DEPARTMENT: Transportation Department
COUNCIL DISTRICT IMPACTED: Citywide
SUBJECT:
Micromobility Plan (formally referred to as “Bike Master Plan”)
SUMMARY:
The Transportation Department will provide an informational briefing to the City Council Transportation & Mobility Committee on the Micromobility Plan. The briefing will include an overview and update on the associated planning efforts.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
On September 29, 2011, City Council adopted San Antonio Bike Plan 2011 + Implementation Strategy (“Plan”) as part of the City’s Comprehensive Plan. The Plan is a guide for a regional bicycle network and goals for policy, funding, and staffing for implementation. Overall, the Plan outlines improvements totaling approximately 1,700 miles of varying bicycle facility types for the San Antonio region, with 1,040 miles on City of San Antonio maintained roads.
The Plan provided a reliable foundation outlining the purpose and need for bicycle facilities in San Antonio.
The underlying methodology holds, but the proposed implementation strategy is not feasible in many instances and needs some improvement. As part of the FY 2020 Budget, funding was provided for staff to update portions of the Plan in the form of a Micromobility Policy Document and develop a regional implementation plan for the Downtown/Midtown Regional Centers.
The Micromobility Policy Document will summarize critical challenges associated with implementing micromobility infrastructure and complete streets in general and recommend policy solutions to mitigate or eliminate these challenges. The Downtown/Midtown Implementation Plan will identify key corridors within and across these regional centers and provide the technical analysis to support the feasibility and future implementation.
A technical stakeholder group has been formed consisting of design, construction, academic institutional, and business interests that will review and offer recommendations on policy and strategy for the regional implementation plan.
Micromobility Policy Document
Transportation Department staff has begun to research best practice policy surrounding known challenges to micromobility and complete streets implementation. These efforts have focused on how best to address situations where parking restrictions or “road-diets” would be necessary to implement the Plan's facilities.
Additionally, the City of San Antonio’s 2011 Complete Streets Policy has undergone a review against the National Complete Streets Coalition grading framework. The analysis shows areas the policy can be strengthened and where it has been effective so far.
Public and stakeholder input will be gathered to understand what citywide policy additions or amendments would be supported. This effort will be done concurrently with public involvement efforts related to the Downtown/Midtown Implementation Plan.
Downtown/Midtown Implementation Plan
Transportation Department staff and consultants have begun to evaluate previous planning efforts, the existing bike facility network, and previous efforts' successes/challenges. Corridors for detailed analysis will be prioritized based on current roadway widths, lane configurations, traffic volumes, bicycle traffic demand, crash data, equity, and adjacent property needs.
Public and stakeholder input will be gathered to understand the location needs and support of bicycle facilities in and around the Downtown/Midtown Regional Centers. Public and stakeholder support will be critical to developing an implementation strategy that is both feasible and meets the community's needs.
Consultant teams will model existing and proposed conditions on prioritized segments to determine the current roadway operations and the impact that potential modification to the system would have if bicycle facilities are added to the roadway. Transportation Department staff and consultants will review configuration options and results of potential roadway modification and develop a revised network and implementation plan. Lastly, consultants will develop cost estimates for both the completed and high-priority projects with recommendations for potential funding sources.
The network recommendations, logic and implementation strategy will be presented in a summary report.
This effort aims to complete all the above tasks and have project recommendations to determine what can be implemented with existing funding in FY2020 and proposed to be funded in FY2021 and the 2022 Bond Program.
ISSUE:
The Transportation Department will provide an informational briefing to the City Council Transportation & Mobility Committee to provide an update on the Micromobility Plan.
ALTERNATIVES:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
FISCAL IMPACT:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
RECOMMENDATION:
This item is for briefing purposes only.