By John P. Anderson
North Park is an urban neighborhood in San Diego. It is often cited as the “hipster” area of town and is generally known for being one of
the more walkable areas in San Diego. North Park is home to the only 2 parklets in San Diego, the majority of the bike corrals in the city, and it is not uncommon to see people biking on the streets.
If there is anywhere in San Diego you would expect to find good bicycle infrastructure North Park would be high on the list, perhaps along with East Village, Downtown, Little Italy, or a beach community like Ocean Beach or Pacific Beach. The reality on the ground is far from good. The reality is a near absolute lack of any bicycle infrastructure.
Here’s a complete map of all the bike lanes in North Park, highlighted in red. The gray, white, orange, and red lines indicate all roadways. There are a total of 2 streets in North Park that have painted bike lanes. One of them is a portion of El Cajon Boulevard, with cars regularly exceeding 40 and 50 MPH. There are no protective measures for biking anywhere in North Park. There is no system or grid to bicycle – if you ride on a roadway with a lane you will be forced to connect to another roadway without any dedicated space for biking whatsoever.
San Diego, and particularly North Park, has very wide streets. There is plenty of room on many of the streets to add bike lanes with the minimal cost and effort of applying paint. Paint is not protection, but it is much better than no dedicated space at all. When conflict occurs due to lack of separated space, as on Adams Avenue recently, drivers can literally run over those biking without likelihood of prosecution.
If a place like North Park that is promoted as being a good place to bike or walk has so little accommodation for bikes what does that mean for other areas that are more explicitly car-first? If our Climate Action Plan rightly targets transportation as a focus area to create a better future, how do we increase biking by a factor of 18 as the plan seeks without facilities to support that growth? We will not get there without meaningful change on the ground.
A couple of bike lanes in a neighborhood of 50,000 people in the core of our city is not good enough. It’s barely even laughable as an attempt at being bike and environmentally friendly. It underlies how unserious we are about moving away from the private automobile as the overwhelming primary transport option. It is no surprise that so few people bike in San Diego when the reality on the ground is unless you are confident and strong enough to bike with zero accommodation on wide, high-speed streets you are out of luck.
Parents, myself included, fret about biking with their children or letting their kids bike to school. Would you put your child on a bike on University Avenue (where SANDAG just scrapped a plan to add a bike plan) or El Cajon Boulevard? Or even smaller streets like 32nd Street or Arnold Avenue? On a recent speed survey on Arnold “City Engineers determined 85% of the traffic was indeed exceeding our 25 mph speed limit by at least 10 mph – one vehicle was going 71 mph – and that test wasn’t even on a Friday or a weekend!” Quoted portion from North Park Nextdoor website.
Perhaps the good news is we can only improve from our current status. That is little comfort for those working and fighting to create a safer, healthier future for our neighborhoods and city. Real support for real improvement is needed from our elected officials and transportation authorities. Foremost we need leadership from SANDAG to pursue a responsible future path on both transportation and land use – not plans that ignore climate change, encourage sprawl, and commit billions and billions to more highways and scraps for biking, walking, and transport. Even the scraps committed to healthier transport are back-loaded and likely to be walked back when push comes to shove.
North Park – I dig you. But bicycle friendly you are not.
Granada Avenue – 54 feet wide but not an inch for bicycles or crosswalks. Good luck to those that don’t want to drive.
John P. Anderson
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Bikes and transportation, are just another icon defining the conflict between San Diego oligarchs and the rest of us. Add the destruction of the waterfront and East Village, the destruction of the Barrio Logan community plan the sabotage of the living wage movement, the devolution of Balboa Park, and… and the picture becomes obvious. San Diego is a GOP lab experiment. New methods of ignoring citizens are being developed by men in blue suits who smile a lot.
Great article John. Since moving to Washington DC I’ve experienced some really amazing bike infrastructure like protected bikeways on main thoroughfares and a truly integrated bike share system. With San Diego’s weather and natural beauty, the only excuse for lagging so far behind a swampy, humid place with extremely hot summers and cold snowy winters is a severe lack of political will. This has been demonstrated time and time again from the scaled-back Rapid Bus project to the NIMBY appeasing density restrictions along Morena Blvd’s future trolley route to the complete castration of the Uptown Bike Corridor Project. I really love San Diego and miss it dearly. Hopefully when I return, some new leadership will have arisen to facilitate real, much-needed change.
Thanks for the article, John. I am not normally a fearful person and have biked in many types bicycle infrastructure (or lack thereof). But I find San Diego the most difficult place to bike. The aggressive drivers don’t just seem aloof but flagrantly anti-bike.
I agree that the political will is desperately lacking at the higher levels, but I’m optimistic our leaders on the ground are capable and motivated. I hope I can have a part in what see as an impending change; if we all take part in changing views on bicycling in SD I think we can have a world-class bicycling city.
The topography of San Diego makes biking any distance impossible for many people. I would much rather see my tax dollars spent on fixing the potholes and sidewalks.
Yes, the mesas and canyons that make San Diego so unique also make distance biking difficult for all but the most aggressive cyclists. But, that’s no reason to give up.
Even promoting cycling intra-neighborhood would still help remove auto traffic from streets. IOW, it’s not an either-or problem; create cycle safe roadways AND pave the damn potholes, too!
When San Diego was one-tenth the size it is today they suspended pedestrian bridges across the canyons so people could walk their neighborhoods. Some still exist today. Balboa Park and Cabrillo Bridge could be funded, too. Now what? Bud Kearns pool is shut down for more than six months because the City can’t find a way to improve its drainage, and the City’s visionary leaders can’t envision bike paths.
The bums will be thrown out of office soon enough, but they’re leaving behind a mess.
There’s always some lazy person who never learned to ride a bike that has to give their anti-bike opinion.
This is one of the main reasons why the University Avenue Mobility Project (UAMP) must be fixed before it’s too late. See http://www.northpark.us/uamp/ for more on this.
The UAMP is a disastrous plan with no dedicated bike lanes, yet it has already been approved by the City Council. Contact your representatives and community groups now to get dedicated bike lanes restored and to prevent turning University Ave. into a barren, ugly bus corridor.
David,
Thanks for your comment and interest in this issue. I’ve been following your commentary regarding the UAMP online and heard the segment on AM 760 this week. One question I have is some of your criticisms like this comment seem to indicate an interest in creating a better place for bicycling. In others you seem to denigrate biking since a very low % of people use bikes to commute. I just wanted to clarify if you are in favor of bike lanes and other infrastructure or if perhaps you are using the bike lanes on the UAMP as a wedge issue.
Not trying to instigate, just curious since it seems conflicting a bit.
Hi John, I am absolutely an advocate of dedicated bike lanes, and believe the city is decades out of touch with reality in their insistence to install bus-only lanes to the complete neglect of appropriately supporting all other transport modes.
http://www.northpark.us/uamp/ goes into great detail on why pedestrian and bike safety and comfort without any question trumps buses and cars.
Bus-only lanes, the removal of all street parking and no bike lanes is a thoroughly idiotic approach for University Avenue – yet the UAMP has *already been approved* by the City Council and is moving forward. It can now only be stopped if enough residents take action.
All are strongly encouraged to review the site I linked to understand what is going on here, what the better alternative is, and what we need to do to fix it.
In Hillcrest I wish the powers that be would tear down the delapitated Pernacamo’s building and turn it into a multi level parking structure instead of a ’boutique” hotel that is being planned. Put in actual bike lanes along University but allow some spots for people with less mobility. The muli level structure would absorb the rest. Biking would be safer, parking will be available for thise not on bikes, and business es would not have to worry about less trafic. Win win. I’m sure North Park can do something similer.
You may be right about the number of “bike lanes”, but I think you’re wrong about it being “bike friendly”. 90% of North Park is residential so it’s very easy to bike around everywhere without any danger dangers or being worried and it easily supports everything. The one place that REALLY needs a bike lane improvement is Texas street, as it’s one of the best streets to bike when biking to somewhere outside North Park (Fairmont/University are the others). Other than that it’s definitely not a major issue. North Park had huge sewer and water problems that need to be addressed before bike lanes.
Cory – thanks for the thoughts and I’m glad you feel safe biking in North Park. There certainly seem to be more people biking each day, but it appears to me to be mostly younger adults (20-40). I believe this indicates that for strong or more confident people biking in North Park may be ok but I would guess it’s intimidating for others. Hopefully we can design streets that are comfortable for all to bike (and walk) on.
Good article, glad you wrote this. I would argue that North Park and South Park where I live, have become unwalkable due to aggressive or distracted drivers. I can’t be the only person who notices that drivers in North Park blow Stop Signs, especially Thorn and 32nd Street where a young woman on her Smart Phone barreled into the intersection while I was crossing the street after leaving Santos Coffee Shop.
I too have a bike, I want to start riding to work but I just don’t feel safe in North Park doing so.
Anyhow, let’s hope for change – how do make the area more safe for walkers, runners, cyclists?
Ellen,
Thanks for the comment. I’ve spoken to many people in the same boat as you – interested in biking in our community but afraid of current road conditions or have had bad incidents with cars that put the bike back in the garage.
Specific measures I would endorse to create safer streets would be: 20 MPH maximum speed limit by default in all residential communities (the “20 is plenty” campaign in the UK has done amazing work on this topic), enforcement of existing laws for speeding and other traffic violations, and probably biggest a cultural attitude shift that puts people first – not the speed of cars. Small actions like stopping for pedestrians, reducing speed a bit, and paying attention while driving make a real difference.