ENCINITAS TO CONSIDER CYCLIST AND PEDESTRIAN SAFETY PLAN

Projects would cost an estimated $1.1 million and include ‘bike boxes’

A slate of proposed roadway changes, including “bike boxes” to improve cyclists’ safety when making left turns, will go before the Encinitas City Council on Wednesday.

If the council decides to pursue all the cyclist- and pedestrian-related projects, plus an “optional” add-on of a fresh slurry seal coating for the roadways, the total cost would be $1.1 million, according to a city staff report. Eliminating the roadway re-coating option cuts the total cost to $621,500.

Encinitas embarked on a stepped-up campaign to improve bike and e-bike safety in late June after a 15-year-old e-bike rider was hit by a van and killed near the Santa Fe Drive and El Camino Real intersection.

The City Council approved a local state of emergency declaration that commits Encinitas to expanding its cyclist education programs, increasing enforcement of traffic regulations and exploring ways to make the roadways safer. One change that’s been immediately noticeable is that the city has installed digital signs near schools and major intersections encouraging people to drive and bike responsibly. The city also has printed 300 small caution signs that people can post on their properties.

Most of the $1.1 million that is now proposed for bicycle and pedestrian upgrades would go for projects sought under the city’s Safe Routes to School program or projects that aim to improve pedestrian and cyclist mobility generally. But there’s one relatively low-cost item — a proposal to try out what are known as “bike boxes” — that generated a great deal of discussion at last month’s Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission.

The traffic commissioners told the city’s traffic engineer that they liked the concept of bike boxes — wide, green-painted, pavement areas that start at one curb and go across the front of the lanes of stopped vehicles — because they would give cyclists a safe, vehiclefree place to begin their left turns, rather than being lumped with the cars and trucks behind the traditional stop line on the pavement. But several commissioners said the city ought to do a pilot project first on one intersection before reworking all the five intersections that were originally proposed for bike boxes.

And, please, don’t pick the Encinitas Boulevard and Vulcan Avenue intersection for a trial project, said Commission Chair June Honsberger. She added that she