City Council discusses bicycle, walking paths
New state laws encouraging more nonmotorized travel are making their way into Spokane Valley’s comprehensive land-use plan. So far, the City Council has included accommodations for pedestrians in the plan’s policies but stopped short of requiring sidewalks along all new streets in the city.
“Folks aren’t using the sidewalks,” Councilman Mike DeVleming said last week. He cited many of the wide, low-traffic streets in the Valley where people are content to walk on the pavement as he and other council members argued that sidewalks might not be the best option for all places.
Last week’s council meeting continued a meticulous discussion of the plan’s transportation chapter, specifically the goals and policies at the end of it.
By consensus, the mandatory-sidewalk policy was changed to require “pedestrian friendly facilities,” which could also include bike paths or walking paths inside housing developments that do not run along the street.
Before agreeing on a broader pathway policy, Councilman Gary Schimmels brought up concerns that sidewalks in the Valley might become inconsistent between streets and that paths along the road might not keep cars away from pedestrians.
“It’s a safety issue more than anything else,” he said.
Councilman Mike Flanigan said that 20 years from now – the time the Comprehensive Plan is supposed to encompass – the city might need sidewalks in areas now considered sparsely traveled.
Other accommodations for nonmotorized travel, such as required bike parking at major destinations, have been changed or de-emphasized in the document since it was written by the city’s planning staff and submitted to the Planning Commission earlier this year.
The mindset that people will rely significantly less on cars in coming decades, which is reflected in many of the document’s policies, does not sit well with Councilman Rich Munson.
“I want to make sure that we have bicycle paths, but I don’t want to develop a Comprehensive Plan that requires the building of an extensive bicycle network that is used by a few people a few months of the year,” he said at an Oct. 25 council meeting.
He likened fears of impending oil depletion and big changes in how people travel to the futuristic predictions of novels from the 1950s that never came true.
At last week’s meeting, the language in a goal for a connected bicycle and pedestrian network in the region was changed from “providing a connected system of pedestrian and bicycle ways … ” to “encourage a connected system of pedestrian and bicycle ways … ” after Munson and others wondered aloud who would pay for it.
The council’s first discussions on the Comprehensive Plan in October were marked by some confusion over which sections of the plan the council could even change or remove.
One of the Legislature’s 2005 amendments to the Growth Management Act requires cities to consider urban planning that promotes physical activity and also requires that a bicycle and pedestrian component be added to their comprehensive plans.
According to a document from the Washington Department of Community Trade and Economic Development explaining the new rules, 30 percent of Americans over 20 years old are obese and 16 percent of Americans between 6 and 19 are considered overweight. People who report having access to sidewalks are 28 percent more likely to be physically active, and the thinking is that more nonmotorized travel options will improve public health, the document states.
Another law passed this year will allow Washington cities to require developers to include upgrades for bike and foot traffic to accommodate new growth.”I believe that there isn’t a city street out there that shouldn’t have a sidewalk,” said Alvin Fisher, a sheriff’s volunteer who has spent four years organizing bicycle safety programs.
Cyclists should learn how to ride safely in the street, Fisher said, but he’d like to see bike paths separated from both the road and sidewalk foot traffic.
“If they are just going to paint a white line (on the street), that really doesn’t tell the motorist what’s going on,” Fisher said.
He points to the bike lanes on the Sprague-Appleway couplet. White lines partition bike lanes from car traffic, but Fisher said few drivers even notice the lines.
The council will hear public comment on the transportation chapter at a Nov. 14 public hearing. Council members hope to complete the Comprehensive Plan by March, pushing the deadline back from their previous goal of wrapping up discussion by year’s end.