A slim majority of New North End residents favor the controversial North Avenue bike lane configuration, according to results of a survey — but opponents and two city councilors who represent the area claim that it was flawed.
Forty-eight percent of New North End residents reported satisfaction with the pilot project, which changed North Avenue from four lanes to three last year, compared to 45 percent who feel dissatisfied, say the results, released in mid-June.
The citywide results indicate a wider margin of support for the bike lane — 53 to 40 percent.
But the year-long pilot project has sown distrust and frustration over the city process.
“It’s divided the neighborhood,” said Councilor Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4).
On Thursday, opponents of the pilot sent an email to the press with the subject line: “North Ave Pilot Survey was manipulated.”
“It is the opinion of many that the outcome of the survey … was decided before the study was made,” wrote Karen Rowell, an opponent of the project.
The Castleton Polling Institute conducted the survey. The Burlington City Council is set to vote Monday to either make the change permanent or abandon it.
Nicole Losch, a senior planner for the Department of Public Works, said that in spite of the criticism, the department has worked to be fully responsive to citizen concerns. “We’ve done more project modification and more public outreach than we’ve ever done for any other projects,” Losch said.
Overall, 3,336 Burlingtonians completed the survey between May 4 and June 8 — more than three quarters of whom were New North End residents.
The city’s process has been a series of slip-ups and faulty communication, said Dave Hartnett (D-North District). Last fall, Hartnett said, Mayor Miro Weinberger vowed to send all the surveys to residents by mail. Instead, the city sent postcards notifying residents to answer the survey — either online, by phone or by mail.
The initial postcards were nondescript, Hartnett said, and more than 1,300 were incorrectly addressed. Hartnett and Wright used their discretionary council funds to pay for a second mailing, which arrived only one day before the survey ended, Wright said.
The councilors expected they would see the data before it was released to the Department of Public Works. That didn’t happen either, Wright said.
“There’s a lot of distrust from a lot of people of the process,” Wright said.
“We’ve gotten this wrong from the start,” Hartnett echoed. “It’s been really disappointing.”
As a result, Hartnett said, he would not be attending the public presentation of the data held by the Department of Public Works on Thursday.
“I’m washing my hands of it,” Hartnett said.
Losch defended the department against the allegations. “We didn’t make any revision to any of the survey results,” she said.
The survey marked the final of three measures the city used to gauge the impact of the three-lane configuration. Crash data from police showed fewer and less serious crashes overall, though there were a higher number of rear-end crashes. According to traffic data, the configuration also caused commutes to increase by just more than three minutes at the peak of evening rush hour.
The North Avenue pilot project emerged from a two-year public planning process that was completed in 2014. The bike lane was installed in June 2016, and follows the stretch of road that links Burlington’s northernmost neighborhood to the city proper. A resolution passed by the city council included language noting that New North End residents must support the project for it to become permanent.
Wright said he planned to introduce an amendment Monday asking city councilors for a citywide vote on the project next Town Meeting Day. He’s not optimistic his measure will pass, he added, but a public vote would provide a final objective result for those concerned about the process.
“As important as the road itself is to people, the issue of trusting government is also a really big issue,” Wright said.
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A ton of money was wasted on this
giving Dave a hard time for not attending a meeting that he, from the inside knew, was going to be a PRESENTATION and not a DISCUSSION or DELIBERATIVE opportunity would seem to be no shame on Dave. He has put a good bit of effort into trying to make sure the process was as transparent as possible and responsive to OUR need to control our own neighborhood (as has Kurt) and I can see why he is frustrated to be left standing in front of a train that is on AUTOPILOT. I WOULD BE TOO.
As I said earlier, with the orphanage coming online, it is on the border of ridiculous to be making a final decision on anything that will have to do with traffic flow on the Avenue. EVERYONE there will be comping North or going South and impacting loads on downtown and the NNE for services and escaping to the interstate. Frankly the connector that was never built will become even more important once HUNDREDS of new apartments and condos and houses and businesses are built on that ground. NO decision should be made on Monday….. No decision should be made on the permanent change to the Avenue until that project is assessed INTO the mix. JMHO
The whole thing seems a bit senseless.
Advocates for the plan please answer this question: Why would I choose to cycle the Avenue rather then the Bikepath???
The two are parallel and offer access to the same destinations, with the Bikepath actually being a bit more flexible.
Sorry. I don’t get it.
Roads are most certainly safer for motorists and cyclists if there is a finer distinction drawn between appropriate paths.
Certain drivers have no respect for cyclists.
Certain cyclists have no respect for cars.
keep the twain apart. This aint a life lesson on getting along.
The only way we are going to trust them is if we get to vote on this and Miro doesn’t pull his robo calls and $11K expenditures like he did last time along with an ad in the N. Ave News and the STILL lost the vote in the NNE by 700. I spoke w/ people on our side who said they wouldn’t fill out the survey because they said the City was going to do want.
GOOD FOR YOU DAVE! THAT is the consequence of the Miro and Chapin show intentionally defrauding/colluding and manipulating the NNE and not listening to the councilors who were voted in to represent us. Our data people show FAR DIFFERENT results from DPW and CCRPC and even THEY state that the data is not statistically significant but hell – just report it anyway right Chapin? That’s you MO. Tweaking the lights all through the survey (A real NO NO during a survey unless you plan on standing out there and tweaking the lights for the next 40 years). Not to mention the EXTREME conflict of interest of having Chapin be any part of the process at all being the former exe. director of Local Motion. It would be illegal if we weren’t in crooked Burlington!
I wonder if Ali Dieng has enough integrity to keep his word and vote no on the pilot like he said he would. Probably just another Local Motion progressive who votes for AGENDA’s instead of his CONSTITUENTS – remember us? When asked Ali Dieng said “I will vote with the people.” On Monday we will find out if that was a lie.
It sure sounds like the same people who crowed “the people have spoken” when the NNE voted overwhelmingly for BTC (while other, adjoining wards were more mixed or strongly against) to push the ballot passage are now claiming that these same people aren’t smart enough to have their voice heard.
Stop demeaning the honest feedback of your neighbors!
The traffic backs up going into the City itself, not along most of North Ave. A couple minutes extra to get some where really ? People are in that much of a hurry, sad that your lack of planning and life skills get us to this discussion. This is moire about not wanting change from old timers than anything else, its a great change I hope they vote to go for it.
Many consider living in the New North End, and expecting to drive quickly and unimpeded to Williston, to be a fundamental human right.
While arguably this could be construed as more of a community mental health issue than a safe streets quandary, it is clear that the establishment of a high-speed, limited-access road, exclusively for cars and trucks, could potentially quell much of the grumbling and angst exhibited by car-partisans.
Imagine climbing in your vehicle of choice in the New North End, and being whisked quickly away towards Walmart and Home Depot and other fine Willistonesque destinations, free from self-entitled cyclists and lolly-gagging foot-traffic!
Oh wait. Such a road already exists. Some call it “The Northern Connector. Or more crudely, The Beltway.
On second thought, never mind.
With so many who live out in the vicinity of the Avenue being so vocally against it Chapin must have colluded with the Progressives for the failed pilot study to have prevailed in the polling?
Let’s get CNN on it.
The math on the three-minute commute extension is easily exploited by those who favor the bike lanes.
Three minutes is designed to sound incidental.
But three minutes for a 30-minute commute is far less than three minutes for a five-minute commute, and the newspaper should have done the analysis that I am doing here.
Otherwise, three minutes has no context whatsoever.
Here’s the point: If your commute goes from Williston to the north end of Burlington, three minutes during that commute may sound incidental.
But if those three minutes occur during what would otherwise be the last 60 seconds of your commute – where the traffic backs up along the bike lanes – you can see how disproportionately longer that portion of the commute become. It effectively more than QUADRUPLES your commuting time.
So city officials will use that extra commuting time as evidence that the bike lanes don’t tie up traffic all that much.
But as you can see, that’s a ruse.
From the BFP,
The police chief also rejected a call for the police to crack down on bicyclists committing traffic infractions.
“I’m not going to put my cops in the middle of this,” he said. He said he didn’t want to distract from the opioid crisis and other serious crimes for traffic enforcement which he’d rather leave to “good engineering and good urban planning.”
This is the problem as it seems that bikes are treated differently then cars when everyone should be observing the rules of the road.
Take away the perception that bikers are better then the rest of us and you might just have more people on board.