Originally Posted by
CliffordK
….As far as cyclists input. Some cities have some kind of cycling advisory board which is supposed to include cyclists. But, what I've realized is that some infrastructure may make perfect sense for one type of cyclist, and makes no sense for the next type of cyclist. ….
As with all this, the devil is in the details.
The scope and authority of an advisory committee will vary widely depending on the jurisdiction. In the case of Houston the full committee meets 2 hours 4 times a year as does an infrastructure subcommittee. I’ve been attending on and off for a couple of years and they don’t/can’t review blueprints-level design. Their scope is only city of Houston, and much of the infrastructure is funded by independent overlapping jurisdictions. It is rare that users get to see and influence blueprints.
There is no mechanism in place to prevent an analogous “bad build” here, and I wouldn’t advocate for one… the cure would be worse than the disease..
My approach is to get communication established, build relationships and be forgiving when things don’t turn out right…use experience to build better in the future.
Regarding types of cyclists this is a serious conflict. The local policy of “all ages and abilities” is being interpreted as “only if suitable for 12 and 65+ years-old inexperienced”. This precludes a lot of low-hanging fruit.
It is easy to be an armchair quarterback, but having worked on design and build of projects I know how hard it is to foresee all problems.. as this example from San Antonio shows, there will always be some degree of build-then-fix:
Oops.