Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, February 15, 2011,
Item 15
15 is to consider and take appropriate action on a proposal to create a joint task force to address bicycle safety on Travis County roads in the unincorporated areas of Travis County.
>> it's 10:30, right?
>> yes, it is.
>> then let's discuss 15.
>> I'm with tnr.
we're requesting from you today your approval for us to initiate an effort to educate bicyclists about some of the conditions of our road, particularly at the eastern part of the county.
I think all of them are pretty much aware of the typical hazards, potholes and traffic and narrow lanes and that sort of thing.
but there are some exceptional issues in the eastern part of the county with the shrinking and swelling soils that we have to deal with that deal with pretty severe cracking.
most importantly, longitudinal cracking in the road rather than transverse.
when a bicycle hits something like that it could create a serious problem.
so working with Commissioner Eckhardt's office, we'd like to put together a task force that will develop some educational material at the very least to inform people of the risk.
>> steve, thank you for the wonderful backup.
we have joe geselman out of restoriment to also participate in this discussion.
and we have representation from the city of Austin as well.
and you came over to help us out with this.
this came, as steve rightly said, this came about because we have a lot of people utilizing the unincorporated roads for bicycle recreationally as well as for transport.
this is a wonderful thing.
we want to elevate understanding of the road conditions and improve communication and information exchange so that we can optimize those experiences for everybody both recreational and transport.
so I'd like to hear from joe and anike if I might.
>> well, first a question.
I do bicycle.
and that's part of my interest here.
but I also fully understand the nature of the county road system, particularly in eastern Travis County where you have difficult soils to deal with.
but I guess my question is, is the charter of the task force merely educational or is it broad enough to make other recommendations to the court?
>> you raise a very good point.
steve, in your backup it appears that you have what amounts to a charge.
and perhaps we should refine that.
let me pull that up.
the proposed initiate charge, one, develop materials and methods to educate the public, cyclists and elected officials about the issues of cycling on lural roads, to develop a reporting system for the cycling community, to report bicycle obstacles and potential hazards to jurisdictions for quicker response and better manning and three, to build partnership between cyclists and elected officials and agency staff.
is that significantly broad or are you thinking of something other?
>> I'm aware that when the county es put on notice with this system you're going to promote you've got to do something about it.
that's the other side of the equation.
and I don't think from my experience you want to broaden this to the entire county road system, that every time you put on notice that county road has edge cracking that you're going to have to do something fairly quickly to remedy it.
so I think in part I'm looking at this as kind of a risk management issue for the task force.
it's a two-way street.
it's what the county provides for bicyclists, safe routes, but at the other end of it is basically a warning to consumer that is some of the county roads will not be safe for bicyclists no matter what.
and so I think that's where the community and the county have to come together, and that's kind of how I would view the task force is to look at both side of the equation.
because merely educational if you're just going to put of a warning like "swim at your own resting" on all county road that would be the only way to protect the county from injuries that bicyclists may have.
so I'm really looking for a way to hit a middle road where we cyclists can use county road systems, at least use some of them safely, with the knowledge that county is intent on keeping those routes safe, while understanding the risk otherwise.
>> so are you suggesting that there also be an item in the charge regarding risk management/expectation management?
>> yes, and maintenance.
maintenance standards of whatever roads are designated as bike routes perhaps.
I mean, I think the topic ought to be how can the county provide safe passage for bicyclists, and what does that mean?
>> anike?
>> thank you.
good morning, Commissioners, judge.
I'm bicycle program manager, Austin.
we had a similar task force put together in 2007 that ran through mid 2007 through 2008.
and it was very successful.
and the charge was very similar to what's written in your backup.
it was very broad.
it was very simple.
and it was former mayor will winn and lance armstrong got together and asked members of the community to be on the task force.
and the goal and the mission was simple.
it was to make Austin safer for bicyclists and increase bicycling.
and they left it to the task force to decide how to organize themselves, how they were going to do that.
and maybe in hindsight it shouldn't have been so organic but it worked well.
and so I think that defining it is fine.
what they ended up doing was breaking up into it was about 30 folks who were invited initially, ranging from medical professionals to engineers, from pro-bicyclists to very serious utilitarian cyclists.
it was a very big mix.
it ended up being a core group of about 20 who ended up really working for about a year.
they bloke term selves up into subcommittees to address three areas.
infrastructure engineering, promotion and education and safety and enforcement.
so they really just wanted to be -- they thought it was a very unique opportunity to have a voice.
they had the attention of elected officials.
they had the attention of the administrators to really give their opinion as professionals and as users of the roadway on what could be done, should be done.
and as mr. Geselman pointed out, they had various understanding of the administration challenges of things that they would identify or processes that they would put in place and how that would affect budgets, how that would affect all kinds of issues that you brought up.
but it was managed very well.
and really what we ended up having was a very comprehensive report that we used at the city to prioritize our resources for road maintenance related to cycling to projects -- everything from project prioritization to project initiation, to -- it was very, very helpful.
and the task force members themselves did a lot of work on inventorying -- doing inventory on the roads that was very helpful as far as rank for not suitable for beginner-type rider or that type of thing which then translated into data for our Austin bicycle map which is really helpful.
and we also have an initiative right now sponsored by council member riley to create a regional bike map which will include your county roads.
so this is actually very timely in order to get very sophisticated feedback on your road system and what roads should be -- can be I hate to say promoted but designated as better than others.
and then the data given back -- you have a pavement management system and you know where your longitudinal cracks are and that type of thing.
but this information will give you more feedback when you're trying to decide how many lane miles you can fill coat, how many cracks you can fill.
you can then balance the cycling needs as well.
it's just one more variable that you can consider.
and so I think that it sounds very similar to what we did at the city.
and it was very helpful.
as far as the time commitment from staff, it was -- the public works department was a liaison to the subcommittee.
so they designated a chair and they organized themselves.
we helped them with that.
so it was a little -- I'm not going to say it wasn't a time commitment.
there need to be somebody who's designated.
and when they need a technical expertise at certain subcommittee meetings -- and they were all public meetings which was great.
we found there was an enormous community response.
I imagine you might find the same.
of people who just a latent demand of people who wanted to get involved and lend their expertise and lend information.
and so we were called upon -- and I had to call upon folks from different departments sometimes -- they delved into planning documents.
they were all over the place.
so it can be a little bit of a time commitment but it wasn't huge and it was definitely workable for all the staff involved to fit into their schedules.
>> I think moving forward from this, it would probably be good to carry this item, to reset this item for maybe three weeks from now to give county staff the opportunity to learn from city staff of the experiences that you all had, come back with a refind charge and a timeline with what we expect to be the deliverable on it.
and joe, would you be willing to be the charter member of the task force?
>> for the --
>> I'll go so far as to try to get it off the ground and then let the court decide what involvement I should have from that point forward.
>> all right.
fair enough.
>>
>> [inaudible]
>> my question to the city is this: and I think joe hit it off right off the top as far as the topography for the terrain in eastern Travis County not really being conducive to a lot of, well, agreeable pavement conditions because of the movement of the soil.
it produces a lot of cracks in our roads in eastern Travis County because of the type of soil we have.
my concern to the city is this: do you have any indication of how much that it costs?
you mention seal coat and try to fills a many cracks as you possibly could in this process.
I'm just saying within the corporate limits of the city.
I'm really looking at eastern Travis County.
springdale road for a for example and other roads that really take a beating as far as maintenance is concerned.
I mean, do you have any indication of how much the city ended up having to spend to make it safer for bicycles?
and I'm strictly speaking of the eastern part of the county because that's where the most -- appear to be where most of the damage takes place as far as having to maintain the roads.
do you have any idea what that possibly cost city?
>> I could say positively that we didn't change our processes in any way in response to the information that was given to us by the task force.
>> all right.
>> it was more we still had our budgeted amount of lane miles we were going to crack seal, seal coat, all of that.
the only thing that changed a little bit was the prioritization.
we sat down with the street and bridge management, division management, and talked about where are you -- and we've been doing more proactive planning with them, anyway.
because when a street is resurfaced it's a perfect opportunity to make the lane a little wider, add a shoulder, do something that can make it better for all users.
a shoulder helps motor vehicles as well to have a safe place if you have a flat tire, that type of thing.
so we've been more proactive over the years in coordinating with them.
because if you just go by a street pavement maintenance schedule, maybe a middle portion of a road is in worse condition than the outer portion.
but really the cyclists are using the whole corridor.
and so to just crack seal the middle part isn't really making the corridor safer.
it's achieving one goal but it could achieve two if you switched out some other roads.
and so it helped us prioritize better.
it didn't cost us anything, it just helped us rethink -- move the furniture around instead of getting new furniture basically.
helped us rethink our maintenance with the perspective of bicycle safety and bicycle corridor.
so it was very productive.
we knew going in we didn't have additional budget.
and we didn't know what the -- what would the outcome of the process would be.
but it ended up not being additional budget.
>> okay.
so just rearranged the maintenance aspect as far as prioritizing.
>> yes, sir.
>> in that aspect.
>> yes.
>> okay.
I just wanted to lay that out a little bit.
because I do know we have some serious challenges.
every year we end up having to see the damage of the road, build an assessment of our road.
we actually grade them and see those that maybe need reconstruction.
and whatever the road may need at that time.
so I'm just kind of concerned about the overall cost of making sure that if we do have bicycle safety concerns what would it actually cost us to do that with limited resources as they are.
so that's a big concern of mine is how do we deal with that.
and I guess that's something that t.n.r.
and all these other folks can probably bring us back in that regard.
so I'm just concerned.
>> thank you again, joe, for sharing your wisdom and experience with this project.
when t.n.
is looking at this, I would request that you also look at western Travis County from a different set of criteria by and large.
eastern side you have the soil, the longitudinal cracks.
the western side we've got hundreds of miles of narrow, windy, hilly roads.
with very limited options for bicyclists on many of them.
and limited resources to imalevel of optimum safety.
so I think that if we could consider which road in western Travis County that feature is good for because we're seeing increasing cyclists out in western Travis County.
and the hazards are there but they're of a different nature by and large for what the eastern side is.
>> we have to get a copy of the charge that the city used plus the report or recommendations from the task force?
>> I can make that available to all of you.
I can make a copy available.
and what's adopted into our bicycle plan as well.
>> see if county staff can make it available to members of the court.
I'd like to see that as soon as possible.
we'll have this back on the agenda in three weeks.
>> does that work?
>> so did you have a lot of officials and public employees?
or did you have more residents?
>> it was more residents and stake holders, yeah.
there was no public officials or city staff on the official task force.
it was all city of Austin residents.
>> I don't know that I'd be bold enough to exclude all officials, but let's promote resident participation is what I'm hearing.
three weeks?
>> I think that would be wonderful.
and thank you so much, anike for coming.
we've got intergenerational public service here with gloria sumami as her mom doing public education.
city of Austin and Travis County intergenerational mixing.
>> thank you for the opportunity.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, February, 2011 2:19 PM
