El Paso City Council postpones discussion on bike lanes for a week
About two dozen cyclists on Tuesday asked El Paso City Council not to halt bike infrastructure in the city after questions arose about the effectiveness of the lanes.
Eastside City Rep. Michiel Noe put an item on Tuesday’s agenda proposing a halt on bike lane installations. He said it doesn’t appear cyclists are sufficiently using the existing lanes.
“My constituents see the bike lanes they drive by them and they see the cyclists not utilizing the bike lanes and I get a lot of calls about that,” said Noe.
The cyclists who spoke up on Tuesday said some of the bike lanes aren’t used because they’re dangerously narrow or filled with debris, which could be hazardous or cause flat tires.
“The bike lanes that we have right now in El Paso aren’t very good and so they’re not being used very much because they’re not safe, they’re not well maintained, they’re very thin and they don’t provide safety for the riders,” said Naomi Furtman.
Furtman said she rides her bike with her two-year-old daughter every day and almost exclusively uses the city’s newer and wider bike lanes.
Noe postponed the discussion for a week as he researches how much money it’ll cost to better maintain the bike lanes.
“If we’re putting them there and we’re not providing a safe passage and the cyclists are still utilizing the streets. Then why are we spending tax dollars to build those? Either we need to build them correctly and maintain them or we need to do away with them because otherwise we’re just doing lip service to the cyclists and saying we’re a bike friendly city when we’re not.”
Noe said the City has to reevaluate if it’s willing to invest more money to better clean the lanes. According to city officials, El Paso streets are scheduled to be swept four times a year, by ten full time city employees.
Cyclists urged the city to focus on better maintenance of the lanes instead of halting future bike lane installations. Currently, there are 111 miles of bike lanes within the City of El Paso, with 50 more projected.
Thirty five miles of bike lanes have been installed on the Eastside, which encompasses Noe’s district. There are 20 more miles of bike lanes projected in that area.
