People submitted emails to me regarding street improvements vis-à-vis bikes and cars, in response to my queries in local media, including The Santa Barbara Independent. The final numbers are:
Make our streets “work” for both bikes and cars — 30
Make our streets better for bikes, including reducing car parking and lanes if necessary — 55
Do not reduce car parking and lanes — 145
Almost universally, people want to make bike riding safer if possible. I agree and believe we can “have our cake and eat it, too” by improving some existing bike “thoroughfares” with physical separation from cars while not reducing car lanes or parking. I plan to present ways of doing this to the City Council so that people can see it’s not a matter of cars or bikes but a matter of both working well together. That’s the Santa Barbara way.