CRTP to Host Bike Safety Audit of Eureka’s 4th and 5th Streets on May 14
Press release from the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities:
Next Wednesday, May 14, 2025, from 5:30-6:30 pm, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities (CRTP) is conducting a bike safety audit of Eureka’s 4th and 5th Streets, part of the US-101 state highway corridor. Participants will meet at the corner of 4th and C Streets in Eureka, and no bike is required to participate.
Bike audits are an opportunity to experience and take note of the conditions for bicyclists in a particular neighborhood or location. Unfortunately, due to the dangerous conditions on 4th and 5th Streets, we will not be riding bikes during the audit. But while we already know 4th and 5th Streets are not safe for bicyclists, the bike audit will help document the exact hazards, and suggest solutions to improve safety.
Participants will walk or roll on the sidewalk while observing conditions for bicyclists, and will focus on observations of three intersections:
- 4th & C Streets, focusing on how bicyclists can connect with the future C Street Bike Boulevard
- 4th & H Streets, focusing on how bicyclists can connect to the new buffered bike lane on H Street from Old Town, Downtown, and the future EaRTH Center transit hub
- 5th & I Streets, focusing on how bicyclists using the new buffered bike lane on I Street can connect to Downtown, Old Town, and the EaRTH Center
The event is free, and all members of the public are invited to participate. No bike is required.
More information about CRTP is available at https://transportationpriorities.org.
May is Bike Month! Information about other local Bike Month events can be found at https://bikemonthhumboldt.org/.
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
Bike lanes are on 6th and 7th streets. Other direction… J, H and I streets.
Bikes don’t belong on 101 traffic.
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Hmmm… I suggest they make a short move to Cooper Gulch on 14th street.
Enough there to ‘keep them busy’ for awhile.
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City spent $5.1 million there… and couldn’t put sidewalks in.
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Go figure.
They did put a sidewalk in there. I’ve walked it. I live nearby and wanted to see what exactly they did. Granted, it’s only on the North side of 14th and doesn’t connect to anything, but there is a sidewalk at that specific spot.
You have lots of ”bike” lanes to egress Eureka. Lots of toxic paint on the road to guide you clowns around town. And dont forget to use the Fairway drive also. All those stupid ass posts are to protect you form growdozers with extra wide mirrors.
On H and I and Fairway, Henderson, and Harris, in the last six months i have seen eight bikes on these streets I drive every day.
The guy who died this week was in violation of safe biking. Start there.
You do realize that most of the “toxic paint” on the road is there to guide drivers around town? Fairway Drive was dumb, but the posts are there to protect us from people driving growdozers who just can’t keep their eyes off their phone for 10 minutes; hopefully they don’t want to risk damaging their paint.
I love driving over those white(dirty) posts.
None of this directed at you, but none of that protection really exists. I dive Fairway almost every day. I can count more busted delineators than cyclists during the week. They don’t do a thing for the “growdozers” because they simply mow them over. I’ve watched them do it. Also, any large truck at all, which is often one of the fire trucks from up the hill on Herrick can’t make the curve without hitting a couple AND not scare the shit out of oncoming traffic trying to NOT hit them in the super narrow spots. It’s a dumb idea in a shit spot that the city thinks they can make safe. Not to mention all the garbage, mud, leaves, tree branches, and such in that lane that doesn’t get cleaned up for two weeks at a time because the streetsweepers can’t access it anymore.
But yeah, if they want to make 4th and 5th, part of an interstate US highway safe, then get it the F off there and on a bypass like people wanted decades ago. It’s never going to be made super safe. Our drivers are just too nuts in their own regard to fool ourselves into thinking yet another lane division or more reflective paint will do anything. When I ride I’m never on those streets (6th or 7th for me or the Waterfront). I don’t trust people that much. And there’s any number of idiots out there that will take their rage out on a cyclist on purpose to or make one flinch because they want to be assholes. Been on the receiving end of that too. You may have as well.
Speaking of paint, Mr. Clark, you are aware of what’s in that roadway paint used for the automobile “clowns”? Let’s be inclusive here, you don’t get a free pass on it:
Thermoplastics, acrylics, adhesives, solvents, glass, various metals to give reflectivity, epoxies, chlorinated rubber, latex… And a hell of a lot of it, not including the asphalt underneath it.
With the exception of Fairway, I seriously doubt the veracity of your claim that you have only seen 8 bikes in six months on the other streets. I counted that many in two hours earlier today on H. And a number of kids cruising Henderson on scooters and a hoverboard. Even a group of long-haul riders stopped to fix a flat. They’re theret. Are you driving in the middle of the night perhaps?
The gentleman who died this week while biking maybe made a mistake but please let him RIP. I am positive he did not do that to kill himself.
”new buffered bike lane” Aw yes the magic of the buffer. Like no 4000 pound car can penetrate that and your plastic helmet.
Kinetic Energy (KE): 100000.00 Joules
It’s a common saying among those of us who ride bicycles; “Paint is not protection.” But California law insists on treating my 25 lb bike like a 4,000 car with six air bags and a crumple zone refusing to provide any other kind of safety, we’ll take what we can get.
As to the foam hat, every police report ever makes very sure to mention whether the person who was ground to a fine paste under the wheels of a cement truck was wearing a helmet.
When you register your bike and pay $500 a year to do so, then you can expect guardrails for your bike road.
I pay taxes for roads I’ll never see let alone use, but I don’t bitch about it. Also while you resist going downtown to shop because you can’t park your Suburban, cyclists never have parking issues. They spend the money that you don’t, which generates sales tax revenue. Also, as has always been the rule, driving is a privilege, not a right. Riding a bike is not subject to that rule, only that they follow the rules of the road. Make sure your insurance policy is active should you flatten a cyclist against one of those guardrails. That’s going to be an expensive ordeal for you.
Riding a bike on 4th and 5th streets is a death wish. You don’t have to do an “audit”, the only thing that could make it safer is to put in bike lanes which is infeasible. Why not just poll the ten weekly cyclists that actually use H and I to never ride on 4th and 5th. So many potential solutions!
Who funds CRTP? Waste of time and money.
Wrapped in barbwire and lubed with chili sauce
Responsible transportation would mean that bikes transported something other than a entitled freeloader, and that is what these bike riders are , they pay zero fuel tax which is what is used for roads and now somehow bike lanes , they do not pay for tags on their bikes which should be required to cover the expense of their bike lanes much like drivers have to pay every year that is supposed to also help pay for roads .
It might give these clowns some credit if they started demanding traffic laws were enforced on bikes like bikes running stop signs not signaling lane changes ect . With all the traffic cameras it should be required that they have a form of identifying who owns the bike so they they 2 can be monitored and tracked . I feel that 100 dollars a year would be a great starting point with fine and jail time if not in compliance . They could keep their paperwork in a compartment that is the size of a water bottle , also ensure that they have proper lights reflectors and helmets just like everything else on the road maybe even some sort of seat belts system so that if they were to be hit or hit something they would stay attached to their bike , we could use magnets then to fish them out of the rivers ect.
Bravo! You just listed almost all the greatest hits of motornormativity; you did miss “bike lanes cause congestion”, but otherwise well done!
How much damage do you believe me and my bicycle do to the asphalt? Wouldn’t it make more sense to penalize oversized personal vehicles with higher registration fees? No one needs a three ton pickup with less cargo capacity than a minivan just to go to the store. As to “entitled freeloader” most folks who ride a bike also have cars and are generally taxpayers.
I’d personally rather see the cops go after drivers who don’t stop at stop signs or signal lane changes, etc.; they’re much more dangerous and the city would rake in all the money!
Well give the conditions of most of the roads in california i have had the terror of driving a person could point out the need for a oversized 4×4 just to ensure they could get out of the potholes . Also tags are based upon gvw so in a way they already do pay a penalty for their size.
as for the damage bike tires might cause to the road , my response is , if it were not for the fuel tax and registration fees that drivers pay there would be no roads for the bike tires to be on
Bikes can ride on dirt and sand you know. People have been doing such since two wheels were bolted to a frame.
Exactly, thank you! I have a photo of a dirt section of the Bay Trail just covered in tire tracks.
Kind of ironic that the first paved roads were at the insistence of bike riders. Then those newfangled horseless carriages took them over and it’s been uphill ever since. {downhill is great on a bike, uphill sucks}
Paint does not provide protection.