Why Petaluma Green Lane? An activist's views:

Not long after this website was created, we got an email from a local bike and climate activist. It's a deeper dive into what drives PGL:

I’m going to offer some random thoughts and suggestions, raw, off the top of my head, and in no logical sequence:

→ I believe it’s worth noting that this notion of making our City safe for bikes (and pedestrians) is not just the pipe-dream of a few offbeat bike advocates, but is actually the City’s official policy. The stated goal of the May 2008 City of Petaluma Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan reads as follows: “Create and maintain a safe, comprehensive, and integrated bicycle and pedestrian system throughout Petaluma that encourages bicycling and walking and is accessible to all.” (p.3)

→ This goal is restated verbatim in our General Plan. Goal #5-G-5 of our May 2008 City of Petaluma General Plan 2025 reads, “Create and maintain a safe, comprehensive and integrated bicycle and pedestrian system throughout Petaluma that encourages bicycling and walking and is accessible to all.” (Pg. 5-18)

→ According to the SCTA Sonoma County Greenhouse Gas Inventory, 2018 Update, the transportation sector accounts for 60% of Sonoma County’s 2018 activity-based greenhouse gas emissions.

→ The City of Petaluma, along with five other jurisdictions in Sonoma County (Cloverdale, Sebastopol, Santa Rosa, City of Sonoma, and the County of Sonoma) and the Regional Climate Protection Authority (RCPA), has set a 2030 target date for carbon neutrality. Getting there means dramatic reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions.

→ According to a Sonoma County Travel Behavior Study presented by Fehr and Peers at the December 9, 2019 SCTA/RCPA Board of Directors meeting, 68% of trips in Petaluma are less than 5 miles in length. The average trip length is 6.7 miles.

→ “Research indicates that the majority of people in the United States (56-73%) would bicycle if dedicated bicycle facilities were provided. However, only a small percentage of Americans (1-3%) are willing to ride if no facilities are provided.” [Source: City of Santa Rosa’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan Update 2018, p.62]

→ According to AAA, the average cost of new car ownership in the U.S. is $9,282, or $773 per month. Measures enacted by the City that relieve residents of the burden of owning a car or truck equate to putting thousands of dollars in their bank accounts.

We presently have a disconnected and discontinuous bunch of bike paths and bike lanes. As stated in our Bike/Ped Plan and in our General Plan, we are advocating for “...a safe, comprehensive, and integrated bicycle and pedestrian system throughout Petaluma.” NOT a bike lane here and a bike lane there. The Green Lane map clearly illustrates this goal.

→ Here are a few youtube videos that give a bit of background on some of the great

"cycling cities" of Northern Europe:

• “What makes a city great? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A

• How the Dutch got their cycle paths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o. “The Netherlands’ problems are not unique; their solutions shouldn’t be either."

• Copenhagen from a North American perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyrTx9SXkVI

• Cycling in the US from a Dutch perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2THe_10dYs.

• Nijmegen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjLZv3Y0CWM

• Utrecht: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boi0XEm9-4E

• Groningen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv38J7SKH_g

→ The one opinion shared among virtually all people living in Petaluma is that traffic sucks. I would guess that the solution that most people would suggest is to build more roads and more traffic lanes and move traffic at greater speeds. We are advocating for a counterintuitive alternative solution: by making it easier for people to get around town without getting in their cars and trucks, we are reducing traffic (and at a far lower expense).

→ In contrast to solutions that require years of studies, planning, engineering, land acquisition, utilities work, drainage work, traffic signal work, etc., we are advocating for “quick build” solutions that rely primarily on striping, paint, and signage to create bike lanes (preferably separated bike lanes). The report titled, Quick Builds for Better Streets, available on the website of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), discusses these sorts of solutions.

The City of Burlington, VT offers their views on Quick Build methods. The PDF doc: Quick Build Guide" Design standards for measures that "make streets safer and more accessible for everyone."

→ Tactical Urbanism expands the vocabulary of quick, low-cost methods.

→ A big part of the solution to “...a safe, comprehensive, and integrated bicycle and pedestrian system throughout Petaluma," which coincides with our Vision Zero goal of zero traffic fatalities is slower streets. We slow traffic, in part, by reducing travel lane widths. NACTO's 2000 Oregon Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines: An Oregon Guide for Reducing Street Widths clearly illustrates these methods.

A Guide to Mindful Driving

Bruce Hagen, Petaluma Argus Courier Column #212, April 11, 2007

There is Zen Meditation, Zen Archery, even Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, but did you know there is also Zen Driving? I am a student of ZD, an aspirant on the asphalt path. It’s not an easy path to just stumble upon. In my culture, we are trained to be impatient, and when we get on the road, haste is the deity reigning supreme. Example: it seems a majority of the voters in my town are still willing to spend $45 million on the Rainier project’s promise of saving a few minutes in central cross-town car travel. If you do the math for the statistically average driver, saving that time costs about $100 an hour. Who among you are worth that much, much less willing to pay that much? Relax.

My youngest son turned 17 in February, and he wants his driver’s license. In addition to the State test, I am insisting he pass my Zen Driving exam. ZD is simple, like the Taoist’s proverbial uncarved engine block. Unless you are speeding your laboring spouse to the delivery room (as I did once, a little over 17 years ago), you drive a couple of mph *under* the speed limit. Acceleration is eggshell slow and smooth. Your awareness encompasses all road and traffic conditions, tuned for every opportunity to avoid sudden movement, to maximize glide. Finally and most important, at every stop sign you come to a complete stop, while you take a deep breath, smile and exhale… and then gently move on.

I conducted a test, driving a 1.5 mile loop around back streets in west Petaluma. Four stop signs, speed limit either 25 or 30. First I tested “Anxious Driving”: 5-10 mph above the speed limit, rolling stops, jackrabbit starts and rapid deceleration: 3 minutes, 16 seconds. Zen Driving: 2:48, about 1.5 times as long. But Anxious Driving carries the heightened risk of accidents and tickets, as well as a significant hit on fuel efficiency. A more reasonable and common approach, driving at the speed limit with “California stops”, but with rapid acceleration and braking, was only 10% faster than ZD, without the fuel efficiency and health benefits. One a 30 minute cross town round trip, that’s 3 minutes.

My boy thought I was joking when I told him about Zen Driving, but he tried it… and later acknowledged the stress reduction effect. Your Anxious cultural conditioning will still be tapping your rear bumper, pushing. But you can always find that peace lying there, just around the corner, a deep breath and a smile away. If you must drive.

There are other requirements for him getting the car keys. He must learn how to *safely* ride a bicycle. I’m giving him a few hours of on-the-road training, the content of the ABA “Street Skills for Safe Cycling” class. He needs to feel physically comfortable on the bike. As for any peer pressure to drive, that’s just a matter of time. We watched An Inconvenient Truth together last month; he’s smart and pays attention to the news. As we get deeper into the climate crisis and society lifts its head from the sand, I expect the chic-thrill of frivolous fossil fuel burning to be regarded as “cool” as inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco.

Jared Huffman and Carole Migden, you can help the transition from cars to bikes by adding a few things to the State’s climate protection legislation. First, include two bike safety questions on every *driver* exam (e.g. bicycle rights, how to pass bikes), and require at least one correct answer in order to pass. This will help ensure that motorists give bicyclists the respect that the law requires. On the other side, a 2 to 4 hour bicycle safety training should be a requirement at least every other year for students from grades 4 through 12. If we are *really* serious about responsible bicycling, we should require licenses, with exams, for the cyclists as well. And one last thing: Critical Mass riders should look for another way to express their frustration with cars and drivers. The old way just isn’t working.

Bicycling Equality, Here, Now

Bruce Hagen, Argus Courier, column #233, September 10, 2008

It looked like a tragic obituary waiting to be written.

She was an attractive young woman, riding her retro fat-tire bicycle in the bike lane past the Line and Twine, down Lakeville. It was a fair summer day, the wind at her back. But wait – she was on the wrong side, facing the rush hour traffic. Wearing earbuds, but no helmet. One hand on the handlebars, one holding her iPod, wheeling through the menus, absorbed in a quest for the right road music, entering and exiting the bike lane as the availability of adjacent sidewalk allowed.

I was headed home from work, on Hopper Street by the Shamrock yard. I see a lot of dangerous cycling, more of it lately, as warm weather, high gas prices and news of climate chaos pull more people out of their cars. But this was too much to let pass; I had a vision of reading about her in tomorrow’s hard news. So I turned in pursuit, and caught up with her by McDonalds. She got the short story about riding with traffic, and the shorter story of a former co-worker whose headphones-no-helmet habit replaced her ten-speed with a wheelchair. I hope she got the message.

The City of Petaluma, doing its part, has been issuing citations to bike rule violators. Good intentions, but, like my effort, not well timed. These people need education, not punishment in the form of fines or, worse, hospital visits. The sad and sorry fact is that our approach to safe cycling has been basically this: build a few bike paths, paint stripes on some asphalt, and hope for the best. There seems to be an assumption that bicycling should be unregulated “free la la la”, or that it’s so simple anyone can learn it from anyone else. Sure, if you never leave a lightly traveled bike path removed from car traffic, your training can end when the training wheels come off.

But just as you can’t put a freeway or a monorail from every front door to every destination, you can’t have a car-free bike path everywhere every rider goes. Cyclists need to learn how to ride on streets, with cars. Not just in Critical Mass rides, either. Critical Mass can “empower” bike riders but, absent education on solo riding, they actually retard progress in replacing car traffic with bike traffic, because they set up bike-car encounters that are both abnormal and confrontational.

Do we cyclists want respect and safe behavior from motorists? Do we want them to “share the road”? Then let’s accept the same responsibilities. I propose a State “Bicycling Equality Act” that would require licensing for cycling above a certain age, with mandatory testing. And training! The League of American Bicyclists (www.bikeleague.org) has an excellent curriculum. I took their “Street Skills” class several years ago, and, even after over three decades of everyday street cycling, was amazed what I didn’t know, and how much safer I felt on the road after completing the class. An age-appropriate version of this class should be required for school kids as soon as they start riding, and repeated all the way through high school.

But bike safety needs to be a two-way street. The BEA would require the State Driver Tests to include a question about cyclists’ right to ride in the car lane; missing it results in automatic failure. That will send a message to motorists far more effective than any number of “Share the Road” signs.

If we are the least bit serious about preventing catastrophic climate change, about reaching President Obama’s goal (I love the way that sounds, don’t you?) of eliminating oil imports within a decade, clearing the air, reversing the obesity epidemic, knitting our communities back together… is the teaching and testing of this BEA too much to ask of cyclists and motorists? And I’m confident President Obama would agree that we have to stop thinking about this as cyclists versus motorists. We are all *Americans going somewhere*. Somewhere good, together.

Ignorance is the greatest threat to cyclists and cycling; it’s time to write its obituary. Send this message to state lawmakers, especially Jared Huffman and Mark Leno: BE, here and now!