Oxnard Plan Focuses on Bicycle Commuters

It’s close to 9 a.m. on a recent weekday, and Jose Ramirez is weaving in and out of heavy traffic in downtown Oxnard. He suddenly jolts to a stop at a busy intersection and waits for the light to change.

“I’m late to work,” Ramirez said on the way to his job as a meat cutter at a supermarket.

Then with a heavy foot to the pedal he rides off on his bike.

Ramirez is among hundreds of bicycle commuters who are prompting city leaders to include their needs in long-range transportation plans. In Oxnard, where a majority of the city’s 170,000 residents are Latino, those commuters are often working-class immigrants.

The Planning Commission recently approved a newly updated $37-million bicycle and pedestrian master plan that would add 55 miles of bike lanes and paths throughout the city over the next 20 years. The City Council is expected to vote on the matter later this month.

Funding would come from a variety of local, state and federal sources, said Cynthia Daniels, a local transportation planner.

One aspect of the city’s ambitious plan is to improve the safety of some bike paths and lanes by shielding riders from vehicle traffic, Daniels said. Commuters such as Ramirez are glad about that.

The 22-year-old Mexican immigrant lives three blocks from work and says he rides his bike only when his car doesn’t work. He said he would use his bike more often if he did not have to swerve between narrow sidewalks and fast-moving SUVs.

“Sometimes it’s not worth it,” he said. “It gets really bad.”

Others have no choice but to ride.

Javier Barrera, 44, rides his bicycle each day to work, or at least on days when he can find work. A strawberry picker, he has ridden as far as Santa Clarita on his Huffy in the early morning darkness because he needs the money, he said.

“You run a risk, but then you just go to the side and wait for the cars to go by and, well, hope they don’t hit you,” he said.

Like other low-income immigrant workers, he cannot afford a car or legally own one, he said. And he would rather face traffic and rain than risk having a car that could be impounded if police stopped him, he said.

“To go run a quick errand, [a bicycle] is more fun anyway,” Barrera said.

Oxnard’s plan calls for paths along the beach, with connections to agricultural fields east of the city. One of the first major improvements, called for in 2004, would be a bike path that connects immigrant communities in south Oxnard to those in downtown and La Colonia.

A planned bike path along Oxnard Boulevard would also help protect commuters around intersections that have the highest number of bicycle-and pedestrian-related accidents in the city.

The plan includes education programs for bicycle riders hailing from countries such as Mexico who are often not aware of state laws that prohibit them from traveling against the flow of traffic, Daniels said.

Most county cities have focused more on recreational facilities than commuter lanes, said Judy Willens, who sits on the board of the Ventura County Bike Coalition. Ventura and Camarillo, for example, have been praised for adding bike trails that border the coast and lush farmlands. Yet commuters in cities may need the most help, she said.

“Recreational bikers avoid places that are not safe. Commuters have to get through no matter what,” Willens said, pointing to the Five Points intersection in downtown Oxnard, which saw seven bicycle-related collisions between 1997 and 2001.

But the tide is shifting in favor of commuters. Santa Paula is developing a bike path that cuts across the city, running east to west. There are Metrolink projects in Ventura and Camarillo that will make it easier for bicyclists to get from station to station. And more Vista & SCAT buses are offering bike racks for commuters.

The changes have been long in coming throughout the state, said James Rojas, a member of the Latino Urban Forum. Immigrant bicycle commuters have not had the clout or knowledge to ask for better conditions, he said.

“These are people who don’t have the power to vote or change policy,” Rojas said. “They don’t realize they deserve better.”

In Los Angeles County, there is also increasing interest in studying street conditions for people who do not travel by car, Rojas said.

Supervisor Gloria Molina is proposing regional plans to improve pedestrian safety, including pathways for immigrants on busy thoroughfares on the city’s eastside. The MTA has allocated about $7 million a year to bicycle-related projects, including facilities for bike commuters.

And Los Angeles City Council members are including facilities for bike commuters in downtown and East Los Angeles as they plan revitalization projects along the Los Angeles River.

In Northern California, cities such as Sacramento are building extensive networks of bike lanes for commuters, said Steve Hoyt, land use planner with the Sacramento-based Local Government Commission.

“Our experience is that Latinos are generally biking and walking more than the general population,” Hoyt said. “There is the ‘smart growth’ movement that calls for designing cities to be more bike-and pedestrian-friendly, and then you find some communities are doing it already.”

In the city of Reedley in Fresno County an old rail line converted into a bike trail connects factory workers downtown to canneries in industrial areas, Hoyt said. Similar projects are underway in the city of Manteca in the San Joaquin Valley and unincorporated areas in Tulare County.

For activists like Ron Milam, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, any local plan that includes bicycle commuters is a welcomed alternative in a region plagued by traffic and pollution, he said.

“I see a great potential in Southern California. We have good weather, wide streets and flat terrain,” Milam said. “When cities like Oxnard pledge $37 million [to bicyclists], that’s a great sign to me.”