26 Sep Action Alert: Tell Austin City Council to Keep Trails Open to Nighttime Bicycles

Austin City Council may vote on Thursday, September 26th to reinstate the nighttime curfew restricting bicycle access to three Central Austin trails.

1. Send an email to Austin City Council TODAY telling them that you want trails to be kept open to nighttime bicycle traffic.  You can find more sample email text and other delivery methods on our website.

   1. To: lee.leffingwell@austintexas.gov, sheryl.cole@austintexas.gov, chris.riley@austintexas.gov, mike.martinez@austintexas.gov, kathie.tovo@austintexas.gov, laura.morrison@austintexas.gov, william.spelman@austintexas.gov

      Cc: tom@bikeaustin.org
      Subject: Keep Austin trails open to nighttime bicycle traffic (9/26/13 Item #85)

      To Mayor Leffingwell, Mayor Pro Tem Cole, and City Councilmembers,

      I ask that you keep our downtown trails (Butler Trail, Shoal Creek Trail, and Johnson Trail) open to nighttime Austin bicycle traffic and that you oppose the proposal to repeal the pilot program that has lifted the curfew. The City of Austin can keep the trails open at night without specially funded Austin Police Department patrols. I ask that the pilot program be continued as scheduled and that the City Council approve a permanent lifting of the curfew.

      Keeping these trails open at night gives people the choice to take the route that they find safest. As one trail user said, “After last call [at the bars] I’d rather risk an encounter with a bum on the trails than a drunk on the roads. Please open up more trails, I don’t want to feel like a criminal just for trying to stay safe while getting where I’m going.” The fact is that there are far more injuries and fatalities that occur on our streets at night than on the trails.

      No one wants to choose between doing what they find is safe and what is legal.

      Sincerely,
      [your first and last name]
      [your zipcode or neighborhood]

2. Sign up against Item #85 of the Sept. 26th Austin City Council agenda. Please sign up by 10am Sept. 26th., or ASAP on Sept. 26th.  301 W. 2nd St. In the lobby, go to one of the kiosks (photo of kiosk), choose the Sept. 26th agenda, choose Item #85, and specify that you are against the item. You do not need to be present at the Council meeting, unless you want to speak.
3. Speak against Item #85 at the Sept. 26th Austin City Council meeting. The item can be up for discussion at any time between 11am and the evening, or even later. Follow Bike Austin on Twitter for updates. However, we may only know minutes ahead of time when the item is ready for citizen speakers.
4. Make an important donation right now to Bike Austin so that we can continue to work on the issues that are important to you, such as this one. 

More Background

Earlier in 2013, Austin City Council approved a pilot program to lift the park curfew (10pm-5am) on three trails in Central Austin (Johnson Creek Trail, Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake, and Shoal Creek Trail). The pilot program began June 1st, and is scheduled to end on Dec. 31st, 2013. This Thursday, September 26, Council will consider reinstating the nighttime curfew on these three trails. We urge Austin City Council not to reinstate the curfew, but rather to lift the curfew permanently.

Though Austin City Council and Bike Austin originally asked for the pilot program without any additional costs, at the request of the Austin Police Department, Council decided to fund police bike patrols during the nighttime hours through Sept. 30th (the end of the fiscal year). In August, Council approved a new city budget that did not set aside special funding for APD monitoring the trails at night after Sept. 30th. As a result, City Council is considering reinstating the curfew. Bike Austin still firmly supports nighttime trail access for people going by bicycle, even without specially funded APD bike patrols on the trails.

In August 2013, Bicycle Advisory Council member Eileen Nehme conducted a mid-course evaluation of the 24-hour trail pilot to inform the Bicycle Advisory Council and City Staff. The evaluation combined bike trip counts (using automated counters) with feedback from bicyclists collected via an online survey. Together, results suggest that people went by bicycle on the trails at nighttime before the pilot period, that use did not change markedly during the pilot, and that while people on bicycles appreciate the police presence and having the curfew lifted, they will continue to use the trails with or without police patrol and regardless of the curfew.

Safety concerns lead people on bicycles to use the trails. Over half of the survey respondents said they used the trails because it felt safer than riding on city streets. Feedback from a woman in her late 20′s who regularly uses the trail at night represents a view expressed by many others: “After last call [at the bars] I’d rather risk an encounter with a bum on the trails than a drunk on the roads. Please open up more trails, I don’t want to feel like a criminal just for trying to stay safe while getting where I’m going.”

Unfortunately, assessing the relative safety of trail use is impractical, because the Austin Police Department lacks the capacity to document the coordinates of incidents that occur within city parks. However, given the publicity that typically surrounds daytime incidents occurring on the trails (particularly assaults), it is reasonable to assume that nighttime incidents would also be publically known. To our knowledge, no assaults on people on bicycles have occurred on the trails during nighttime hours, either while the curfew was in place or during the pilot.

We know people bicycle on the trails between 10pm and 5am. They use their judgment to determine that this is the safest course of action. We have no evidence to suggest that this perception is incorrect, and certainly we have evidence indicating that nighttime bicycling with motorists poses safety risks. Given the evidence, the best course of action is to keep these travel options open for people who are going by bicycle.

Sept. 26, 2013 Austin City Council Agenda