Pasadena Releases New Bicycle Master Plan Recommendations
It’s been a long road since PasCSC founders attended the Municipal Services Committee in July 2013 to respectfully ask City leaders and staff to strengthen the City’s draft Bicycle Master Plan by including a network of protected and buffered bicycle lanes. Over that period of time, City staff convened a Bicycle Advisory Committee, commissioned a Protected Bikeway Feasibility Study by KOA Corporation, convened a series of public meetings, and even had a consultant develop a “Level of Traffic Stress Map on Existing and Proposed On-Street Bike Routes.”
The result: the below mapped and listed “priority recommendations” to add to the existing draft bicycle master plan. In red are Class I on-street protected bikeways, purple Class II on-street buffered bikeways, and gold Class III low-traffic “greenways.” Highlights include:
Two-way, Class I Protected Bikeway on Union Ave (Hill to Arroyo Parkway)
Class II Buffered Bicycle Lane on Colorado Blvd. Holliston to Madre
Class II Buffered Bicycle Lane on Orange Grove (Columbia to Sierra Madre Villa)
Class II Buffered Bicycle Lane
Staff’s recommendations were made public and presented to the City’s Transportation Advisory Commission on October 23rd. In general, the Transportation Commissioners were very supportive of ongoing efforts to improve bicycle access and safety in the City, including staff’s proposed priority strategies. The Commissioners did, however, have 3 specific asks of staff:
Include Class II lanes on Raymond to connect Filmore, Del Mar, and Memorial Park Gold Line stations.
Prioritize the development of a network of comfortable/quiet streets as a relatively low-cost, big impact improvement for bicycle and pedestrian mobility in the short-term.
Brand the network of these calm, pedestrian and bike-friendly streets under one name (e.g., Pasadena greenways).
Staff plans to solicit further public input on the updated recommendations, and then return with a fully updated Bicycle Master Plan for formal consideration by the Committee and City Council in Spring 2015.
