by JONATHAN YORK
Getting around Kyle is not so much fun, however you choose to do it. There are potholes if you drive, tight lanes if you bike and ditches if you walk.
In council meetings this fall the city’s leaders have talked at length about how to fix our troubled roads. And most of the focus has been on motor traffic, which is a natural choice for a town that makes its living along the interstate.
There have been a few indications, too, that the city is interested in helping non-motorists get around. The new city planner, Sofia Nelson, told the Hays Free Press that she is interested in development “that is not only designed for automobiles but is also mindful of the pedestrian and cyclist.”
And the county commissioners voted late last month to ask the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization that $770,400 in federal funds be used to build sidewalks and bike lanes along FM 150 and FM 2770. Describing the need for these sidewalks in October, Mayor Pro Tem David Wilson said, “Children walk to school in the ditches.”
“That’s my big deal: sidewalks, child safety and schools in general,” Wilson said after Tuesday night’s council meeting. “The ones that were sent to CAMPO were particularly important.”
Sidewalks and bike lanes, one must note, were not the city’s top road projects. Council members voted that rebuilding Bunton Lane and Goforth Road was their highest priority for that federal money. But the county was allocated only $3.87 million. That might sound like the pot of gold to many of us, but in the world of road projects, $3.87 million is not all that much.
“Our first priority was still Goforth and Bunton. I would have preferred for the county to fund that,” said Mayor Lucy Johnson. “But given the small amount ... I’m really happy that they funded anything in Kyle.”
Johnson also was grateful that the commissioners decided to improve the intersection of Texas Highway 21 and FM 150. Although that’s outside the city limits, she said, “So many people in Kyle use that intersection.”
The improvements for walking and biking will be on the west side of Interstate 35, between Burleson Street and Hays High School. From a cyclist’s perspective, said Joseph Garcia, that’s a waste of good bike lane money.
“If it goes in front of Hometown Kyle it’s redundant,” Garcia said, noting that cyclists just go north on the Old Stagecoach Road instead of on FM 150, where cars sometimes drive 70 mph, and where there’s no shoulder. “Once you get on 2770 there is a large enough shoulder,” he said, and consequently no need for a bike lane there either. “The shoulder is huge.”
Garcia is the manager of Arrowhead Bicycles on Old Highway 81. He would rather see bike lanes on FM 150 east of the interstate. But if the lanes are put in, he has one request: “It’s not just that we need bike lanes. We need them kept clean.”
He often rides his bike to San Marcos, and one problem he has encountered there, on Post Road and Aquarena Springs Drive, is that the bike lanes will be full of gravel, trash, and – the nemesis of all bicycle tires – broken glass.
“There’s some mornings where it’s like three broken bottles along the road,” Garcia said. “I almost want to sit there and say hey, person in a car, I’d like to be in this lane, but it’s full of glass. Would you ride through glass?”
“Any bike lane is good for cyclists,” he said, and there are precious few around Kyle. (His count was two or three.) But the city would have to keep a commitment to maintaining them, he said; otherwise, cyclists will be afraid to use them.
