County talks bicycle routes

Comprehensive Plan may see changes

The Yuma County Board of Supervisors and staff talked at a Monday work session about past and current efforts to create bicycle routes and a comprehensive bicycle plan to increase safety and encourage more residents to ride.

The response from representatives of the Yuma Region Bicycle Coalition to current efforts was largely positive, though they had many more suggestions for expanding the bike network throughout the county, from lane markers in the streets to widening shoulders along well-traveled roads such as Highway 95 and Avenue 9E.

County Engineer Roger Patterson said later this month, staff will start the process of amending the Comprehensive Plan to create a North Frontage Road and Foothills bicycle loop.

It loops along Foothills Boulevard and Avenue 15E between County 14th Street and South Frontage Road, and then north of Interstate 8 on the North Frontage Road, heading west through Mesa del Sol and ultimately ending at the city of Yuma limits around 28th Street, where riders can connect to bike lanes along 24th Street and a bicycle path along 32nd Street.

He said new guidelines for how to establish bike routes in the county have been drafted, but the Comprehensive Plan (equivalent to the city’s General Plan) must be updated before those standards can be adopted by the board.

The amendment will be presented to the county Planning and Zoning Commission June 26 and take about five months to get through the required public hearing and notice period before coming to the board for a vote.

The proposed bicycle route guidelines include

identification of designated bicycle routes with a rectangular green sign sporting a bicycle symbol, as well as triangular yellow signs with the same symbol and the words “ON ROADWAY” to warn drivers about their presence on other streets with speed limits above 35 mph.

The costs of some of these improvements will be minimal, but Patterson said others — the ones that create more room for cyclists on area roads — tend to be much pricier.

“Per the city of Yuma’s Bicycle Plan, a 5-foot bike lane road widening (asphalt only) on each side is estimated at $176,500 per mile. The total cost for bike lanes is estimated up to $700,000 per mile, depending on right-of-way costs,” he said.

Patterson sketched out a history of the county’s efforts, or lack thereof, to enact a uniform bicycle route policy over the years.

A county half-cent sales tax for transportation was defeated in 1986, which limited the county’s financial resources by the time the Yuma Metropolitan Planning Organization developed a 127-page comprehensive bicycle plan the next year. It recommended adding bike lanes, paved shoulders and a network of bicycle/pedestrian trails built mostly on canal banks.

Its five-year recommended budget was $7 million, with most of that going into the new paths and trails. The plan was never adopted by the county or the city, which passed its own in 1998. The current Comprehensive Plan adopted in 2012 “doesn’t really mention bicycles,” County Administrator Susan Thorpe said.

These and other board decisions over the next 25 years that did not take cyclists into account helped spur the Yuma Region Bicycle Coalition, led by chairman Gene Dalbey, to start pressing the county for more action beginning in 2015.

Yuma County unsuccessfully applied for $20,000 in state grant money in 2015 and 2016 to begin the process of creating a new bicycle master plan, and a county budget request for $100,000 was not approved.

But the YMPO may get involved again by funding a new bicycle/pedestrian plan, executive director Paul Ward said at the meeting. He said that is one of six plans the agency is hoping to accomplish in the upcoming year.

Executive Director Paul Ward said the YMPO is planning to do six federally-funded transportation studies over the coming year, though “all of the funds I have for all of the studies hasn’t been 100 percent confirmed, so that’s an unfortunate circumstance at this time.”

One of these is a $145,000 bicycle and pedestrian study, and “At the moment, depending on the status of the funding, my best estimate is that particular project will move forward,” he said.

An estimated 8 percent of Yuma County workers either walk or bike to work, but “The region does not have a cohesive region-wide set of design and construction guidelines for such facilities,” he said. “And by that I mean, What is a bike path, what is that defined as? How wide does it have to be?”

Such details would include the width of sidewalks and multiuse paths and what kind of materials should be used to build them, guidelines which could be used throughout the county as well as in its four municipalities.

The result would be regional design and construction guidelines that will meet state and federal standards, and may be used by member agencies during the planning of new and refurbished bike lanes, Ward said.

Yuma Region Bicycle Coalition members at the Monday meeting gave the board a batch of bicycle-themed cookies to show their appreciation for what county staff has done since 2015, and said they were happy about the planned bicycle loop for the Foothills and Mesa Del Sol areas.

Still, much needs to be done to make county roads safe for cyclists, with few having even the wide shoulders for them to ride on, let alone bike lanes.

Coalition member Marty Hoganson said officials have been “kind enough to correct some safety issues out of their maintenance budget, which was very nice. Despite what a lot of people think we’re not necessarily after big projects, we’re realistic enough to know that if we can get the biggest bang for the buck we can get something done, maybe.”

But even within the last few years roads have been built without any safety features for cycling, he said, with little chance of any major widening or upgrades in the following two or three decades. “I think big mistakes were made, and not unknowingly.”

He cited the recent rebuilding of 40th Street in the Foothills. “Nice big, wide street. No consideration at all for bicycles on that. And you know, once that street is done like that, none of us are going to see the next rebuild on that. So we’re stuck with it,” he said.

The same thing happened on Fortuna Road, South Frontage Road and 28th Street, even when original designs included more amenities, he said.

The city of Yuma has more amenities for cyclists, including the coalition members’ gold standard for local road design: 24th Street east of Araby Road, with bike lines on both sides the road all the way out to Arizona Western College.

Hoganson said a more affordable alternative for the county could be markings on most, if not all, roads telling drivers they can expect to see bicycles using their lanes.

“In other parts of the country, they just take a bicycle stencil, put some chevrons on it, put it right in the traffic lane, all along. It tells riders who don’t necessarily see the little signs along the road, because there are so many signs, it seems,” he said. “They’re right in the traffic lane, so people are aware that they’re going to run into bicycles there, so be careful.

That seems to be the best solution. It’s cheap, it’s not perfect, but it works.” he said.

Mary Kay Hardin, a coalition member who works at AWC and lives in Mesa Del Sol, said the college has plans to use such symbols on campus streets. “We’re committed to it, but we’re an island,” she said.

She knows several faculty and staff members who want to commute there by cycling, but unless they live just off 24th Street they don’t feel like it’s safe to do so, given the narrowness of other county and city roads and the speed of most vehicles.

Hardin said, “My husband commutes from Mesa Del Sol to Avenue D; I don’t know how he does it,” she said.

She and Hoganson both said being able to travel on regular roads is more useful for many riders than having a few dedicated paths that may or may not get them where they want to go.

“It’s not just recreation for us, we would really commute. And I think it goes back to that adage, build it and they would ride, or do you need the riders to build? But it’s so unsafe we’re not riding,” she said.

John Courtis, executive director of the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce, said bike lanes and routes are valued by winter visitors and tourists, as well as people looking to live and work in the area.

“It’s a huge economic development driver. When people call the chamber of commerce for relocation packages, and send out about 50 of them every year, half of the questions are, ‘Do you have bicycle lanes, do you have bicycle paths? It’s a huge driver for people wanting to relocate here or move their businesses here,” he said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Tony Reyes said the cycling advocates have made their needs clear over the last couple of years, and it was getting to be time for the county to act on them, at least when they have the money to do so.

“I think we need to start looking to some kind of an action plan, that has action in it that we can put a cost behind it. Some of this is going to be simple, but most of them are going to require funding, and I think that’s going to be, get the funding necessary. Do the things we can do to that are costeffective and then find the funding to do the most longrange solutions,” he said.