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Bike Plan: Still on Hold

On May 26, after working for some time to form a resolution recommending adoption of a bike plan by Ithaca Common Council, the City Planning Board instead voted to table the resolution at least until their next meeting, on June 16. Many bike-plan supporters were present. No one present spoke or appeared to have come to oppose the plan, although the purpose, time, and place of the event was noted in a cautiously supportive Ithaca Journal editorial several days earlier.

 Prior to the meeting, city staff members had prepared a resolution to adopt the bike plan as directed, as had Planning Board members David Kay and Steve Ehrhardt. Ehrhardt withdrew his proposal, moved the staff-written proposal, and used his prerogative to consider Kay’s amendments unfriendly.

 The surprise move to table came at the instigation of mayor Alan Cohen, who was not at the previous Planning Board meeting, a week earlier. That meeting had reached consensus to recommend plan adoption and made a list of items for staff writers to include in a resolution that could then be voted on at the May 26 meeting.

 The vote to table was supported by Ithaca Planning Board chairman Clarence Reed, BPW vice-chairman and liaison Steve Ehrhardt, and Scott Whitham. Ellen McCollister seemed to have difficulty deciding how to vote, but I think she must have been the fourth vote to table. David Kay and Paulette Manos voted not to table but to finish writing the resolution during the meeting. Eldred Harris, whom we have only seen at the board’s public-information meeting, was again absent.

 Tabling the resolution throws the bike plan off schedule. Even if there is a vote to adopt some resolution at the Planning Board’s June 16 meeting, the next step is to go before the Planning Committee of Common Council, which meets the next day, on June 17. In any event there is probably not enough time to find a place on the Planning Committee’s June 17 agenda. Delays also allow already scheduled projects to proceed without inclusion of bike facilities, such as the NYS Department of Transportation’s plans to repave Route 13.

 Cohen’s reasons for objecting were not clear to me. He said the plan does not reflect the objections he has heard from constituents. Yet the Planning Board had indicated that all comments up to and even since the Planning Board’s public-input meeting, which was designed to hear objections, were to be appended to the plan.

 Cohen said he faced numerous complaints during Octopus reconstruction about decisions and plans for which he was not responsible, and that he didn’t look forward to more complaints resulting from the bike plan. Yet the bike plan’s first phase would simply allow restriping of existing pavement and in some residential areas consolidate parking into existing space. Nowhere does the plan require changes to motor traffic patterns or disruption of business or other activities.

 The mayor noted that there is no hurry to implement the bike plan, or spend its money, and said there are many other more pressing issues and spending priorities. Apparently, city leaders are not worried about losing the $80,000 of federal money that the state has said the city may use, although no one could say how long the money would remain available.

 Although it is possible that the Planning Board will pass a resolution next month recommending adoption of the bike plan, we were left with no reassurance by the mayor, the Common Council liaison, or the BPW liaison that they will facilitate implementation of the bike plan soon.

 —Dave Nutter

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In response to the mayor’s request, Kay is to write up a summary of comments to append to the bike plan, which Ehrhardt is to edit so that they both are satisfied. Kay likened this process to a Final Environmental Impact Statement, a degree of scrutiny that most plans do not undergo.

 Sandy Wold obtained a copy of the staff draft before the meeting, and at her request during the discussion she was given a copy of Kay’s resolution, but we did not see Ehrhardt’s resolution although he appeared to be proposing amendments from it. With his text unavailable, it was difficult to catch the subtle wording changes he was proposing, but we did note that he removed bike travel corridors from the list of items to be sought when hashing out any implementation problems.

Cohen and Ehrhardt again made reference to the SW plan suggesting that the processes for the two unrelated plans should be the same, intimating that the bike plan somehow is being passed without enough scrutiny or input, while the SW plan is being delayed. This is confusing since, unlike the southwest plan, the bike planning process has since 1994 consisted of a professional bike planning consultant taking public input at a series of well publicized meetings on behalf of a client committee appointed by Cohen and well represented by neighborhood organizations and critics of the previous draft plan. Ehrhardt was a member of this client committee which approved the plan.

 The purpose of the above process was to arrive at a useful and workable route system based on extensive public input and informed professional judgment so that the various boards, committees and councils of City government could proceed with confidence. Everyone acknowledges that the plan’s routes are subject to some change, although the as-yet-undecided process of deciding on those changes is crucial. Still Cohen, Reed, Manos and Ehrhardt each said at the meeting, "the only problem with the plan is the routes". It is unclear why officials who knew they would have to deal with the bike plan implementation did not participate to a greater extent earlier in the planning process, but instead are claiming afterward that there is a problem with the routes. None of them had submitted comments last I checked.

 A witness to the May 26 meeting remarked, "So, it sounds like they are in favor of the plan as long as it doesn’t really happen." To be fair, the bike plan is also replete with worthy recommendations regarding education, enforcement, and government policies. However the existing money is for improving the streets, where bicycle riders and drivers feel the squeeze because current street designs assume bikes do not exist. And bike users have a reasonable expectation of implementation now that the plan has been completed. Yet Ehrhardt expressed consternation that the bicycling public will expect change on the streets outlined in the bike plan.