Albany Strollers & Rollers Advocacy Goals for Albany’s ATP Update

October 23, 2024
(Notes on the process for this document are at the bottom.)

Albany Strollers & Rollers is excited to engage in Albany’s Active Transportation Update process! The original 2012 ATP has served well as a walking and cycling infrastructure upgrade template. The plan’s influence has extended past its original list of projects to play a role in planning for several additional street improvements and the sidewalk repair program. The updated ATP will serve as a strong foundation for the next decade.

It’s clear to AS&R that all parties must contribute to the discussion when considering changes to our city’s built environment, especially with Solano Avenue, a major focus for the new ATP. We seek to share our needs as patrons of Albany businesses (and employees and owners) and listen to the needs of all. We want to shop there, not drive businesses away. The goal is to draw more shoppers (and clients, residents, etc.) to Solano.

Infrastructure technology, expectations, and practices have changed since 2012. It’s time for an update, focused on walking and rolling, that addresses active and accessible transportation of all kinds. These active users have felt like second-class citizens on Albany streets compared to motorists. The new ATP must plan for access to Albany locations for all people, regardless of mode of travel, age, or physical ability. Access that is safe and inviting for all road users. Access alone can not be considered equitable unless a majority of users across all ages and abilities feel comfortable using it. 

With equity in mind, Albany Strollers & Rollers endorses planning for motorist-separated cycling lanes or tracks on both sides of all major streets and primary routes to schools in Albany. These major streets include Solano, San Pablo, Buchanan, Marin, Pierce, Cleveland, and Brighton. Primary routes to schools include Jackson, Solano, Marin, Santa Fe, Curtis, Key Route, and Thousand Oaks. Ensuring the safety of our children walking and biking to every school is also a top priority.

General Improvement Goals for Walking and Rolling:

• Consider all modes, ages, and abilities. Prioritize active and transit modes.
• Make our streets safe and inviting for all users with separation/protection of users and speed reduction. Encourage multi-stop shopping trips by making movements along San Pablo and Solano easy and safe for all modes.
• Reduce speeds on all roads possible to 20 MPH.
• Address lighting at human scale for safety and visual enhancement.
• Align with Climate Action Plan goals: reduce vehicle miles traveled by attracting more cyclist shoppers and commuters. Strive for multi-benefit projects that further transportation and Climate Action Plan Goals, like building bioswales into curbs.
• Assume city responsibility for maintaining sidewalks so that this key transportation network achieves parity with roads in Albany.
• Pursue League of American Cyclists Bike Friendly Community designation as a mark of Albany’s commitment.
• Recognize that diverting active transportation users to parallel routes can increase safety, or even the perception of safety, for some users while decreasing the same for others. Daytime families might appreciate reduced traffic and speeds. Women riding at night have reported feeling vulnerable due to reduced eyes on the street, low light levels, and lack of other road users. 

Beyond Albany:

• Strive for a regional bike-share network that includes Albany, El Cerrito, Berkeley, and Richmond.
• Support routes that continue through adjoining cities or lie partially outside of Albany, like Pierce Street to EC Plaza BART.
• Complete and protect corridor connections to El Cerrito, Berkeley, and Richmond.
  • Kains and Adams bikeways and their connections into El Cerrito.
  • Codornices Pathway routes that link to Berkeley feel unsafe due to human encampments and all that comes with it. Parents don’t feel comfortable sending their kids to the ball fields along Albany and Berkeley and across I-80, despite recent infrastructure improvements.

Public Way Treatments:

• Increase the standard width of facilities for walking, cycling, jogging, etc. where possible to allow for passing, variation in speed, and simply more users. Set off facilities for different active modes with height variations or surface treatments.
• 4-way stops at all bike boulevard intersections.
  

Specific Locations:

• Reconfigure public parking on Solano to increase accessible parking, bike parking, and short-term dropoff/pickup, meal driver, and delivery needs over long-term motorist parking. (This addresses a shift to Transit Oriented Development and the increased density of redeveloped properties.)
• Consider stop signs and stoplights on Solano to support pedestrian right-of-way and slow vehicle speeds. 
• Prohibit right turns on red at some bike route intersections like Marin at San Pablo and Pierce at Buchanan.
  

Walkers and rollers are a diverse group of all ages and abilities who use a variety of modes. Active transportation isn’t uniform like driving a car or truck. Not only because of vehicle size but because speed follows ability and intent in a much more direct way when using your body to move. Someone who jogs in the morning may take a leisurely stroll on the same path to shop later in the day. A cyclist who pedals fast on the Greenway to catch a BART train to work may use the Greenway at a slower pace with their kids later. Some will only walk, some will roll slowly, and others can only shuffle. Our new ATP should consider all of these users, address their needs, and create space for them to feel safe and welcomed.

AS&R encourages you to submit your comments through the project portal to ensure they are recorded, weighted, and considered as part of the process, even if they overlap with this Advocacy Goals Statement.

Creation process:
We held an open meeting to discuss AS&R goals on October 8, 2024, at 7 pm. The meeting was announced in the October Greenways and a separate announcement was sent with a Zoom code. The meeting was attended by six members of the Core Group, who contributed ideas to a draft. The draft was circulated to the Discussion List for general membership comment over several days. The Core Group took these comments and created this Goals statement on October 23, 2024.