So do you think this should be on the agenda for the next TWG meeting? Also, who are the litigants? That's not clear to me. I tried to explain to Greg that the TWG had already weighed in on the bike plan update, but I'm not sure that meant anything to him. Sue -- Dave Snyder <dave@livablecity.org> wrote: I've gone over this ad nauseum. The first bike plan was approved in 1997. For funding purposes, they must be renewed every five years. In 1999, we (the SFBC) secured a commitment to do a bike network plan so that we could get a set of projects in the pipeline for the purposes of more easily acquiring funding for the bike project. The city's planners took so long in developing that "bike network" plan that the "policy" plan was due for renewal by the time they began work on the bike network plan. The SFBC sought to preserve the funding for the bike network plan and asked that additional funding be found for the policy plan. The city's planners decided to do the policy plan "in house" to preserve the funding for consultants to do the bike network plan. We supported that. The process for developing the bike plan--both parts--was terrible. The author of the plan had no idea how to facilitate debate on key elements of the plan, nor how to develop consensus from among various interests with competing ideas. The policy document had one short poorly advertised terribly facilitated public meeting before the BAC. All other input into that document had to be submitted in writing, in an utterly unadvertised process. To date, there has not been even one public hearing on the network document. The grounds for the lawsuit against the bike plan are indeed the severance of the plan into two parts, but not the "policy" part and the "network" part. Rather, it was the division of the network discussion into two parts, one mentioned in a chapter in the policy document and the other developed separately. The litigants are arguing that the bike plan mentioned specific streets in the network chapter, but those are just a small part of the larger project that should be analyzed. You can't, under CEQA, divide a project into separate parts and analyze those parts separately. If the policy document had not mentioned specific streets (as I advised the planner who authored the document), then there would be no grounds for the lawsuit. "Plans" do not require CEQA approval, only "projects" do. Education, enforcement, encouragement, parking, etc., are exempt from CEQA review. The bike plan is a sham. Neither the SFBC leadership nor even the plan's author takes it seriously. For all intents and purposes, we don't have a bike plan in this city. We have some planners and some advocates who are working on whatever projects bubble to the top of their priority list without reference to a strategic vision. The plan's much-touted goal of 10% of all trips by 2010 is a complete joke. I would love for the SF Green Party to launch a campaign to write a proper bike plan, with open public debate, approved by the Board of Supervisors'-appointed bicycle advisory committee and eventually by the Board itself. Dave At 3:23 AM +0000 2/1/06, susan_e_vaughan@juno.com wrote:
Please review for our next TWG meeting.
Sue
---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Proposed item for Geen Party Transportation Committee
-Review of law-suit against the City for failure to follow CEQA requirements in regards to the City Bike plan
-Review of actions that led to this law-suit. Specifically the removal from the Bike Plan of specific Bike Plan chapters required by state law, such as Enforcement and Education
-Review of how these actions primarily advocated by a local non-profit corporation in order to promote its vision of a bike network only bike plan, led to the sectionalizing of the Bike plan into "network" and "policy" documents which eventually gave rise to one of the causes of actions in the law-suit, for "piece-mealing" or dividing the plan into sections so as to avoid complete environmental review
-discussion of public speech and participation in public plans and of ways to avoid this sort of mess in the future.
Basically how can we avoid this travesty of public process in the future.
This is not an attempt to lay blame as much as to recognize that mistakes were made and give thought to how to avoid theses mistakes in the future.
The people of the Green Party and the City at-Large deserve an open public planning process, that is not pre-restricted or co-opted by the desires of any one non-profit corporation.
Thanks,
Greg Hayes
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