In each of the past two years, at least one person has died while walking or riding a bicycle in Charlottesville. During the same time—for the last seven years, in fact—the City of Charlottesville’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Facilities Master Plan has been sitting on a shelf. Could these accidents have been avoided with an updated master plan? While the answer to this question is speculative at best, the reality of the broken state of our roads is, it seems, unquestionable.
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For Vince Caristo, executive director of ACCT, the goal is for Charlottesville to be awarded a silver medal by the League of American Bicyclists. “In order to do that, we need to figure out what needs to be done in all different areas,” says Caristo. “Not just infrastructure, but education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation.”
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Take Monday, April 19. That morning, 23-year-old UVA graduate student Matthew King was pedaling down West Main Street headed towards the University of Virginia. At the intersection of West Main and Fourth streets, he collided with a city utility truck and later died from his injuries. Although a police investigation found that the driver of the city truck was not at fault for the accident, one wonders to what degree the structure of West Main itself—narrow bike lanes, a number of on-street parking spots—might make for risky cycling.
A few weeks after King’s death, a second, non-fatal accident occurred on West Main. Lee Connally, a teacher at St. Anne’s-Belfield, commutes by bicycle from his Downtown Mall apartment to the St. Anne’s campus, a trip of three-and-half-miles. On his way back home, Connally hit a car at the intersection of West Main Street and Roosevelt Brown Boulevard, sprained his wrist and damaged his bike. It wasn’t his fault.
“I was in the bike lane, and then a woman pulled up along side me and didn’t have a signal. She pulled right a few feet in front of me and turned right,” he says. Connally adds that this wasn’t his first experience with the dangers of riding along major city corridors.
“I almost got hit there last year as well, at the same intersection, by a car turning right and not using a signal,” he says. “I don’t think Charlottesville is the safest bike city, and I just try to be hyper-aware of cars.”
The drive down West Main Street, from the UVA Grounds to the store fronts near Ridge Street, is arguably easy on the eyes of motorists. Bicyclists might consider the same route to be a bit more dangerous.
In the wake of King’s death, residents, bike advocates, city staff and elected officials are once again rethinking the safety of our roads. At the moment, however, no new changes to the city’s bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure seem to be in the pipeline.
In fact, according to Jeanie Alexander, city traffic engineer, “there have been no formal updates to the plan.
“I expect that there will be discussion of the remaining projects in the plan over the next few months with the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Committee,” she says by e-mail, referring to a recently formed group of residents and city officials geared toward finding solutions to infrastructure and safety problems.
The 2003 master plan was written when Maurice Cox, an avid bike commuter, served as mayor. The plan was crafted to outline “the City’s plans for bicycle and pedestrian improvements.” Its goals are “creating a comprehensive network of on-street bicycle facilities and off-street, recreational trails,” and “providing for an alternative mode of transportation and a recreational amenity that will be a model for other communities to emulate.”
The plan is a “long-term” project, but with “immediate benefits,” and aims for “a shift in the perspective for residents from a totally vehicular lifestyle, to one less dependent on automobiles for transportation.”
But while bikers abound in Charlottesville, cars dominate. According to the Charlottesville Police Department, the total number of traffic accidents decreased between 2008 and 2009, but those involving bicycles increased to 12 from 10. In the first months of this year, five bike accidents were reported, with King counted as the first fatality. (For complete city and national statistics, see chart, page 17.)
“Accidents, to the extent that accidents can instigate change, can have a positive effect,” says Vince Caristo, executive director of Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation (ACCT). “And hopefully we’re seeing it this year in Charlottesville. Generally, people need to know there’s a safe way to bicycle. Driving is the most dangerous thing most people do in their daily lives.”
Yet in May 2008, Charlottesville was awarded a bronze medal by the League of American Bicyclists for its efforts to make the city bike-friendly. Caristo says ACCT wants to find a way to get Charlottesville the silver medal.
“In order to do that, we need to figure out what needs to be done in all different areas,” says Caristo. “Not just infrastructure, but education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation.”
Bicyclists and groups like ACCT seem ready to implement changes now. So what’s the hold up?
Roads are a car’s best friend
Historically, roads weren’t always paved for the sole purpose of catering to drivers. Peter Norton, assistant professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at UVA, argues that the streets became redefined as an exclusive place for cars in the 20th century.
“Of course, when you mix cars with other uses, you have safety problems,” says Norton.
Exhibit one: Traffic lights. Beneath the pavement, many traffic lights employ a detector that records and detects metal mass of the objects on the road, says Norton. If there isn’t a lot of traffic and a car pulls up, the red traffic light turns green.
“Well, it takes a lot of mass to do that and a bicycle doesn’t have enough,” he says. “So a bicyclist can pull up to a light and wait forever.” For Norton, the very fact that the detector does not recognize a bike is another indication of the car mentality that is “just something very deep in the consciousness—that you design a street for cars to get around in. And nobody seems to know how to make a bike fit in the streets.”
In the end, one of the solutions to actively improve road safety was to simply keep non-drivers off the road.
“I think one of the main reasons is that drivers hardly think of other people’s industry. They think about other cars. So, they are looking for other cars, and they know what to do when they see other cars,” says Norton.
West Main Street may be one of the most difficult spots to make bicycles and cars coexist. The road is one of the city’s major corridors and the most immediate route from UVA to Downtown for drivers and cyclists alike. When a cyclist braves West Main Street during rush hour, however, he or she risks life and limb at every turn—dodging doors from cars parked along the street, or going without bike lanes.
“On West Main Street, you sit there and watch cyclists come up both sides of Water Street and what you notice is a lot of people using the sidewalk,” says Caristo. “Behavior like that, sidewalk riding, is an indicator of poor infrastructure. They don’t feel safe on the road.”
In an interview for a story about the death of King, David Brown, a City Councilor and bicyclist, suggested that one possible means to create more room for bikes might be removal of street parking on one side of West Main—a move he concedes would require more off-street parking to compensate.
Mayor Dave Norris, interviewed for that same story, commented that bicyclists might benefit from their own lanes.
“What to me has always been a priority is dedicated bike lines and paths where bikes and pedestrians—and specifically bikes—don’t have to share the road with automobiles,” he says. “There are certain parts of the city where it would be hard to create a dedicated space for it, because we don’t have any space … but I am convinced that there is more we can do in terms of creating the kinds of bike networks that you see in places like Boulder, Colorado or Madison, Wisconsin.”
But, despite the 2003 master plan’s mention of a “shift in perspective,” city roads like West Main remain car-centric.
“Currently the city does not have specific plans to change the on-street parking on West Main,” says Alexander in an e-mail. She says that one of the benefits of eliminating parking on the side of the streets is “more space for bicycle and pedestrian amenities.” However, Alexander adds, “The challenge is where deliveries to the businesses will be made and where customers will park.”
Alexander also says that the addition of new bike lanes “will require either a change to how the current roadway is used or relocation of the existing curb lines.
“Specifically, on-street parking would need to be removed in many locations where bicycle lanes do not currently exist,” she says.
“I was hoping, and I am still hoping, that they’ll update the [master] plan,” says Caristo. “It’s seven years old. If not update it, at least recommit certain sections, or add new sections for education and encouragement.”
Separate lane
Whether the city has enough room on its roads to accommodate commuter bicyclists is debatable. Off-road, however, is growing more accommodating.
“There are probably four, five or six miles of new off-road trails that will be in place in the next two years,” says Chris Gensic, the city’s park and trails planner. One trail would run along the north side of the 250 Bypass, from the proposed Interchange, with a separate bridge over the railroad tracks in McIntire Park. Another trail is planned from the Belmont Bridge, past the Coal Tower to Meade Avenue and down to Meade Park, and a third from Meadowcreek, Kmart and the new Whole Foods area to Greenbrier Park and into the Meadowcreek Parkway trails. “So you kind of create a big loop,” he says.
“It’s a pretty big system if you went from Meade Park up to the railroad, down to the Downtown Mall, leave the Downtown Mall, go up to McIntire Road and go west along to 29 and north up to Rio Road,” says Gensic. The 250 Bypass trail is estimated at about $300,000; Meade Avenue at about $400,000 and another $350,000 is in the budget to build other trails. “There is a fair balance of local funding, state funding, some federal funding that we are using, and private money—we get some donations,” says Gensic.
But while the off-street trails passed the planning stage and are nearing the conceptual process, a city-road equivalent has yet to be put on the books. Bike lanes exist in Charlottesville, along the major corridors, but they are narrow, placed dangerously close to on-street parking and, sometimes, end without warning.
Alexander says that the city is “always looking at ways to improve safety for all roadway users.” But, as Norton points out, cities often struggle with alternative transportation like bicycles because “it’s really hard to undo decades of assumptions with all the engineered solutions that made the streets places for cars and not really for anything else.”
Much like the city, bike activists are always looking for ways to improve roadway safety. In the Spring of 2007, ACCT collected feedback from Charlottesville-area bicyclists and created a list, “Top Five Priority Improvements to the Bicycle Network.” The priorities included creating incentives for developers to provide bike lanes, trails and long-term bicycle storage facilities; building a network of trails around the city; improving Old Lynchburg Road for bicycles; improving signage for bicycles; and improving the Corner area for bikers.
“Progress is slow, but improvements were made in every area,” says Caristo of the priorities. “I think we are going to be a very different city in five years for off-street trails.”
“For on-street trails and for transportation, we the bicyclists are the ones who know what needs to happen if anyone,” continues Caristo. “So, if we want changes to happen, we need to be clear and reasoned in what improvements need to be made, and then we need to stick to making sure they happen.”
But can local bikers afford to wait another five years?
Chris Gist, manager of Charlottesville Community Bikes and a certified instructor with the League of American Bicyclists—the same organization that awarded Charlottesville its bike-friendly bronze medal in 2008—says the infrastructure system in Charlottesville “is not satisfactory.”
“I would like to see a situation in Charlottesville where we address pedestrian and bicycle safety issues and all infrastructure development projects,” says Gist, because some improvements have made local roads less safe for bikers. Gist mentions Jefferson Park Avenue and West Main Street.
“They’ve put in those bump outs in what was a bicycle lane, and of course, all Main Street is problematic…but they have removed the width of the lane in order to keep parking,” says Gist. He also mentions the Corner, where Connally was hit by a glass bottle while cycling.
“There is no reason why there shouldn’t be bicycle lanes all through the Corner,” says Gist. “There needs to be a holistic approach to how bicyclists and pedestrians move throughout the whole city.” He says that West Main Street has been the site of many accidents lately because the corridor is not yet seen as the main commuter route for bicyclists going to and from the University and Downtown.
And many local bikers feel they don’t have much of a chance to experiment with alternate routes.
“Cherry Avenue is awful for biking, between the lack of bike lanes and the hills. It makes getting to West Main your best option,” says Charlottesville resident and bike commuter Paul Josey. “Fifth Street Extended feels like a superhighway.”
It’s all about communication
Shelly Stern, ACCT’s program coordinator, cycles with her son, Emerson, around Charlottesville. Though she feels safe, she says better communication between all users of the road can help educate the public, from fellow cyclists to drivers to city officials.
“I feel it’s very purposeful to have a citywide event where we can hear from each type of road users. I benefited greatly from a conversation with a [Charlottesville Transit System] bus driver recently. I didn’t realize what his blind spots were in relationship to me as a bicycle user,” she writes in a e-mail.
“It is important to have a city-wide message that our roadways are shared, public spaces where every mode of transportation should be valued and respected.”
When it comes to addressing their transportation concerns, bicyclists have no problem listening to one another. In May, ACCT sponsored a Bike Summit, where close to 100 local bikers and residents met to update their five priority improvements from 2007 and possibly identify new ones. Yet city plans for bicycling in 2010 still rely on a Bicycle & Pedestrian Facilities Master Plan circa 2003.
And according to Caristo, cyclists are interested in expanding their access to the area. “A very big thing that came out this year was improving city-county connectivity with on-street, off-street [bike lanes] … making it easier to get to the north, to the east, to the west and to the south through whatever means,” says Caristo. Other ideas ran the gamut from a database of local bicycle info on close calls and problem areas, and an idea Caristo calls CICLOville, a proposal to close major corridors in the city to cars for a few hours on weekends so bikers and pedestrians have a bit more space to pedal.
In an effort to gather as much feedback as possible, ACCT and Bike Charlottesville have released the 2010 Bike Ballot, a series of questions that invite residents to chime in and choose the most important projects that will make Charlottesville more bike friendly. The ballot is accessible at bikecharlottesville.org.
But updating infrastructure remains the most important element to complete the puzzle.
“In general, our streets need to be respected for the things that they post, no matter what, how you’re using them. And bicycling is no different. And hopefully people will understand,” says Caristo. “I just hope that the dialogue surrounding bike safety remains constructive and doesn’t have the effect of deterring people in doing. Because the best way to increase safety is to get more people on the road, and have them using the road responsibly.”
