City taxpayers will be asked to foot an estimated $43.6 million-$51.8 million Bicycle Master Plan (BMP) bill for projects spanning over 20 years if the City Council votes at its February 23 meeting to adopt this plan. What the public has not be told until very late in the process is that the removal of 100 public parking spaces along five blocks of Micheltorena is at stake here and part of the costly price tag for business owners and residents.
The BMP is the work product of a Los Angeles consulting firm, Melendrez, Fehr, and Peers, and the sole basis for decisions made up to date. City funds amounting to $200,000 were used to hire outside consultants with City Council’s blessings for a project that failed to yield any statistical significantly meaningful or useful data to guide decisions. Sadly, there were only 1,440 respondents to the web-based survey. This represents only 1.6 percent of the 86,681 who live in Santa Barbara. Where is the missing 98.4 percent in this survey? The BMP has been misrepresented as being built upon solid data and so reflecting the community’s wishes. There is no data.
We have been led to believe by city staff that safety is the primary reason for its plan to remove Micheltorena’s public parking. However, nowhere in BMP’s interactive map survey is Micheltorena ever identified as a safety hazard for cyclists. Data shows that only eight bicycle accidents over a 10-year period, or less that one accident a year, have occurred. Yet again, data does not support any decision to remove Micheltorena parking.