Dear Councilmembers,
I have been a bike commuter since August 2018, when I purchased an e-bike
and discovered how lovely a cross town commute could be. Over the last 8
years, Ive seen the city add quite a bit of bike lane paint and No Parking
signs to my bike route. With 24 schools in our little town, pretty much
every road is a route to school.
However, I would like to note that every single day, literally, I have to
ride my bike around a vehicle parked in a bike lane. And over the course
of years of seeing this, it has occurred to me that bike infrastructure is
the first one to be impeded anytime drivers are feel like they "need" to
use the space. Need to just drop something off? Bikes will go around.
Amazon delivery? Bikes will go around. Construction work? Bikes will go
around. Private bus ddriver needs to wait somewhere for the ECR pickup?
Park on the Ravenswood bike lane. Bikes will go around. Only on very rare
occasions are drivers or pedestrians ever asked to be less safe so that
drivers can have all the space they need. Its always bikes. People are
begging you for protected bike lanes, but it appears councils next top
priority is more rules to target bikes when they dont even have the funds
to follow through on enforcing rules drivers are violating every day. And
they also dont have the funds to enforce all the bike laws already on the
books.
If bollards need to be replaced so often, we do understand that its
because drivers are going out of their lanes and hitting them - which is
the exact safety concern we all bringing up. Stop pushing bike safety to
the back of the line and start prioritizing it like a form of
transportation that will help make our world and lives better in the
future, because it is.
Thank you,
Jacqui Cebrian
Resident of Belle Haven
Complete Streets Commissioner
Resident of Belle Haven
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What Im reading/just finished (audio/print/ebook):
[image: Lula Deans Little Library of Banned Books: A Novel By Kirsten
Miller Cover Image]. [image: Pocket Bear By Katherine Applegate Cover Image]
[image: Troubling Tonsils! (Jasper Rabbits Creepy Tales!) By Aaron
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