Davis prioritizes active transportation, except when it doesn’t…

It’s time to TRASH almost everything between First St & Cowell/Research Park Drive

Focus of post: Consent Calendar item, this evening in City Council:
“Authorize the City Manager to sign the California Transportation Commission ATP Cycle 8 Signature Page for Richards I-80 Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Grant Application and if awarded authorize CityManager to commit agency resources and funds to grant”

First things first: On April 13, Lincoln Sabini was killed in the Greater Davis Mobility Ecosystem ¹. Please pause for a moment. Release. Sign Petition.

Hot on the heals of the ethically-repugnant fake patriotism of the City Council – okay, Council member Vaitla made a just above symbolic opposition vote – final approval for July 4th Fireworks via Consent – also in the midst of the forming trials of the Esparto Fireworks Murderers including the impossibility of County Supervisor deniability/ignorance over a decade – now we have the Council using the never-meant-to-be blunt instrument of the Consent Calendar to remove active transportation infrastructure from a long term project designed to herd rabid driving kittens in the Richards-80 “Uptight Diamond Project”. 

Also a decade in the corrupt birth canal of Caltrans, in the buns of a stinky Double-Double, the ghost of a Murder Burger, the bike lane clogging coffee that only incestuous Dutch siblings would ever create… we have a mostly mysteriously delayed, budget over-ripened waste of concrete and bitumen bits getting a lazy bifurcation… a separating of the funding mechanism for its active transportation elements.

By increasing capacity between I-80 and Olive Drive and removing the long-flowing ramps for the westbound freeway, the Richards-80 Project will indeed at least temporarily remove some conflicts or stress from the ill leeches – freeway-to-local connections – that suck the metal fecundity units (mostly “cars”²) from the Eisenhower into the Bike Friendly Paradise of the Greatest Nation on Earth!  But it will also just push the same or more metal encased bags of flesh (humans, beneficial bacteria and sometimes companion animals)into the Downtown, where the permanently soiled diaper of mostly fare free parking won’t actual expand like the belt-loosening induction of demand of that ex-President-named maximalist infrastructure perpetual gift – and that famous quote about the “military industrial complex” applies to cars… it’s motonormativity and it’s a cancer (the I-80 widening).

The City needs to instead use staff capacity to apply for something else and very related better like vast improvements to the rough and/or ableist existing under crossing to South Davis – perhaps purchase the land along the Dry Putah Creek just east of the I-80 under crossing so that the multi-use path (MUP) can finally go that way, repave the west end of Research Park Drive – and perhaps also use the $$$ for the in-progress Cowell protected bike lane (which is very flawed due to this thing called motor vehicle headlights glare – it’s also ableist, yep yep, but we can solve this!)

YES, just as the Uptight Diamond will revert to coal not so long after completion, the designed and approved MUP is a WASTE of time: It has no safe connectivity at the Olive end, is problematically serpentine and has an absolute danger point – where the stairs shortcut to the top meets the Downtown-direction bike lane on a 4%-ish slope after a 90 degree turn.

It’s true that – Richards-80 this train wrecking train wreck of a project was left to staff and current council to deal with, BUT:

100 times worse is the WHOLE ENTIRE JUNCTION BETWEEN FIRST ST AND COWELL/RESEARCH PARK DRIVE INCLUSIVE OF THE NEW AND OLD FREEWAY EGRESSES  – IT IS SIMPLY AN EXISTENTIAL MESS THAT CAN NEVER BE SORTED OUT IN A JOYOUS, SAFE AND SUSTAINABLE WAY. 

TAKE THIS OUT OF CONSENT, THROW IT INTO THE RECYCLING – ALONG WITH THE CLAIMED 88% OF EVERYTHING ELSE IN TOWN –  and make plans to reach out to the next hopefully kinder Federal administration and convince them that a HUGE investment is needed to first very nearly destroy everything – oh yeah, sorta sad that millions is being spent now to something something symbolic related to the shape of a freeway like a belt but also the traffic induction belt of perpetual loosening and populist vote gathering!

Again, again, and again… City Council, it’s really not your fault, it’s objectively awful. Just please admit it, force Caltrans to agree…. and move on to something different and better.

Thank you!!

Just for fun: For what’s been spent so far on the war in Iran, every single student, YES, every single student, K-12, in the USA could have a $1000 bicycle. 

AND HAVE SOME FUN AND DANCE

1. This is the actual transportation infrastructure and systems of the city, campus, peripheral areas and region. ↩︎
2. A motor vehicle is a general technical term for a tool for mobility conveyance; “car” is a function of this tool and others that can perform the same thing in a partial or often superior and e.g. more efficient fashion… normal bicycles for single passenger trips (in combination with public transport), cargo bikes, etc.
   ↩︎