News - BCNM Minutes from 1/16/2003 meeting
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1. Greg White – NM State Highway and Transportation Dept, Bicycle/Pedestrian/Equestrian Coordinator 2. Plans for Bicycle Day at the Roundhouse in February - probably 11 am - 1 pm on a weekday; suggestions welcome 3. Brief summary of expected bike-related legislation: A. helmet law for kids, B. Safe Routes to Schools to fund improvements near schools, C. "pay-as-you-go" insurance, that makes car insurance more fairly reflect how much you drive (so if you drive very little, you have lower insurance) 4. April 5th SW Regional Bike Advocacy meeting in Santa Fe 5. Santa Fe project updates: Rail Trail, St. Francis Crossing, Old Pecos Trail, other. Dan Baker/Quela Robinson will report on City Council, Jan 8th. 6. Reports on TEA-3 (highway bill reauthorization, and any response from Senator Domenici to our letter.) 7. Planning for Bike-to-Work/School Day in May - form a subcommittee 8. ideas for naming Santa Fe bike advocacy group STENCIL available to stencil "BikeNM.org" onto a banner, articles of clothing, trailers etc. MEETING NOTES: The Bicycle Coalition met on January 16th, 2003. Greg White, State Bicycle/Pedestrian/Equestrian coordinator, made a full report on his job duties. He started as the BPE coordinator in August, 2002. He explained how state and federal funding are utilized in roadway and other projects. He mentioned that the new management at the NM State Highway and Transportation Department considers bicycling/walking to be one of the top two programs at the department. Meeting attendees asked Greg various questions about the process for obtaining improvements. For example, how to make sure shoulders get put on Old Pecos Trail when it is rebuilt. It was suggested that now that we know more about the state functions, we should invite a City or County representative to speak to the group. Greg explained that the "MPO" or Metropolitan Planning Organization is the entity that submits roadway projects, which includes bikeway projects, to the state for funding consideration. The MPO is defined as the urban area plus a 5-mile circle outside of that. Carrie LaCrosse is the MPO representative to the BPE Committee of the state. The new Secretary at NMSTHD is cost-conscious, and she is pro-bike, according to Greg. Reasonable costs in construction can be rationalized if they can be expected to reduce liability by improving safety. An important person in deciding project importance is the Traffic Safety Engineer. Greg explained that the District Engineer for each of the NMSTHD districts is the "top dog." He or she has two ADE’s (Assistant District Engineers) reporting to him or her, and they are all supported by a Traffic Safety Engineer. For projects to be funded, they must be: Greg promised to send Dan more information about the MPO. He pointed out that discussions between all stakeholders need to be ongoing on projects. Greg asked the group to tell him the Most Dangerous areas for cycling (on state roads), since those are where he can make the biggest impact. - In response to this, Dan is planning to add an "Incident Report" form to the website so that bikers can report accidents, near-misses, or bike/motorist related traffic infractions. They will also be looking at state roads surrounding population centers that are known to have current bike traffic, or would be good routes for Tours and recreation. Someone suggested that Interstate 25, northbound, after the El Dorado exit, is terrible. There is only about 2 feet between the rumble strips and the guard rail. It makes it very dangerous with so little space, particularly if there is debris on the shoulder as there is no escape route. Greg mentioned that Bob Bracher is retiring. He dealt with safety issues and standards like rumble strips we think... In response to this Greg and Dan have started gathering info and planning to propose some changes to the construction standards. Greg discussed the State BPE Plan, and said they are looking at it some more. He wants to identify bike corridors around the state. Key meeting will be the one in LasVegas. It was mentioned that the Leukemia Team-in-Training, which has historically been affiliated with the Santa Fe Century, was not going to be affiliating with the Santa Fe Century this year. There had been too many complaints about the roads and course. We discussed the need to point these impacts out to Economic Development folks, and the Tourism department. In response to this Dan will try to document responses from both TNT and SF century to have as an example in discussions with Tourism people. Dan discussed the need for striping improvements at key intersections, and mentioned Old Pecos Trail intersection with St. Michael’s Drive as an example of an unmarked "thru-lane" for cyclists causing confusion with motorists. He said there is a good diagram of how that "free right" should look on the website for cyclists in Eugene, OR. The picture was submitted at the City Council meeting, but no response has been made by the city yet. We talked about the need to "get friendly" and talk to City and County staff, so that they know about our needs. But we also need to impress elected officials, like City Council, with the fact that cyclists are using roadways, and monies need to be appropriated to make fixes. After Greg finished, and we finished grilling him, we talked about a few of the other items on the agenda. Quela [?] mentioned that her roommate knows about the bills for the Legislature, and could help us track them. People brainstormed about how else we could have an impact and improve cycling in Santa Fe. We should approach the schools. It would be good to create cycling teams at schools, like Santa Fe Prep. Also good to push the "Safe Route to School" angle for middle and high schools. Athena said she probably would have gotten more interested in cycling, earlier, if it had been at her school. We all hoped that getting the kids cycling would indirectly shift attitudes with parents. We talked about how to promote Bike-to-Work Day a little. Like putting up road signs that say "Do you drive this route – bike it!" Someone noted that there are no signs on Richards Road out to SF Community College. We talked about some other tourism/promotional events. Like having triathalons. Las Vegas’ triathalon is a big event. Silver City’s Tour of the Gila is that community’s single biggest tourism event. Other examples include the Mt. Taylod Quadrathlon in Grants. A future project will be to touch base with race directors and try to obtain some documentation on economic impact to promote events in more communities. To keep roads clean – we need to talk to County Road Superintendent. We should make an Easy-to-Read card that is easy to hand out about bicycling; also bumper stickers. That BCNM members could hand to other cyclists when they are out there. It’s important to get the message out. As follow-up to obtaining lights, we talked about initiating a combination education blitz and light giveaway thru state and city police. It would be a chance for us to build a positive relationship with enforcement, and get the lights to people that need them. The concept would be that patrols would have a couple lights in each (and we hope EVERY) car, and STOP and give them to bikers without lights they see after dark.
Meeting adjourned at 8:40 pm.
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