A Long Way Yet To Go

before Santa Cruz is bike-friendly

D. A. Clarke

February 2001
This is the longer unpublished version.

In January, issues of "bike justice" came to the fore in Santa Cruz, CA. The coincidence of two events briefly focussed the attention of city authorities on cyclists' issues and concerns.

The second event was unfortunately typical in the USA. On the afternoon of January 20th, during a small anti-Bush demonstration downtown, an impatient motorist driving a light pickup truck had a "traffic tantrum". After honking and shouting, he backed his truck a foot or two, punched the throttle, and bulled through a crosswalk.

According to witnesses including a reporter from the local newspaper (Metro) the driver, Joe Gutierrez, struck and knocked down a cyclist (Shawn Duncan, UCSC employee) and then attempted to drive away. Outraged bystanders prevented his departure, surrounding (even climbing on) the truck with cries of "citizen's arrest!" Mr. Duncan was shaken but unharmed; his bike, less fortunate, had been run over.

When police finally arrived they declined to interview several eyewitnesses, made only a cursory examination of the scene, and let the driver go without a citation. Mr Duncan is now challenging the police report, which apparently blames the cyclist.

This might be merely a small-town dispute over right of way, if it weren't for a documented national pattern of police bias in "traffic accident" reports when a cyclist (or a pedestrian) is struck by an automobile. Unless the driver is drunk at the time, it's common for police to show excessive lenience to the motorist, and even to blame the cyclist or pedestrian -- even if the motorist was in violation of vehicle code. For Mr. Duncan the irony of the situation is made more painful by his having himself recently received a $300 ticket from the same police department -- for the serious crime of riding on the sidewalk, with no collision involved.

One can understand Mr Duncan's feelings. If he was ticketed several hundred dollars for a vehicle code infraction that harmed no one, why was an aggressive driver allowed to drive away uncited after wrecking a bike and knocking its rider to the pavement?

The first event was much less spectacular. It might have passed almost unnoticed, if not for that second event which underscored its significance.

On Friday the 19th of January -- the day before Mr. Duncan very nearly became a hit-n-run casualty -- the City bicycle subcommittee was informed that the SCPD had drafted a half-million-dollar grant proposal for submission to the California OTS (Office of Traffic Safety), for bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement. The City Council would vote on approval of the proposal on the following Tuesday afternoon. The bike subcommittee was asked by City staff to write a letter of support for the grant -- the actual text of which was, however, not made available to them for any review.

Other bike and pedestrian advocates had never even heard of this grant proposal; as Rick Hyman wrote in email to the sc-bikes mailing list, "The County bike committee was never consulted, let alone informed." The cycling community found out about it either by word of mouth from the city subcom, or via the mailing list. There was already some mild concern as of Friday night: what were the police up to? why was the grant process so secretive? Given that a fair amount of the grant concept dealt with night-time enforcement and funding for a motorcycle and a sworn officer, there was some question as to what this had to do with bike and pedestrian incidents -- which mostly happen during the day.

The secretive process, and the confusing partial proposal description that was given to the City subcom, caused a bit of skepticism among City Hall watchers. Were the cops using bike/ped safety as a stalking horse for a basic personnel increment? But after the very unsatisfactory handling of the Gutierrez incident on Saturday, a much stronger feeling of "bad cop, no donut" was aroused among local cyclists. Why should our police be awarded an extra half million dollars for enforcing the law unfairly?

Everyone who cycles in Santa Cruz daily knows that we have far too many drivers who speed, violate crosswalks, and even bully and deliberately harass cyclists. Many of these incidents are not life-threatening, only annoying or sometimes humiliating; but "assume they are all out to get you," remains a good motto for urban cyclists. We really cannot trust our drivers to drive properly. Many of them don't even know the vehicle code. [Yes, even a bike advocate has to admit that we have our share of cowboy cyclists too; but reckless biking is far less dangerous to the general public than reckless operation of two ton of steel. Drivers *should* be more careful, more conservative, and more law-abiding than any one else except bus and heavy lorry operators.]

So most of us have often recited the old cliche' "there's never a cop around when I need one," right after a near miss with a careless, inattentive, or hostile driver. "Road rage" incidents are by no means uncommon, and therefore SCPD's lenient treatment of Gutierrez (and the lack of sympathy or respect for the victim of his aggressive driving) angered many cyclists. It could have been any one of us who was knocked down, and who received a cursory and uncaring police response. Cynical comments were posted to the mailing list, like "SCPD declares open season on cyclists," or "What if someone had done the same thing with a gun; they would be sitting in jail."

The frustration and anger of the cycling community found expression at the City Council meeting Tuesday afternoon. When the SCPD grant came up on the agenda, despite moderate to heavy rainfall and a meeting time during working hours there were about ten local cyclists (including Shawn Duncan) signed up to speak. Various speakers had various takes on the situation, but in general, they seemed to want the grant proposal process suspended until two things happened: first, a complete investigation into the Gutierrez incident, and second, some consultation between the SCPD and local bike and pedestrian advocacy groups.

The City Council, however, had been put in a tough position. SCPD has come to them in November with a scary-looking report which claimed to prove that Santa Cruz rated poorly against comparable towns in California, when it came to bicycle and pedestrian "accidents." The statistics by which they "proved" this were somewhat weak (see URLs at end of article for some written commentary that was submitted to the City), but the analysis made the City look bad -- and therefore made the SCPD's simultaneous request to submit a major OTS proposal look good, as in "do something about this".

The OTS deadline for this proposal was January 31, according to the SCPD. SCPD went before the City Council with it on Jan 23rd, having done zero outreach to any community groups in the preceding two and a half months, but also with only a week to go before the submission deadline. The City wanted funding to continue and expand "traffic safety" education programs in schools, and for political reasons such money is presently unlikely to come from the RTC; so there were good reasons to "go for it" and get some funding.

The City Council, after discussion, said they could not delay the grant without missing the deadline. However, they admitted that there had been no public process, and the Mayor proposed that a written comment period be established which would last until the following Monday morning (the 29th) at which time he would hold a public meeting for the purpose of examining and revising the grant language in the light of public comment.

The Council approved this compromise, and thus a written comment period of about five days (three working days) was won. However, SCPD and the City did not get the actual grant text out to the public until Thursday, so more than a day of the comment period was lost to this delay. SCPD then said that written comment could not be submitted later than Friday at 5pm, which would have axed the weekend (a time when working people might be likely to sit down, read the grant, and think about it) -- but fortunately Councilmember Reilly took up the issue on the public's behalf and the City Clerk said she would continue to accept written comment right up until the morning of Monday.

Written comment focussed on the carcentric language of the grant proposal. Bike and pedestrian advocates asked why all the objectives in the proposal were directed towards "education and training" for cyclists and pedestrians, as if these road users were the problem. Repeatedly, comment called for more attention to be paid to dangerous driving, and to reducing bias in police handling of "accidents". You can read the comments at the URLs below.

At the Mayor's meeting on the following Monday, the 29th, oral feedback continued along the same themes: why did the police not ask cyclists and pedestrians what would make us safer? why were motorists invisible in the grant language, even though we know that dangerous driving is very common? By a sort of "gentleman's agreement", the Gutierrez case was not mentioned at this meeting, but it seemed to hover in the background.

Bike advocates also asked how a grant allegedly focussed on bike safety could completely ignore the issue of night lighting -- lack of bike running lights being strongly linked to after-hours collisions between motor vehicles and cyclists. As with many "safety" proposals that come from police and traffic authorities, there was a narrow focus on helmets alone, (i.e. on partial mitigation of the effects of collision) but insufficient emphasis on *preventing* collisions. Preventive measures like traffic calming, providing lights to cyclists, aggressive enforcement against dangerous drivers, etc. were not in the plan.

The police really did not seem to understand the problem. They kept referring to the language of the grant as "neutral," and saying that OTS requires such "neutral" language. The bike advocates present kept saying that a grant which implicitly blames all ped/bike traffic injuries on the peds and bikes themselves, and conceals the part played by drivers, is not neutral. Various proposals were made to encourage ped/bike reporting of dangerous driving, to crack down on crosswalk violations, and to increase input and participation by local advocates.

Finally the Mayor called "time" and said he would work to revise specific language in the grant before it went out.

The Mayor succeeded in rewording a couple of critical items in the grant. Motorists became partially visible in the enforcement agenda, and bike lights crept into the "safety" agenda. Language about consultation with community/advocacy groups was strengthened a bit, and the idea of a "bike hotline" (for cyclists to report dangerous driver incidents) was introduced.

These small tweaks to what remains a fundamentally "traffic authoritarian", carcentric proposal, actually represent a significant victory for the bike and ped advocates in our town. Although the SCPD grant was not transformed into a pro-bike, pro-pedestrian, progressive program, we can hope that a couple of messages were delivered.

One is that the bike community is aware, informed, and talking among itself. News travels fast, and SCPD cannot do sloppy police work (as in the Gutierrez case) and feel no heat for it. The Santa Cruz Metro paper ran a feature news page on the incident a couple of days after the City Council meeting; and letters to the editor in a subsequent edition continued to put pressure on the police to do a better job. This pressure seems to be having some effect; a revised police report is said to be in the works.

Another message is that being bike-friendly, or pedestrian-friendly, is not all about educating kids to be afraid of cars, or about ticketing jaywalkers (or cyclists on the sidewalk). If Santa Cruz is to live up to its self-image as a progressive city striving towards sustainability, the excessive privilege we accord to the automobile really will have to be challenged. Santa Cruz is not forward-looking when it comes to livable city planning, sustainable development, and so forth -- we are still widening roads, building massive parking facilities, and generally making desperate attempts to enable and perpetuate excessive automobile use -- rather than tackling our traffic problems at their root.

The unusual amount of public concern and feedback over a minor police grant will, I hope, have sent a message to our City Council and City staff that those who walk and bike in this town also count. At this point in history carcentric planning, pro-auto bias in police procedure, and condescending "safety" programs that blame pedestrians and cyclists for dangers created by an overpopulation of cars, are old-fashioned and unacceptable. If this message has been whispered into the ears of our local authorities, then it was worth expending all this effort just to change a few words in a grant proposal.


de@daclarke.org
De Clarke

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