The Optimum Bike Network for the City of San Marcos and Texas State University INTRODUCTION The City of San Marcos and Texas State University (TxState) have both planned and proposed for the expansion of the San Marcos bike system. A survey completed in February of 2005 by the City of San Marcos showed that transportation was the second highest priority wanted for the city (City of San Marcos, Feb. 2005). A sub-category of the same survey shows that new hike and bike trails are the most wanted addition to the city’s transportation system. The high demand for a new bike system has spurred the city to introduce a future master plan with a detailed outlook of future bike lanes throughout the city. Texas State University is a University with a student population over 27,000 and growing in both prestige and size. With the increasing population, the University has proposed a master plan to give campus and its amenities a face-lift. Within this new master plan, the University has planned for a well-established bicycle network throughout campus. This proposed bicycle system will provide a connection to the City of San Marcos bicycle system and provide students, faculty and the San Marcos community with a safe and well-established bicycle system. This study will examine the current bicycle infrastructure in the City of San Marcos and around Texas State University. The study will propose additions to the current system. Although biking shares several traits with motor transportation and pedestrians, it has many specific needs. This study will identify problem areas for bikers caused by traffic and terrain and then find the fastest, easiest and safest routes throughout the city. SCOPE The extent of our study will focus on the City of San Marcos and Texas State University. San Marcos, according to the US Census Bureau estimates, is a city with a population of 44,628 and located in southern Hays County. The TxState campus encompasses a large area in central San Marcos and its student population living within San Marcos makes up one-fourth of the City’s population. METHODOLOGY Data was spatially defined using the North American Datum of 1983 and the projected coordinate system: NAD_1983_Stateplane_Texas_Central_FIPS_4203_Feet The first objective was to prioritize the areas of greatest need. We used the TxState student addresses, San Marcos parks, San Marcos schools, high volume facilities, TxState parking lots, TxState buildings, Historical District boundaries, Census blocks and Historic District sites to determine the ranking. We accomplished this using overlay and buffer analysis along with the Spatial Analyst extension. Safety is a high priority of our overall plan of analysis. The project defined and ranked the roads according to traffic volume and the intersections according to highest accident rates. We also factored in the inclusion of safe school crossings to ensure the safety of transportation of children to and from local schools. Efficient and fluid movement is essential to the success of the San Marcos bicycle system. We used roads, traffic lights, railways, traffic flow, and hydrological data to identify any constraints that need to be overcome. As TxState begins to implement its Campus Master Plan, there will be less on-campus parking. This will mean more reliance on the bus system. The transit system has begun to equip buses with bike racks. This will enable the bicycle system to incorporate the transit system into the overall plan by strategically placing secure bike racks on-campus and parking lots. We analyzed the transit system to determine how to best utilize their services. We examined the current infrastructure and identify areas that can be used in their current state and areas that need expansion or improvements. Cliff Walden – Project Manager Ty Wolosin – Assistant Manager John Karras – Web Master Ran Kataoka – GIS Analyst Rusty Rex – GIS Analyst T.R.A.N.S. Source: The City of San Marcos, San Marcos Transportation Master Plan. Wilbur Smith Associates. CURRENT TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM The automobile provides an image of some of America’s most coveted ideals: freedom of expression, individualism, unlimited mobility. However, its use as the only viable mode of transportation in most of the United States has led to serious problems. The automobile currently accounts for 86 percent of all passenger-miles traveled in the United States. This leaves entire segments of our population (children under the age of sixteen, the elderly, and the physically disabled) without basic transportation. Also, the air pollution generated by automobiles is a growing problem. With only five percent of the world’s population, the United States has 25 percent of the world’s automobiles. Clearly, the predominance of the automobile in our country is a cause for concern. It is not only a national problem, but a global one as well. Mona Sahlin, Sweden’s minister of sustainable development, calls oil dependency “one of the greatest problems facing the world.” The City of San Marcos is no exception to the monopoly the automobile possesses over transportation. Aside from the Texas State University and the C.A.R.T.S. bus systems, the only way to reach most destinations within the city is by motor vehicle. One of the underlying problems is that the vast majority of American cities has been built at such a low density that mass transit, or public transportation (buses, light rail/streetcars, commuter rail, and subways), is rarely an alternative. It has been documented that for mass transit to work properly, a city must have a density of at least ten dwelling units, or homes, per acre. The average American residential subdivision has a density of only five dwelling units per acre. Source: The Geography of Urban Transportation (p. 36) edited by Susan Hanson and Genevieve Giuliano, 2004, New York, The Guilford Press. Copyright 2004 by The Guilford Press. BIKE SYSTEM AS THE SOLUTION The plan for bicycle path network is not only in San Marcos but also in other regions in the United States; for example, a 2000 regional plan emphasizes the future bikeways as the second priority. The efficient bike system is considered as one of the solutions for current transportation problems. San Marcos is no more than four miles wide in any section of its developed urban area. As researchers Fajans & Curry have noted, the average cyclist can travel at speeds of 12.5 miles per hour, making the entire city of San Marcos well within the reach of almost anyone. Not only is San Marcos well-suited for a system of bike paths because of its physical size but also because of its median age of only That is comparable to 28.8 for the median age of a bicycle rider in the United States, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. Having a bicycle path network would benefit everyone in San Marcos in some way or another. If such a network were in place, vehicle traffic within the city would decrease, leading to safer streets due to fewer accidents and a lower level of air pollution in San Marcos and its surrounding areas. Furthermore, having a network of bike paths would give citizens a chance to enjoy the scenic areas of the city (downtown, the historic district, Aquarena Springs, and city parks) while simultaneously improving their cardiovascular health. Commuter cyclists can have the best form of exercise for protection against many lifestyle related diseases (Vuori, Oja et al. 1994). The result of that study indicates that the exertion level of cyclists is in the comfortable range considered to provide the optimum benefits to our health. Source: Federal Highway Administration, Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey. Exertion of cycling and walking for transport RESULTS AND DISCUSSION San Marcos and Texas State University are two places seeing substantial growth. San Marcos was not an adequate city for “friendly” biking but had the potential to be just that. Within the next ten years, San Marcos and TxState will be receiving massive facelifts and the end result will be an area with more people, commercial & residential developments, green space and routes for bike riders and pedestrians throughout the city. That being said, we found reasons for and against development of a bike network. The first limitation to a San Marcos bike network is distance. Generally, most people are not willing to ride their bike long distances (more then ¾ of a mile) to reach school. We discovered that most apartments in San Marcos are within three miles of TxState. The second real limitation to a bike network in this area is the slope. The San Marcos landscape goes from flat coastal planes to steep Texas hill country hills. We discovered, as most living here could tell you, that the roads around campus and west San Marcos are those most affected by slope. We believes that the solution to both these problems is the integration of the public transportation system with a bike network. This can be done by placing bike racks on all buses. This gives riders a choice in transportation in the case of bad weather or if unwilling to ride up the hills of San Marcos. The next part of the analysis that we completed was the introduction of non-landscape impediments to the bike network like traffic flow, traffic light wait time, railroad wait time and accidents. The major problem for us was the fact that we could never get the network to work with the impediments. This problem was time constraints because we felt we needed to move ahead with another form of analysis to finish the project with some form of a result on schedule. If the project was to be done again, more time would be allotted to the establishment and implementation of network analysis. It is possible that within the given time, a thorough network analysis may not be plausible and given more then a semester, one could establish a working network. We hypothesized that we would optimize the current City of San Marcos and TxState bike systems. In this case, we feels comfortable they did just that. This area has great limitations on anything having to do with a bike network or pedestrian safe roads. In fact, there are few established bike lanes anywhere in the city. Based on our results, talked about in the previous section, we gave its recommendations for where bike lanes could be situated within the ETJ city limits. The City of San Marcos hired a firm, Wilbur-Smith, to help them establish a transportation master plan for this area. This company had more time and an actually budget to work with. Although they did a more thorough analysis, we found many similarities with our end results and Wilbur-Smith’s locations of bike lanes. This city is broken into four major sections of student locations outside of campus and four primary roads to reach these areas. These include, Post Rd., Aquarena Springs, North LBJ and RR12. Based on the analysis, it is these four roads where bike lanes are a major necessity to this city. The construction of five-foot wide bike lanes on each side of a roadway is a common way to implement bike transportation infrastructure. The bike lanes function as a shoulder since they are separated from the roadway by a painted barrier. On average, a five-foot wide bike lane on both sides of a roadway costs $170,775 to construct (Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council, The Center for Neighborhood Technology, Virginia Transport Policy Institute). Using these average costs for bike lane construction, the San Marcos bike path network as recommended by TRANS, with a total of _________ miles would cost the city $ __________. CONCLUSION Both the City of San Marcos and Texas State University have implemented bike networks into their master plans but no new construction has begun. In addition, both parties agree on a limitation to their dependency on car/truck transportation and more of an emphasis on public transportation and non-polluting transportation. We feels their data can be used for determining the safest and most efficient routes for bike trails in San Marcos and the TxState campus. The results can be used to study transportation needs and obstacles of San Marcos. This will allow sound decisions to be made for future growth and expansion of both San Marcos and TxState. Throughout this project, we did extensive research that uncovered no previous studies on bicycle analysis that would have provided a guidance blueprint for us. That being said, we discovered that bicycle analysis is very objective and open to individual interpretation.