By Julie BUTCHER

On Tuesday night, the Glendale City Council heard from 95 speakers in person and 24 callers commenting on the city’s tentative Bicycle Transportation Plan during a council meeting that ran until 2:15 a.m.

“Anyone who wants to bring a sleeping bag …” joked Mayor Elen Asatryan as she introduced the Bicycle Transportation Plan item before hearing nearly five hours of public testimony.

The mayor expressed her concerns about the lack of information shared by the city in advance of the deliberation.

“Misinformation and misleading information,” Asatryan observed adding that info on social media moves at the speed of sound. “When you leave a void as a city and are not engaged in meeting the community where they are at, you are leaving a void for others to fill.”

“The amazing thing is the awakening of the community speaking out against losing traffic lanes and having anything like what’s going on on Brand Boulevard,” commented Councilmember Ara Najarian. He received more than 550 emails on the topic, more than on any other council agenda item or any single issue before the Metro board, an agency covering more than 10 million people, Najarian shared. “And it’s organic, not organized by any interest group, not like the bicycle riders. I think I saw every one of Glendale’s bike riders here tonight.”

Najarian was not done. “After you said to ignore the cost estimates in your report because they’re wrong, it makes me mistrust every word that comes after. It’d be a dereliction of my duty as a council member to ignore the strong and vocal outcry against these bike lanes and the Bicycle Transportation Plan from the public. The silent majority isn’t silent anymore.”

Councilmember Najarian also expressed his concerns about the consultant, Buro Happold, expressing his preference for a local consultant rather than one from New York City and questioning the independence of utilizing the same consultant for the bike plan and for plans for the Verdugo Wash.

“I know a conflict when I see it,” he said.

According to Bradley Calvert, director of Glendale’s Community Development Dept., the Bicycle Transportation Plan was presented to the council in February 2022 “to shape the next two decades of safe, convenient, inviting infrastructure in Glendale.” Calvert detailed “significant levels of community outreach and input” and overviewed the proposed network of 90.7 miles of bike lanes transversing the city.

Glendale is 10 miles across. The plan would next need environmental review and approval before returning to council for final approval, anticipated in November.

Calvert explained the wide range of costs estimated – between $158,560,000 and $531,940,000 – would be expended on all street upgrades and repairs, not just for bike lanes.

Representing the consultant, the various types of bike lanes and the overall themes of the project were explained: the importance of safety (people want to feel safe on city streets; people want to feel safe biking); the need for connectivity and the continuity of bike lanes across the city; the desire for usable bike infrastructure throughout the city; and an accessible bike network that people of all ages and all abilities can use.

“A road network goes everywhere; a transit network goes some places; there is no bike network now and this plan sets out to correct that,” the Buro Happold consultant told the council.

“I’ve lived in Glendale for 13 years,” said Alex, one of the numerous speakers to address the council, “first as a renter downtown and now as a homeowner in northwest Glendale. I love how walkable my neighborhood is. But the big problem I have is safety. When I walk to Trader Joe’s, just a couple of blocks away, I have to cross Glenoaks. It is genuinely scary. Six lanes of traffic, people drive on it like a freeway. I’ve seen people racing, running red lights, almost flipping their cars, doing high-speed U-turns in my intersection. This is where I walk my dog.

“That’s why I’m so grateful to Councilmember Najarian for bringing the BRT [bus rapid transit] project through Glenoaks – it’s going to reduce travel lanes, add a bus-only lane and protected bike lanes. I’m going to feel so much better on my street with less lanes. I’ll have the option to take a bus that’s rapid to downtown Burbank or to Pasadena. I can ride my bike across the same corridor and feel safe and protected. That’s a huge improvement to my quality of life. I love being outside – walking, biking – in our beautiful weather, and these are family-friendly values. I like to be in a place where kids can be moving around on bikes, not in danger.”

Alex added that he had been observing commentary online.

“There’s a very vocal group of people, a lot of whom spent the last couple of years harassing Glendale teachers and school board members, who have now turned their attention to this issue for some reason. What is so apocalyptic about bike lanes? What are our values as a city? Is our only goal to move cars through our city as fast as possible?”

Local realtor Susan Broussalian commented on the cost.

“These proposed bike lanes will cost up to half a billion dollars. I can only imagine the multiple types of disaster this will create, not only on major thoroughfares but also tangled up in our quiet residential neighborhoods,” Broussalian said.

“Pacific is always backed up and now Central as well because of the circus on Brand Boulevard. In my opinion, drivers will be losing patience, and more road rage will occur. I travel on Brand daily and not once have I seen a biker using the bike lanes. Not once. It’s a complete waste of money. Glendale is already experiencing significant traffic congestion, and this is not a city that has high bicycle usage – we are not a strong culture of cycling advocacy like Davis or San Francisco or New York. We are a small city and we don’t have strong cyclists. All we need are more police officers issuing tickets and speeding will stop,” Broussalian opined.

Andre Ordubegian, who has a business in Sparr Heights, spoke in opposition to the bike plan.

“I don’t want to do my grocery shopping on a bicycle. I don’t want to live in a 400-square-foot apartment with four other people that costs $4,000 a month,” he said.

“I’ve lived here for 13 years and this is my first time speaking to council,” David explained adding he was “here to advocate for my own and for public safety in support of the Bike Transportation Plan. Glendale is a world-class city – improving mobility for all will make it more so.”

Kirsten agreed. “I’m a mom who lives in south Glendale without a car and I actually do my grocery shopping by bike. A safe street for someone on a bike is a safe street for all road users. Glendale has the unfortunate distinction of being the most deadly city in the state for senior pedestrians. The infrastructure recommended by the Bicycle Transportation Plan is proven to reduce fatalities just like those. I’ve heard a lot of comments along the lines of ‘everyone in Glendale relies on cars so we must continue to dedicate 100% of road space to personal vehicles.’ Not only is that obviously short-sighted and depressingly unimaginative, it’s also not even true. Thirteen percent of households in Glendale have zero [emission] vehicles and if we look at south Glendale, where the bulk of the bike plan would be concentrated, and where the vast proportion of the Glendale population lives, the number is as high as 33% in some census tracts.”

“I’ll admit, the half billion price tag came as a shocker,” stated Councilmember Dan Brotman. The La Crescenta Avenue project, he added, “Love it or hate it, would cost $15.7 million. Of that approximately $765,000 is the bike portion of the cost.”

Regarding the overall Bike Transportation Plan, Brotman said, “It’s a very robust vision of where we want to be over the next 20 years, and I fully support that vision. If we can pull it off – and that’s a big if – we’ll have a healthier community; we’ll have a safer community; we’ll have a more sustainable community; a more equitable community; a more prosperous community. The research is very clear: a good bike network benefits all of those things.”

Brotman countered what he called the “no one rides” fallacy explaining that many people ride bikes in Glendale and that many more would do so if it were safer.

“We shouldn’t build a bridge based on the number of people swimming across the river. If we build a bike network and make it safe, people will ride. We’ve seen it around the world, in cities large and small. There’s no reason to think that Glendale residents are genetically different from people around the world. The same thing will happen here. We just need to have the vision and the courage to start planning,” Brotman advocated.

Ultimately, there were not enough votes on the council to move the plan forward. It will be discussed again at an upcoming council meeting.

Similarly, the council punted on determining the future of plans to require new buildings to utilize electrical power. In November 2022, the council adopted a building electrification reach code requiring all new construction to be all electric. Since then, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a Berkeley ordinance outlawing new gas construction. Many jurisdictions, including Glendale, suspended enforcement.

“People need to have a choice,” Councilmember Vartan Gharpetian expressed. “Developers are smarter than me. If it makes economic sense to build all-electric, they will.”

“My concern is the lack of coordination among city departments,” she said.

Earlier in the meeting, the council adopted a resolution recognizing Disability Pride Month and one acknowledging Korean Comfort Women Day.

“It’s important to remember this atrocity so that it won’t happen again,” urged recipients of the recognition.

The International Memorial Day for Comfort Women falls on Aug. 14, the day when the late Kim Hak-sun, a former comfort woman, first publicly testified about Japan operating an organized military brothel program during the war in 1991. According to historians, up to 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were coerced into sexual servitude in front-line Japanese brothels when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony. The City of Glendale dedicated a Peace Monument replica statue in its Central Park in 2013 to commemorate the events.