You are hereA2W Rumor: Nueces Bike Boulevard Dead. Truth: Twitter is still some bullshit, and Nueces is still on the table.
A2W Rumor: Nueces Bike Boulevard Dead. Truth: Twitter is still some bullshit, and Nueces is still on the table.
I read something rather disheartening in the twattings of a collegue a few minutes ago regarding the Nueces Bike Boulevard project:
#Rumor:city staff calling Nueces Bike Blvd "dead". Will good public policy prevail or will handful of property owners kill our 1st bike blvd?
11 minutes ago from web
First off, FUCK TWITTER. With that sentiment out of the way, as soon as I read their twitting I picked up the phone and called the alleged source: the CoA Bike/ped staff. From them I learned that this tweeter-totter bullshit was unfounded, and that they're still going ahead and looking at Nueces as an option for the bike boulevard. They're also weighing Rio Grande, as was brought up at the previous meeting, and mentioned that they've commissioned another traffic study to take a closer look at the patterns in the area and give them a better grasp on how a bike boulevard would affect the businesses and residents in the area. As they did before the previous meeting a mailer went out to all property owners in the area, only this time the mailer mentioned Rio Grande as an alternate option. I'm going to try and get a copy of this mailer before the meeting so we can check it out as well. From what the staffers said, it went out to about 5000 people who own property between MLK and 3rd street, and Lamar and Guadalupe. Expect an interesting crowd tonight.
Oh yeah, I ALSO learned that several business owners have been exerting political pressure on the CoA staff to divert the plans from Nueces and onto another street, as a textbook case of NIMBYism and political favoritism in action. The LOBV has weighed in with their opinion that the bike boulevard SHOULD be on Nueces, so I expect the two factions to have a grand ol' time trying to bash each others brains in at tonights' meeting. The formerly hardline facebook group has even softened their stance on bicycle exclusivity, so could they be the common ground that brings everyone together? Show up tonight at Pease Elementary around 6pm and find out. Come early for the good seats.
Finally, due to the political mumbo jumbo and the strings that got pulled by certain property owners, the process for deciding the specifics of the bike boulevard is probably going to stretch on past the February meeting. Sometimes the gears of progress turn slowly when intentionally gummed up by political bullshit. Ole!
Moral(s) of the story: FUCK TWITTER. Ask questions. Get truth. Show up to the meeting if you want your opinions heard.
Update: In related news I just posted my first twitter, and I don't even know if it "worked". FUCK. It's all downhill from here, isn't it? Somebody kill me now.
Remember kids, if you twitter too much you'll (go blind) get ADD.
At the last meeting I noticed that there were a lot of cyclists and supporters, but they tended to be more well behaved and less belligerent than the opposition. kind of like, whichever child cries loudest gets heard. I kind of felt like our main/only vocal supporter was Annick.
"...the twattings of a collegue..."
(snickering)
Glad you posted this next to REVIVAL!
... for many property owners, this isn't a prison a few blocks away -- it's a drastic change in the street that 99% of their customers use to get to their business.
It's not their back yard ... it's their front yard, their driveway. They have every reason to be extremely concerned about this -- it does have the potential to destroy their business if done improperly (though I doubt they'll do anything like ban cars entirely, which is what would be really disruptive.)
I'm not saying that we should bow to their demands -- if we did that, NOTHING would ever happen (as every street would have similar issues) -- but dismissing their concerns as simply "textbook NIMBY" is unfair.
Doug,
Everything except traffic diverters in the toolbox has already been done in this town on other roads for years with no negative effect on business or property values. Moreover, as I've pointed out similar traffic calming in other cities has proved advantageous to those involved.
I agree that initial nervousness is legitimate, but when presented with this evidence, those opposed ignore it or dismiss it. It does not appear to me they are open to reasoned argument: textbook NYMBYism.
Elliott from Austin On Two Wheels
I wonder exactly which "business owners have been exerting political pressure on the CoA staff".
The Texas Assoc. of Business? Ranch 616? A bunch of lawyers and bail bondsmen?
What other businesses are on that street? It can't just be the guy with the trophy shop. Who goes drive-by window shopping for an attorney, or an engineer, or an architecture firm?
I too felt that a lot of the property owners didn't seem very interested in compromise. I hope there's less reactionary knee-jerk opposition this time.
-------------------------
There's a blurb on the AAStatesman now:
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/traffic/e...
"Scott Sayers, who has offices in a building on Nueces near MLK, says that the proposed changes would inevitably cut business for property owners along the street, and that the plan is too intrusive for the relatively small slice of traffic on bicycles."
Somebody needs to tell this guy that cars will still be able to find his business on 18th & Nueces. It's not as if all car traffic is being eliminated or that potential clients will somehow magically forget that all those east/westbound streets exist.
... zero car traffic is still an option that could happen. (Granted, I think it's unlikely, but it's still on the table. Especially if the property owners stopped fighting it.)
As for studies showing that traffic calming in other cities helped rather than hurted business, they need to be taken with a big grain of salt as all studies do. The first study you refer to? Put out by "Your advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit" -- hardly a disinterested party. And NYC is different than Austin -- don't only a small fraction of people in NYC even own cars, where in Austin most do?
Another talks about "highly urbanized areas" -- I'm not sure Nueces qualifies (it's somewhat urbanied, close to downtown, but not highly urbanized by itself.) The author is Emily Drennen, a big bicycling proponent, go figure. And the other reference you give gets it's data from the NYC study, and is on a blog of the "livable streets coalition" -- another source the businesses are not likely to trust.
Do you have a study on such streets done by the businesses on the street to refer to? That would be more convincing to the property owners than this pro-bike stuff.
And again, this isn't a prison a few blocks away -- this is the street right in front of their business (well, for the businesses on the street), this is how their customers get to them. To dismiss them simply as being NIMBYers is insulting and likely to be counter-productive as it helps prompt them to pull out all the stops in opposing your goals.
I hope the plan goes through in spite of the property owner's opposition, and I think discouraging (but not banning) cars and encouraging bikes is the way to go. But being insulting to the property owners isn't exactly fair -- it's not like the proponents will be proposing that the bicycle blvd be removed if their businesses end up suffering from it, and that is a very real possibility.
Doug,
I am an owner of several small businesses so I have a pretty good grasp on business planning and the risks involved. I have said that concerns of the businesses and properties on Nueces are legitimate, HOWEVER I could also find no evidence in any of the research I did published by any entity that showed a negative effect on business. In fact, San Francisco report I sited actually included interview with property owners and business owners where traffic calming had been implemented. 65% were happy with the improvements several years later and only 4% were unhappy. These weren't policy wonks. They were people running businesses.
I have total respect for this fear, but the most vocal opponents do not seem to care what economic evidence is presented. That is not reasoned concern. It is irrational NIMBYism and no matter what we say or do, we will not satisfy that fear.
I agree that there are broader community benefits that make this project important regardless of the economic impact on the owners, but there is simply no evidence that this will negatively effect them.
Elliott from Austin On Two Wheels
San Francisco and New York might as well be in another solar system for all the relevance they have to Austin. And don't get me started on Europe (another galaxy).
As much as we might wish otherwise, the fact is that in Austin, people who patronize businesses by transit instead of by driving are almost entirely lower-income folks, unlike the vast swaths of middle and upper income people who do so in SF and especially NY. It is not difficult to understand why these businesses are afraid that their patrons who are turned off by difficulty driving there might not be easily replaced by transit users or cyclists.
It's important to understand this argument rather than dismissing it with studies that simply aren't applicable to our environment. Otherwise, you're talking past each other, and the city will just go with the people making the most sense to them (meaning a 6-1 vote against the bike blvd).
Instead, I'd respond with "your customers will still have access by car; they just won't have through access for long distances either way; this is no different than (insert large numbers of other sections of downtown where the street grid is discontinuous, for instance; or even go to suburban areas where strip malls don't connect with each other). This shows that you understand the concern, and then effectively minimize it, rather than relying on the questionable contention that our transportation modeshares among the people with money to spend are anything like SF or NY or will be any time in the near future.
This isn't NIMBY -- they're not objecting to something a few blocks over. As far as they're concerned the city is considering tearing up the street right in front of their business, the street their customers use.
Would you like the road in front of your house filled up with bollards and speed bumps and similar things? Bollards on both ends so cars can't get in? Or if you don't own a car, how about lengthwise grates that grab bike tires on both ends? Or let's remove the road entirely, and replace it with a park. (Everybody likes another park, right?)
If you were to oppose this, do you think it would be fair to dismiss your views as "textbook NIMBY" ?
(Yes, I know, some of my examples were more extreme than most of the Nueces proposals. Does the extremeness of the proposal affect whether people are "textbook NIMBY" when they oppose it or not?)
NIMBY is usually about adding something few people like, but it has to go *somewhere*. This isn't such a thing -- this is about removing/altering existing infrastructure to add some new, different infrastructure. And people were already relying on the existing infrastructure, and feel that the new infrastructure will be inferior to the existing infrastructure for their needs. I'm sure most these people would love to have a bicycle blvd a block over (their `back yard') from their business -- then that would actually drive *more* automobile traffic right in front of their business! (At least one of your studies pointed out that residential areas preferred lighter traffic -- but this isn't a residential area!)
And as for your studies, I've skimmed over them, but haven't read them carefully. But I have seen that they're all written by people with a pro-bike agenda, and any agenda tends to make people select the data that supports their view and dismiss other data.
And the SF report was over a "highly urbanized" environment -- which Nueces isn't. You don't have to park several blocks away and walk -- you usually park right at or in front of your destination. Under the most likely plans, people could still do this, but it would take longer to drive to your destination, which the people having to take longer aren't likely to enjoy. If it was "highly urbanized", people would have already had to walk long distances, and things wouldn't really change except that the walk might be more pleasant.
And really, who turned reason off? If somebody doesn't believe that this benefits them, and believes that it hurts them, why should they stop opposing it? It's reasonable for business owners to oppose this plan if they feel that it hurts them more than it benefits them (and so far, the "but it benefits you!" arguments I've seen have been rather weak.)
This is probably why I'm not a politician. I want the plan to happen, but I'm arguing for the other side because I think they're being demonized unreasonably. (Stop calling it NIMBY, stop accusing them of not being reasonable, and then I stop thinking they're being demonized.)
I’m pleased to hear the Bike/Ped staff publicly reaffirm that Nueces Street is still very much on the table. It would give me more confidence if I heard that from the Assistant City Manager level.
Elliott from Austin On Two Wheels
haha if that remains your one and only twit er "tweet" that would be rad.
I thought that the twatter fad was already over.
The last meeting was standing room only, this one should be very interesting. I hope to see more cyclists turn out in support of this thing.