aren’t bike lanes, even when it’s uphill and they own a heavy e-bike — or if they have a cargo bike with kids or groceries onboard.
But every little thing we do that makes biking “that much less” desirable and less safe as a transportation mode will discourage potential riders and runs contrary to numerous city goals.
Cyclists shouldn’t have to choose between what feels safe for them and their children and the threat of getting a $100 fine.
Biking on the sidewalk should be banned on State Street downtown, and perhaps other downtown streets as well, but in general cyclists know when and where it’s safe to ride on the sidewalk.
What’s not an anecdote is the fact that, according to the city (and the State of California’s) own data, there have been a mere five collisions between cyclists and pedestrians in the last three years, out of 1,304 total crashes.
Of those, 113 involved pedestrians, and in 53% of these the driver of a vehicle was at fault (none list a cyclist as the party at fault).
Additionally, cyclists represented 18% of the total victims in all crashes, a number greater than their mode share on our roads.
Hopefully, one day we will create a more ideal world in which cyclists never have to ride on the sidewalk — because the bike infrastructure on our roadways is so safe and connected.
For now, enforcement of cycling behavior isn’t a great solution. In her book, There Are No Accidents, author Jessie Singer explains this counterintuitive trend.
She writes that studies show that cities that spend more money on police enforcing traffic behavior laws actually had a 23% higher rate of accidental death than cities that spent less.
Meanwhile, cities that spent more money on correcting the dangerous conditions on their roadways that led to accidents had a 14% reduction in accidental death than others.
For instance, the increase in protected bike lanes in New York has led to a 29% reduction in pedestrian fatalities and deaths.
At the end of the day, my story about riding on the sidewalk may be a mere “anecdote.” But by the same metric, so are all the stories of peoples’ experiences of bad cyclist behavior.
This observation isn’t meant to discredit either experience, but we should keep in mind that the data is clear: to meet numerous city goals and keep our citizens safe, we should restore the ordinance language allowing riding on the sidewalk when cyclists feel the roadway is too dangerous.
