[KevinFromTexas]

Web Posted: 03/07/2010 12:00 CST
Downtown vision falls short

Robert Rivard

As Castro noted, San Antonio is a growing place, and with San Diego, Calif., now in the rearview mirror, in terms of the nation's largest cities, Philadelphia will be the next city we pass.

The big screen above the stage fills with a city map showing Madison's comprehensive network of bike lanes, despite the city's long winters.

Then she turns to San Antonio's patchwork of bike lanes and says the map communicates one message to local cyclists: Don't even think about riding in this city.

While the mayor has been speaking passionately about the “Decade of Downtown” and others in the Downtown Alliance have joined him in supporting imaginative and ambitious plans for the future inner city, the sad truth is that the rhetoric is not being matched by action.

In the coming year, both Hildebrand and Mulberry avenues, both of which cross and connect the city's key north-south avenues — Broadway, McCullough and San Pedro — will be closed for long periods to undertake major drainage improvement projects.

The newly constructed streets will include some additional right of way, yet city engineers have no plans to add bike lanes to either Hildebrand or Mulberry, which bracket Brackenridge Park.

...

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...lls_short.html