After reviewing Bike East Bay’s proposal for a 2-way cycle track with physical protection on Patrick Avenue and ruling it out, mainly due to lack of familiarity with the concept, Hayward staff are sticking to their buffered bike lane design. A buffered bike lane design places bikes amongst parking cars, loading/unloading cars and high speed traffic and leaves too much opportunity for traffic to easily use the bike lane whenever they choose.
Painted bike lanes on busy streets are dangerous, and are certainly no place for elementary school children to safely get to school. Traffic speeds on Patrick Avenue average 38 mph. A child will be lucky to survive a collision at that speed. Everywhere around the East Bay where buffered bikes are striped next to on-street parking we see cars use the wider bike lanes as a 2nd travel lane, a passing lane, to drop off and pick up, to load and unload, as well as pull into and out of on-street parking. On busy streets, buffered bike lanes do not work.
Email Hayward City Council at: List-Mayor-Council@hayward-ca.gov and let them know you support “protected bike lanes on Patrick Avenue.” Please cc Bike East Bay’s Advocacy Director at advocacy@bikeeastbay.org. Or Zoom in tonight at 7:00pm (October 12). Zoom link here.
Talking points:
- Protected bike lanes are the safest option
- Parents with kids walking and bicycling to school asked for the safest option
- Parking concerns can be addressed with protected bike lanes, as they have elsewhere in other cities