San Antonio Metropolis Council authorized a rebooted Bike Community Plan Thursday that features greater than 600 further miles in bike paths and will price between $3 billion and $8 billion over the following 25 years.
“A few of our residents don’t have entry to a automobile and depend on bikes,” stated Cat Hernandez, town’s transportation director. “Let’s give everybody a possibility to make use of a protected, snug different mode of transportation.”
Almost 8% of households within the metropolis wouldn’t have entry to a automobile, she stated, including that, in 2022, San Antonio was ranked the “sixteenth deadliest metropolis for cyclists within the nation.”
Biking advocates say the 2011 plan did little to facilitate biking as a way of transportation or commuting, as an alternative favoring leisure routes and paths aimed extra towards vacationers.
Of the 1,288 miles of motorcycle lanes it beneficial establishing about 523 are full, in line with a September presentation to the Metropolis Council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The brand new plan, knowledgeable by group enter and surveys, goals to repair insurance policies which have “created a barrier to cyclists of all ages and talents” and determine attainable funding alternatives, in line with metropolis paperwork.
Town’s 2025 funds contains $3.5 million to begin work on the plan.
Beneath the plan, not all intersections and bike lanes will look alike, as infrastructure will adapt to avenue widths, visitors move and different issues.
“The Bike Community Plan displays our metropolis’s dedication to making a more healthy group by making biking one other dependable and accessible mode of transportation,” Metropolis Supervisor Erik Walsh stated. “By constructing protected, snug biking infrastructure, we’re making a future by which residents can safely and conveniently journey all through San Antonio on two wheels.”
The brand new plan handed with a 10-0 vote, with Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) abstaining. Whyte criticized the plan for being “too large” and “too broad.”
Senior Reporter Iris Dimmick contributed to this report.
