Like clockwork, twice every weekday, the streets of Simi Valley become saturated with the cars of the tens of thousands of people who commute to work and school. Parents sit idling in their cars waiting for their turn to drop their kids off and wish them a good day. This is just a generally accepted way of life for all residents. However, things don’t need to be this way. A significant chunk of students live a 10-20 min bike ride from school yet are still shuttled around by family or neighbors because biking often seems too stressful or dangerous. If we want to reduce the traffic on our roads, improve the quality of our air and allow our students to be more independent, we urgently need to improve the safety and experience of our biking infrastructure.

Here are some diagrams to illustrate my example. Below is a heatmap showing the time it takes to walk from one of the three high schools in Simi to the surrounding neighborhoods. Dark blue represents a trip of <5 min where the dark red represents a trip of around 25 to 30 min.

Suggested Improvement Path

If we adjust this heatmap to instead show the same ranges but for a bicycle trip instead of walking, we can significantly increase the percentage of the population that can access school without the help of a personal automobile.

Suggested Improvement Path

Even though this is the current trip length by bike, there are many factors that discourage average people and students from using their bicycle for these commutes. These maps were generated by close.city.

The Challenge

How do we encourage more people to bike to school? Well, how do we encourage more people to bike at all? Most of our bike infrastructure in Simi Valley induces stress in the people that use it. Only the most fit and adventurous people will even consider riding their bike in the painted gutter on the side of the road. There are usually dangerously fast-moving cars zooming by over the speed limit or not paying attention to their surroundings.

Suggested Improvement Path that’s a bike lane on the right of Los Angeles Ave. A thoroughfare with a speed limit set at 45MPH.

If you’ve ever had the displeasure of using one of these lanes, it’s a truly terrifying when a large truck or car barrels past you way above the speed limit.

A possible solution

The easiest thing I think we can do is update the definition and standards of the class II bike path that the city uses. The current standard defined in the 2008 edition of the Master Bike has some flaws that make it unfriendly to younger and less experienced cyclists.

Suggested Improvement Path

Let’s pick out some of the flaws with this layout

  1. Bikes are located adjacent to traffic, directly exposing them to fast-moving traffic.
  2. Bikes are positioned in the “door zone” where the driver’s side doors can open suddenly and possibly strike a biker.

Suggested Improvement Path

These problems can be resolved by swapping the parking spots and the bike lanes. Riding a bike is significantly more comfortable in this style of Class 2 bike lane. Here is an example from the city of Santa Monica on how they aim to convert their old streets to have parking buffered bike lanes and also retain the parking element. This layout closely resembles some of the streets we have here in Simi Valley, like the east portion of Royal Ave.

Suggested Improvement Path

These modifications can be made cheaply and occur during routine re-striping. If the striping proves popular, the treatment can be made more permanent with concrete or flex posts to create an even more comfortable experience. Here is an example of plans like this put into practice.

Suggested Improvement Path

We can also start biking programs in coordination with our schools to educate students about biking, like the City of Ventura when they partnered with BikeVentura to offer bimonthly bicycle education classes for students.

Another potential solution

While the first solution proposed isolating bicycle traffic from vehicular traffic, this solution seeks to slow down vehicular traffic. Making the driving experience more uncomfortable has proven to reduce speeds and make the pedestrian experience more comfortable. This can be down by narrowing lanes, adding in trees to the planters on the side of the road, or potentially even adding a middle divider with plants.

The city could even opt to use “modal filters” a technique to restrict through traffic on neighborhood streets. They are usually just bollards, parks or even rocks that ensure that neighborhood streets are only used by residents and not people making longer trips attempting to avoid the main roads and potential traffic. They create a more welcoming pedestrian experience and ensure neighborhoods stay quieter.

Suggested Improvement Path

An opportunity for positive change

The upcoming refresh to the Simi Valley Bicycle Master Plan presents the perfect opportunity for the city to accomplish these goals. Also, since our plan hasn’t been updated since 2008, it’s critical that we take action now to include good and future-proof planning that we can use for the next decade to guide our active transportation planning.

Incorporating changes into our plan that directly increase the chances of getting students to bike to school is critical to reduce excessive vehicular traffic, remove harmful local pollutants from our air, promoting a healthier lifestyle for our community and children along with letting our kids reclaim independence they lose by having to be shuttled around by their parents all day.