No rumble strips please

[Jim Langley]

I'm 100% opposed to rumble strips in any form on Highway 1 and if
you're a cyclist you should be too. There is no way center or shoulder
rumble strips can be installed without seriously endangering the
thousands of cyclists that frequent the road.

It's not onesies and twosies all the time. Small and huge group rides
travel up and down that road all the time. They already can't fit on
the eroded shoulders that exist. Adding treacherous rumble strips
directly in their path, and that they would have to cross would be
criminal. Putting them down the center would create even more
obnoxious drivers refusing to cross the center to give cyclists a safe
passing distance.

Rumble strips are a terrible idea on any cycling road but on Highway 1
they should be completely out of the question. That Caltrans didn't
immediately realize this just shows how car-centric and ignorant of
cycling safety issues they are. Sad but certainly no surprise.

We should work together to prevent them ruining one of our area's
greatest cycling resources. Until we started writing them, Caltrans
wasn't thinking about us at all. They were thinking about how to spend
some use-it-or-lose-it money and they just grabbed a project on their
list with no thought of who uses this road besides drivers. To their
way of thinking if the project reduces car crashes by 25% (the most it
might achieve according to the stats we've found - or a handful less
crashes per year) it's a great project and it doesn't matter a bit if
cyclists suffer or even get killed as a result.

Don't believe me? Just look at the Mission Street stretch of Hwy 1 and
compare the cycling death figures before and after Caltrans made
"safety" improvements to that road with complete disregard to
cyclists' vehement objections. Like what they want to do with the
rumble strips, they only thought about drivers and ruined the road for
everyone else. Let's not let them do it again.

Jim