Barrington (Hills) Anti Bike Campaign

Anyone heard about the campaign below or seen this sign?

Website is - http://www.dontchangebarringtonhills.com/

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Permalink Reply by Jose A. Terrazas on July 14, 2014 at 9:03am

NICE, Thanks

Richard Stiers said:

Not to worry, the B2B Ride does not touch Barrington Hills. It goes through Barrington, Lake Barrington and North Barrington. Friendlier areas. Less horse hockey on the side of the road.

Jose A. Terrazas said:

Wait, are Barrington and Barrington Hills opposites? I'm riding the B2B Honor Ride in " Barrington" this August. Should I be wary of Bucolic Characters?

Permalink Reply by skyrefuge on July 14, 2014 at 9:15am

I read through some of the Barrington Hills Village Board minutes, and it appears the situation is slightly different than dontchangebarringtonhills.com would lead you to believe. Shocker, I know! FYI, I'm not a Barrington Hills resident, though I live in a nearby suburb, and occasionally ride through their village (never in a group, and never 2-abreast). Here is the chain of events that has really brought the village to this point:

1) In July of 2012, the Village decides they want to repave/rebuild Haeger's Bend Rd., simply because it's in poor shape. They apply for STP (federal) funding via the McHenry County Council of Mayors (MCCOM). The only planned change to the existing road is the addition of 3' gravel shoulders.

2) Sometime later, MCCOM denies federal funding, but advises that chances of receiving funding will be greatly increased if bicycle facilities were included in the reconstruction plan (as that's part of the FHWA "Complete Streets"-type rules).

3) In 2014, Barrington Hills prepares to resubmit the funding request to MCCOM, this time with bicycle facilities (a 4' wide shoulder) included in the plan.

4) Chaos ensues.

So the only "outsiders" insisting on bike lanes are the people being asked to pay for the lion's share of the project. If Barrington Hills wants the road reconstructed, there is no one stopping them from keeping it at the existing width without shoulders; the catch is simply that they'd have to pay for it out of their own pockets.  (and given the arguments made by DCBH.com about "owning to the middle of the road", it seems they ought to have no problem with that!)

It all seems rather silly to me. As the residents of Barrington Hills know, their roads, with their slow speeds and very light traffic, simply make for very attractive bicycling. The lack of shoulders up 'til now has done nothing to diminish that attractiveness, so it's difficult to see the addition of shoulders attracting any more bicycles. If anything, it'll make it less-annoying for drivers to get where they're going by eliminating the (small) amount of time when a car has to wait before passing a bicycle.

So from a logical perspective, I would assume that the DCBH.com argument is really about property owners losing a 7' strip of their property, and invoking cyclist-hate is simply a trick they're using to drum up enthusiasm.

However, the players involved don't seem to be entirely logical. For some shining examples, see the Public Comments from last month's town meeting, including the woman who was so mad she followed a "pack" of cyclists for quite a distance while talking on her phone and taking photos, or the one citing "brawls among bikers and drivers" in Chicago once bike lanes were added there: http://www.barringtonhills-il.gov/pdf/public_comments/2014/05_2014.pdf (unfortunately the pages in the PDF are a bit jumbled, but it kind of fits with the way their arguments are jumbled!)

I can say that from my times riding in Barrington Hills, the drivers have all been very courteous and safe, so I had no idea there was this hate bubbling beneath! This has all led to a special meeting on Wednesday night to hash things out (big enough to be highlighted on the BH website front page!) How very exciting!

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 14, 2014 at 9:26am

So, if they want federal funding (the rest of us) to pay for their repaving then they have to bring their roads up to modern standards.  If they don't want to do this they can pay for their own damn repaving.

Seems fair to me. 

Permalink Reply by skyrefuge on July 17, 2014 at 4:10am

Barrington Hills has not yet posted anything about last night's meeting, but I noticed that before the meeting, they published a rather nice summary sheet that ended up pretty much settling the issue: https://villageofbarringtonhills.app.box.com/shared/gbyie6mydytrsda...

It looks like a shoulder/bike lanes will NOT be part of the road reconstruction. But it doesn't seem to have much to do with the DCBH.com lobbying. Instead, BH says that the scoring procedure to win funding simply changed, and they no longer need bicycle accommodations to boost their score. They had been hoping the bicycle accommodation would boost the score by 20 points, but under the new scoring, it would only boost it 2 to 4 points, so given the opposition, they figured it's not worth including it in the proposal.

Oddly, while the 2014 scoring criteria definitely show the 2 to 4 points for bicycle/pedestrian accommodations that BH references, there was nothing in the 2012 scoring criteria that had *anything* to do with bicycles, much less giving them 20 points. In fact, it would seem odd for bicycle accommodations to be responsible for 24% (20 points out of 85) of the total scoring. And for it to *decrease* in importance so drastically between 2012 and 2014.

So now I'm wondering if the whole thing was just a miscommunication/misunderstanding a couple years ago between McHenry County and Barrington Hills (and a handout from BH to their consulting firm which went ahead and made a whole bike-lane-included design that will never be used!) Or did I miss something and bicycle accommodations *have* actually decreased in importance for securing funding?

2012 scoring criteria: http://www.mchenrycountycom.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/McCOMSTP...

2014 scoring criteria: http://www.mchenrycountycom.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/STP-Appl...

Permalink Reply by globalguy on July 17, 2014 at 11:16am

+1 skyrefuge 

Permalink Reply by David of the North (David606xx) on July 18, 2014 at 7:00am

Tempting as it is to go piss on things, that's farther than I really want to go. I'll leave it to the locals to fight this pissing match. Courage!



MK said:

No respect, I tells ya.

John Durham said:

From the website copy: 

We have no obligation to a professional biking community, clad in spandex, who are regularly abusive to our residents and drivers, and urinate on our property.


WTF?

Permalink Reply by Bruce on July 18, 2014 at 7:21am

You may be interested in reading some of the commentary provided to the May 2014 meeting of the Village Board. It is available here: http://www.barringtonhills-il.gov/pdf/public_comments/2014/05_2014.pdf

Page 18 is a letter of complaint regarding 2 "packs of bike riders" which is supported by two low-resolution photos probably taken with the complainants cellphone whilst she drove along behind them.

Permalink Reply by Robert Underwood on July 18, 2014 at 7:40am

We have no obligation to a professional biking community, clad in spandex, who are regularly abusive to our residents and drivers, and urinate on our property. 

      Sounds punk rock

Permalink Reply by David Lieb on July 18, 2014 at 7:41am

I frequently do a Sunday morning bike shop ride that sometimes goes through parts of Barrington Hills. Usually 10 to 20 of us split into two groups. We see many other single riders and groups of various sizes. I would be surprised if there were not a fair number of chainlinkers represented amongst all that lycra.
I am not particularly interested in having bike lanes there. I would, however, be delighted if they were to actually trim the shrubbery to the point that it is not encroaching as much as three feet into the (already narrow) roadway! Perhaps the horses like to browse as they stroll past? 
The anti-bike-path signs are very recent. Police profiling of cyclists there is less so. I am all for cyclists obeying the law, but sending cops out to hide in the shrubbery specifically to target cyclists is a bit extreme.
The whole single file nonsense is weird.

I wonder whether they have ever noticed the percentage of squirrels, raccoons, deer, etc that are urinating on their properties? Sometimes the options are a bit sparce. Ironically, if they were to change to the point of losing their bucolic character, the bike traffic would probably go down, since many cyclists are there because of the lack of heavy traffic.

Permalink Reply by Greg Berry on July 18, 2014 at 8:39am

I know the a local bike club does weekend rides through Barrington Hills.  Its one of few areas where traffic is low enough where cyclists can get up to speed and keep it constant.  I for one like riding through the area as its peaceful and enjoyable.  Maybe I'll remove the baseball card from my spokes to keep the "engine noise" down.

Permalink Reply by skyrefuge on July 18, 2014 at 1:29pm

Today I discovered BH's audio archives from their meetings, and have been playing them in the background at work. I cut out some of the choice lines I noticed, some of them fairly hilarious and/or shocking. It's normal hearing this kind of stuff from anonymous Internet commenters, but it's a bit different hearing it from grown-up village board members.

These all come from the Planning Board (a lower level than the actual Village board), and much of the time is spent with the understanding that complaining about "clowns" on bikes violating the law has nothing to do with Planning, but they can't stop themselves. And even they are bemused to see all the members of the public showing up to give comments at their normally-ignored meetings. But they're all there because somehow bikes blocking cars enrages people all out of proportion to how much it actually impacts their life. Surely the Planning Board has made tons of decisions that have a larger financial and material impact on residents of the community than bicyclists do, but no one ever turned out for those meetings! So that was informative to me. Complaining about bikes is easy to do in an Internet comments section, but to actually get your ass to a public meeting and join the political process over it? That's a whole other level!

The many comments from members of the public are all pretty entertaining too, but more like cyclist-hating Internet commenters we're all familiar with, so I only included stuff from the actual board:

Some tension on the planning board!

The whole 7 minutes from here to the end of the board discussion are all pretty informative/entertaining, (with thankfully one woman standing up a bit as a voice of sanity amidst the bicycle rage), but here some of the final lines, on how they can stop the traffic-blocking cyclist groups:

(speaking of how it's easy for bikes to evade arrest) "It's kind of like one of these smash'n'grabs with a gang!"

"It's gotta be a coordinated effort with several police cars blocking the road..."

"A giant net!"

"Herd 'em into a truck!"

"Or a big, deep hole."

Uh, you're being recorded!

A: "What's the logic of 4 feet on each side?" (referring to the added shoulder/bike lane width)

B: "The state adopted a provision, because an Illinois legislator was sideswiped, of 3 foot separation while riding your bicycle."

A: "More of them should be sideswiped."

B: "I...wouldn't suggest that on the public record sir."

At least some self-awareness!

C: "So we try to lobby our state reps...and ask, what is the vehicle? ....we want our money, we want our cake and eat it too. We want our money, and we don't want bike paths".

Enforcement apparently increasing:

18 (or 11) tickets were handed out to cyclists the previous Saturday. Police are being "a lot more aggressive than they have been in the past".

Permalink Reply by Gene B on July 18, 2014 at 4:07pm

Agreed. Two of my favorite places to ride is Barrington Hills and the North Shore. In my experience, the North suburbs is a lot more bike-friendly (and seems to have a lot more cyclists too) than the Northwest suburbs.

Mike Zumwalt said:

Never been to Barrington Hills but if you want to live in posh community AND ride a bike move to Lake Forest.

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