Bikes-Only Plan Would Change Rules of the Road : Transportation: Autos would be banned on six streets. Some residents predict big problems.

A far-reaching $2-million bicycle plan proposed for Santa Monica could dramatically change the way people get around the city, whether pedaling on two wheels or cruising on four.

The proposed master bicycle network would turn six streets into bike boulevards by blocking through auto traffic and removing some stop signs to facilitate two-wheel travel.

Proposed east-west bicycle boulevards are Alta, Washington, Arizona and Ashland avenues and Pearl Street. A north-south boulevard is planned for Yale and 28th streets.

The plan, presented at a recent meeting of the Planning Commission, also calls for bike lanes on other streets. Parking would be eliminated on one side of a few single-family residential blocks. Seventh, 11th and 17th streets would carry north-south bicycle traffic on striped lanes. Room for bike lanes on two streets would be created by carving up at least part of the tree-lined median-strip.

The Bicycle Master Plan was commissioned by the planning department to facilitate the use of bikes for both transportation and recreation in the city. It is part of long-range traffic-management policy set by the City Council.

Attending the meeting was an overflow crowd of more than 200, most of them angry residents of two streets that are included in the plan, who strongly oppose the prospect of turning their quiet, residential streets into another Venice Beach bike path.

“It’s a $2-million solution to a nonexistent problem,” said 17th Street resident Leonard Adler.

Even some city planning commissioners were taken aback by the scope of the proposal. Ralph Mechur, Planning Commission president, said it was too aggressive and the need for it was not fully shown. “I don’t want a system where hordes of cyclists in tight green leotards are racing through our city . . . running people over,” Mechur said.

The plan, in its incipient stages, was passed along to the City Council for review, with comments from several commissioners suggesting caution. If the council votes to move the proposal to the next stage, an environmental impact report would be required.

“If we don’t take steps now it will never happen,” Planning Commission member Sharon Gilpin said.

Santa Monica Planning Director Paul Berlant said in a later interview that, except for residents of two proposed bicycle boulevards, Alta and Ashland, reaction to the bike plan has been generally favorable. “There’s a whole lot more to the plan than those two streets,” he said.

And, he argued, torpedoing the plan because of spot opposition from residents of the two streets would be like “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

Most of the speakers at the hearing live in homes on or near proposed bicycle boulevards, many on Alta, a street of single-family homes north of Montana Avenue.

Residents said they fear that the bicycle network will bring more outsiders to the city, adding noise, traffic and litter. Alta resident Lawrence Fitzgerald said it would bring “a human zoo going by my front yard every weekend.”

But they had other concerns as well. Residents of Ashland Avenue, near the city’s southern border, complained that their street is too hilly to be a bicycle thoroughfare. Planning Commission member Thomas Pyne noted that Arizona, one of the proposed bicycle boulevards, runs through a hospital zone that ambulances often use.

Additional complaints from residents centered around the wisdom of diverting traffic to other car-clogged streets and whether the expensive effort would really get local commuters out of their cars or just impinge on their neighborhood.

“I feel helpless because I’m constantly trying to reclaim our neighborhood as a safe and quiet place to raise our children,” said Christine Amos, a resident of Alta Avenue.

Many residents wonder how a plan they view as disastrous to their lifestyles, property values and mobility ever got into the pipeline.

“Who originated this incredible plan?” asked Alta resident Ron Brenner, who pronounced the idea an unnecessary attempt to provide for local “bicyclists who do not exist.”

Planning consultant Ryan Snyder, an avid cyclist, was paid about $20,000 to devise the plan, Berlant said. “We needed to do something to better address how people get around on bicycles,” he said, noting that other cities have master bike plans.

Snyder explained at the public hearing that cyclists need a connecting route of bike-friendly streets to entice high ridership. A tight grid of such streets is needed “so people will not have to go too far to find a bike route,” Snyder said.

To make the city bike-friendly, the plan calls for removing some stop signs on bicycle boulevards or using technology so that cyclists could change traffic signals.

In addition, the 4th Street overpass would be widened and a bridge would be built over the Santa Monica Freeway near 7th Street to allow access to Santa Monica High School.

Snyder said the $2-million cost estimate, which includes a $200,000 consultant salary for someone to implement the plan, could be raised mostly from state and federal funds available for alternative modes of transportation.