Alexandria — To the Editor:
Ursula, I was wrong and you were right when you said the city doesn't listen. In my letter, ("Deferral Serves Public Safety," Gazette Packet, Dec. 19) I wrote to let you know of one case where the city listened. The Alexandria Traffic and Parking Board heard the safety concerns of residents on King Street at a public hearing Nov. 25. Based on what they knew and heard, they recommended the city defer action on the King Street Proposal for bike lanes, "in order to achieve greater compromise with the various interests of the community."
Residents asked what next. The "what next" was a Christmas surprise. On Friday afternoon, the week before Christmas, a letter was hand delivered to residents on King Street signed by Richard Baier, director of Transportation and Environmental Services for Alexandria. The four-page letter states "a delay of this decision to further study and discussion is not recommended." Basically the city chooses to ignore the board's recommendation and the safety concerns of residents most affected by this decision. Instead the director directs staff to remove contiguous parking and access to resident's homes in order to install bike lanes on King Street.
The letter implies that residents are asking for an exception to Alexandria's Complete Streets Policy. We are not. We are not because this policy does not require dedicated bike lanes, only safe transport within and through a community. Further, of the master plans, goals, and policy the letter referenced to support this decision, I've yet to find a requirement for "dedicated" bike lanes.
Requiring dedicated bike lanes is not realistic in some locations and the residents on King Street contend that installing dedicated bike lanes on four blocks of this section of King Street will not improve safety. The city's letter states that a crash analyses for this area for the last 5 years identified one crash involving a pedestrian, none involving a bicyclist, and 12 involving vehicles. There's not a lot of room for improvement, but there's a lot of room to make it worse. Besides implementing a confusing patchwork bike lane configuration, the city is allocating 30 percent of a 30-foot roadway (i.e. King Street) for bicycles when that roadway, a major thoroughfare to/from Old Town, handles 13,000 vechicles each day. The peak number of vehicles is over 1,000 per hour, the peak number of bicycles is 12 per hour. The decision set forth in the letter seems like a solution in search of a problem rather than a solution to a problem. There are actual, real roadway problems with King Street which this decision neither addresses nor solves.
Further, this decision intentionally does not address the safety concerns of the residents of this community. Separation of roadway safety and residents' needs are necessary for the decision to be made by Mr. Baier. The letter states, "As the design of this project pertains to the safety of roadway users, the process does not include a recommendation or approval for action by the Alexandria City Council." A wise decision by the city would have integrated these needs. My hope was that the city would listen and consider the safety concerns of those residents that will live with the impact of this decision each and every day. They did not listen.
The letter states Mr. Baier "walked, drove, and rode my own bike up and down King Street to make sure I experienced the roadway from the perspective of all street users." I would suggest Mr. Baier, or other city representatives, experience it from a resident's perspective as well.
Louise Welch, Alexandria