The Senate appointed HB44 Conferees on Tuesday:
Sen. Trudy Wade, Chair, Sen. Tom Apodaca, Sen. Andrew C. Brock, Sen. Harry Brown, Sen. Kathy Harrington, Sen. John M. Alexander, Jr., Sen. Ben Clark
Next week both the House and the Senate will be on break, but since it is unclear how soon conferees will be meeting, the sooner we make contact the better. The bike lane (road diet) prohibition under certain conditions provision is Section 7 of HB44. The bill is actually called the Local Government Regulatory Reform of 2015. The House conferees received hundreds if not over 1,000 emails about Section 7; all urging removal. Thank you to all of you for your action!! According to People for Bikes, on just the letters they tracked, the NC response to action was 15.5% vs. an average of 3.6%.
No letters/emails in support of the provision have been received based on our inquiry of the House conferees.
We have been talking with NCDOT and urging them to explain that this provision is not needed – they already use this traffic flow and level of service criteria, and need the flexibility to consider other criteria such as safety and economic development in approving road projects.
BWNC position on HB44 is to remove the provision as it is overly prescriptive and will result in a negative impact on communities working to optimize safety and congestion relief in a comprehensive manner.
Contact Senate Conferees here and urge them to remove Section 7 from HB44.
Andreas Adrian says
This would be ridiculous. We need more bike lanes and you want to make it harder. Just ridiculous.