A series of ambitious proposals from San Diego bicycling advocates is getting mostly praise from city officials, with a few minor exceptions.

The goal of the proposals, which include a new version of “traffic school” for bicycle-related incidents and increased funding for bike lanes, is to boost ridership primarily by creating a connected cycling network throughout the sprawling city.

Other proposals would require cycling education for all local fourth-graders, increase bicycle parking, boost police enforcement of laws protecting cyclists and encourage businesses to provide incentives for cycling to work.

City officials say they agree with 25 of the 32 proposals in the plan from the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, although they say some will take more time than cycling advocates want.


Of the other seven proposals, city staff declared only one a bad idea: revising the city’s 2013 bicycle master plan to reflect the subsequent approval of the city’s landmark climate action plan in 2015.

The other six proposals weren’t criticized as lacking merit, but city staff raised concerns about budget constraints, lack of adequate staff or related feasibility issues.

Based on such feedback, committee members plan to revise the proposals and present them to the City Council for approval this fall as a “strategic implementation plan” that would govern cycling policy.

The proposals come as many motorists and residents have begun complaining about spending taxpayer dollars on bike lanes that get little usage and require narrowing of streets, elimination of driving lanes or removal of parking spots.


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But city officials, environmentalists and cycling advocates say it’s only fair for cars to share the streets more evenly with bikes because cycling boosts air quality, helps fight climate change and reduces parking scarcity and traffic congestion.

They predict usage of cycling lanes will sharply increase as the network grows, traffic congestion for cars increases and education and outreach they’re recommending hits full stride.

“We want to see San Diego rise nationally as a destination and a city that should be high on the list of cities for safe, connected networks for cycling,” said Andy Hanshaw, committee chair and leader of the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition. “I think we’re getting there, but we need to accelerate our efforts.”


The sense of urgency comes partly from the climate action plan, which requires the number of people cycling to work in the city’s densely populated neighborhoods to increase from about 2 percent to 6 percent by 2020, and then to 18 percent by 2035.

The city will soon begin to track its progress toward those goals with electronic counters that will compile usage statistics, and installation of smart streetlights that can count cyclists, said Linda Marabian, a deputy director in the city’s Transportation and Stormwater Department.

The streetlights will be strategically located where the city has installed cycling infrastructure or will do so in the near future, she said.

“We’ll have a better count next year at this time,” she said.


Councilman David Alvarez said it’s crucial for the city to gauge how much usage new cycling lanes are getting to determine if money is being spent wisely and efficiently, and to guide potential adjustments to future plans and projects.

Timing is one issue where the city and cycling advocates differ.

The proposal recommends completing the top 77 projects in the bicycle master plan by 2020 at an estimated cost of $74 million, but city staff said that’s an infeasibly fast schedule because many of the projects require public outreach, removal of parking and construction on land not controlled by the city.

City officials stress that they’ve completed more than 210 miles of bike lanes in the last four years and that they plan to complete the ambitious downtown mobility plan within the next two years.


The plan, approved last summer by the City Council, would transform many vehicle lanes and some on-street parking into miles of protected cycling lanes and pedestrian promenades.

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Other recent projects include one on Market Street, one on El Cajon Boulevard and several on University Avenue.

In addition, the county’s regional planning agency — the San Diego Association of Governments — is constructing and pursuing several other projects that will help create a regional cycling network.


The city has also increased the number of employees working on implementation of the bike master plan from one part-timer to 10 full-timers.

Spending has also increased, partly with help from millions of dollars in grants, but city staff said it’s unclear whether they will meet a goal set by cycling advocates of spending 6 percent of transportation funding on cycling projects.

That percentage was chosen because it matches the climate action plan’s goal of 6 percent of commuting by bicycle in 2020, but city staff said “it’s difficult to justify a relationship between ridership and funding allocation.”

City officials also rejected a proposal to revise the bike master plan to reflect the climate action plan goals, contending that neighborhood-specific changes included in ongoing community plans updates would suffice.


The Climate Action Campaign, a nonprofit environmental group, disagreed. Sophie Wolfram, the group’s policy advocate, said recent community plan updates haven’t met cycling goals of the climate plan because the bike master plan is outdated.

On the proposals city officials fully endorsed, prospects for quick implementation vary widely.

For example, prospects seem strong for the proposal to establish a traffic school where cyclists and vehicle drivers cited for bicycle-related infractions could go instead of traditional traffic school.

City staff says development of the program is “under review” by City Attorney Mara Elliott.


But despite endorsing a proposal to require cycling education for all local fourth-graders, staff says the cycling committee must engage San Diego Unified School District officials to gauge their interest.

The committee’s revised implementation plan is expected to come before the City Council’s Environment Committee this fall before being presented to the full council for approval.


david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick