RULES COMMITTEE: 3/16/2022
Item: B.1
File ID: ROGC 22-111
TO: Honorable Mayor & FROM: Toni J. Taber, CMC
City Council City Clerk
SUBJECT: The Public Record DATE: March 16, 2022
March 3 – March 10, 2022
ITEMS FILED FOR THE PUBLIC RECORD
Letters from Boards, Commissions, and Committees
Letters from the Public
1. Letter from Tessa Woodmansee, dated March 7, 2022, regarding: Re: How to Engineer Safe Streets.
____________________________
Toni J. Taber, CMC
City Clerk
TJT/tt
3/10/22, 10:43 AM Mail - Rules and Open Government Committee Agendas - Outlook https://outlook.office365.com/mail/[email protected]/inbox/id/AAQkADhhYzk3NTk1LTBmZDAtNDc4Yi1hN2Q0LTZjNmZjNTk5MT… 1/1 [External Email]
This message is from outside the City email system. Do not open links or attachments from untrusted sources.
Re: How to Engineer Safe Streets
tessa woodmansee < >
Mon 3/7/2022 11:53 PM
To: City Clerk <[email protected]>; Rules and Open Government Committee Agendas <[email protected]>; tessa woodmansee
On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Cat Woodmansee < > wrote:
See attached document, the same text pasted here too:
How to Engineer Safe Streets
WHEREAS our goal is to eliminate pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities on our streets caused by automobile drivers, AND WHEREAS measures created to defend bicyclists from automobile traffic will also help to protect pedestrians, AND WHEREAS it is understood from daily evidence that a century of educating drivers has not proven sufficient to protect pedestrians and bicyclists on our streets,
THEREFOR IT IS TAKEN AS EVIDENT FROM OBSERVATIONS that the only way remaining to protect pedestrians and bicyclists from automobile fatalities is to institute hard engineered controls of the shared space, AND GIVEN ALSO in the right and just pursuit of this goal we will not consider economic sensitivities in determining how to eliminate these kinds of fatalities,
AND GIVEN ALSO we will not consider political sensitivities as we pursue eliminating these kinds of fatalities, THEREFOR the following can be used as a decision tree guiding how best to engineer our streets to eliminate pedestrian and bicycles fatalities caused by drivers:
1: If a street has 2 or more lanes in one direction, ONE lane will be taken and dedicated to a well-defined and protected bicycle lane (here defined as; having a dedicated, well-maintained, paved surface exclusively for bicycles, at least four feet wide, not in the door-zone of parked cars, with a door-zone striped to warn cyclists where there are parked cars, and defended by a solid concrete barrier or barricades between the bike lane and the car lanes, the latter being strong enough and anchored enough to prevent most types of vehicle incursion into the bicycle lane); 2: If a street has a single defined lane in one direction, but has on-street parking (or unused shoulder of the same extent) then disallow the on-street parking and/or take the space to create a well-defined and protected bicycle lane. 3 If the street has a single defined lane in one direction, but it is narrow to the curb and there is inadequate space for a welldefined and protected bicycle lane, then either A) direct cyclists away from that street with clear directions to the next safe and appropriate street (as designed above) and also head the same direction, or B) reduce vehicle speeds to 15 mph and add speed bumps, with warnings to be safe around bicyclists and pedestrians. --
Clean Air and Quiet Neighborhoods—A Natural Right!
Public Record: 1