CA Cyclists Call on Boxer to Respect Right to the Road

Senator Barbara Boxer is receiving bi-partisan praise for managing to move a transportation policy and funding bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a divided Senate, but she may be facing trouble from a usually supportive constituency back home.

Regardless of how one feels about the new funding formulas proposed in the bill, there is no doubt that a provision in the MAP-21 highway authorization bill entitled "bicycle safety" would dramatically change cyclists' rights to the road and would force many cyclists to either break the law or put themselves in unsafe situations.  The language in question reads:

"The provision requires no minimum standard of safety or mobility on the sidepath, and experience shows that such paths are often more dangerous or impractical than on-road bicycling," explains David Snyder, the executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition.  "The provision may have been well-intentioned but its result is to reduce safety and it should be removed."

Jim Baross, with the California Association of Bicycle Organizations explains further.  "Most of our concern is that adjacent trails, paths or alternative facilities that bicycling might be detoured to do not provide anything near to the efficiency and safety provided by the shoulders of Federal highways," Baross begins. "At a time when there are significant and important efforts to encourage Americans to use bicycling as a healthy, environmentally appropriate and economic transportation choice, it is ironic that a proposal for prohibiting bicycling, such as this, would be included in a transportation bill."

The real-world implications of such a change would be felt throughout the state, but Bikeside President Alex Thompson explains some of the local impact.  After first noting that this law would require a lot of municipalities to get out their measuring tape and that it would effectively ban bikes from the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, Thompson notes many of the other implementation problems with the language as written.

"Are their places where Dockweiler is within 100 yards of Vista Del Mar but only for 1/4 mile?  If there are, then you would have to switch over and back all the time,"  Thomspon begins.  "And there's the issue of how you tell cyclists that they have to getoff the road, turn, right, proceed past two apartment buildings, and join the secret hidden bike path you didn't know about. It's chock full of holes as written."