Went to the city's website to look for something -- oh, what an exciting life it is -- and came across this freshly minted item: "City clarifies Dallas Bike Plan implementation status and outlook." Well, now. Looks like someone (cough) would like to rebut a law-practicing council member's argument that the city council -- not to mention the citizenry -- was misled when it came to the cost and ease of rolling out the new Bike Plan when council rode it to the finish line on a 15-seat tandem back in June.
Far as the higher-ups at City Hall are concerned, the council wasn't paying attention during the summer when told it would be an expensive and time-consuming process. Maybe -- but just the other day we were told city staff only discovered recently that street changes needed to go through the thoroughfare-amending process (which a former city official told me earlier this week was an incorrect interpretation of City Code). Anyway. An excerpt:
The recent Council adoption of the Dallas Bike Plan in June, 2011 represents a good faith commitment by the City to see this plan implemented. This plan has laid a clear pathway towards accommodating a diverse range of bicycle facilities within our city streets. The Dallas Bike Plan is projected to be implemented over a ten-year time frame. City management believes that this plan is achievable and that the anticipated challenges in translating this vision on paper to real bike facilities on the ground can be overcome.Expect much, much more about this whole mess in next week's paper version of Unfair Park.
A key ingredient to success in this endeavor is a clear understanding of the challenges we will face during the implementation process. These challenges were discussed during development of the plan and are acknowledged in the adopted plan document. However, during the excitement of the final stages of the plan adoption process, they were not the focus of attention.
