Scotts Valley Drive is currently a four to five lane traffic sewer that runs the length of town, a ludicrous width of pavement for the roughly 8,000 vehicles per day that travel here. The report suggests four different designs to reconfigure this main thoroughfare:

1. Buffered bike lanes + two car lanes in each direction with center turn lane (low cost).
2. Protected bike lanes that are separated from cars with landscaping + two car lanes in each direction with no center turn lane (moderate cost).
3. Two-way bike lanes on one side of the street + two car lanes in each direction with center turn lane (high cost).
4. Wider sidewalks, wider protected bike lanes that are separated from cars with landscaping, and one car lane in each direction with center turn lane (high cost, but what a way to transform the streetscape!)

Bike Santa Cruz County is sending out an Action Alert that encourages people to support Layout #4 in the report. You can read their suggested talking points in this sample letter.

Two talking points opposing this vision that are unique to Scotts Valley include:

• Scotts Valley Drive was extensively reconstructed in the 1990s. Some sitting council members, including one who generally has been supportive of other cycling endeavors in Scotts Valley, were involved in the decision to spend money for this project back then, and they have already mentioned that they feel like it might be a waste of money to undo their work. There’s probably a more polite way to say this to people who are invested in the old project, but it was a horrible idea in the 1990s, and it remains a bad idea today.
• Scotts Valley needs five lanes for emergency evacuations. Scotts Valley is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and most of the population had to evacuate quickly during the CZU Lightning Complex Fires. I know first hand the terrifying feeling of a rapidly approaching wildfire, but, honestly, Highway 17 has the lane capacity to evacuate the entire town inside of an hour. Cal Fire is also much more willing to issue evacuation orders ever since the Paradise Fire disaster.

We have a lot of NIMBYs in town, so you’ll hear misinformation about the scope of the project as well. Any lane reductions on Scotts Valley Drive will happen only between about Victor Square and Bean Creek Road.

The meeting begins at 6 PM. If you attend in person or virtually via Zoom, members of the public are given opportunity to speak for three minutes on each agenda item. If you attend in person at city council chambers, you can proceed to the public comment podium when the Mayor opens the item for public comment.

For Zoom attendees, use the webinar attendee option to “raise hand” when the Mayor opens the item for public comment. The Clerk will unmute you when it is your turn. If you have joined via Zoom phone call, dial *9 or your phone to “raise your hand”, and the Clerk will unmute you when it is your turn.

You can view the full report online at the city council agenda portal.

I routinely receive media invites to try various sports recovery supplements and almost deleted an invite to try “Chargel Gel Drink” when I noticed an interesting detail.

This recovery drink comes from a Japanese candy company? Of course I have to try it!

Morinaga is famous for its HI-CHEW fruit-flavored chewy candies. I love Hi-Chew candy, and the PR firm telling me about Chargel’s introduction to the US market completely buried this lede.

As I suspected, Chargel (flavored with real fruit juice) tastes amazingly like a less sweet version of Hi-Chew candy with an interesting jelly texture that I’m told has propelled this drink ahead of the popular Pocari Sweat electrolyte drink in the Japanese sports drink market. 18 grams of sugar in each 180-gram pouch is pretty high when compared with other sports drinks, but Morinaga’s fruit-flavored blend of carbohydrates and B vitamins tastes pretty delicious after a hard effort in warm weather.

If you’re familiar with east Asian foods, Chargel’s jelly texture may remind you of the soft, slippery jellies and noodles made from the konjac yam, or the slurpable soft jellies available at some boba tea shops. The jelly is almost identical to Jin Jin Jelly Straws, if you know this popular snack. This texture contributes to a satisfying feeling of satiety without making me feel overfully full while I’m out and about, and it goes down very easily during and after a hard ride.

Chargel comes in sippy pouches and tastes best chilled. So far in the San Francisco Bay Area, I only find Chargel at Japanese markets such as Mitsuwa and Nijiwa. Find Chargel in your area using Chargel’s online store locator, or buy directly from Chargel.com.

Disclosure: I received a free sample of this product with no expectation of consideration. It really is pretty delicious.

Caltrans uses their Highway Design Manual to determine the geometry of California State Routes, and includes details on lane widths, turning radii, shoulder width, vertical clearances, and so forth. Remember, a California State Route designation does not necessarily mean a limited accesss freeway. State Route 1 through Santa Cruz, for example, is known in town as “Mission Street.” State Route 82 is El Camino Real through much of the South Bay and the Peninsula in the SF Bay Area. State Route 50 is the main street across South Lake Tahoe. Large sections of SR 1 in Southern California — the Pacific Coast Highway — are used as surface roads.

Efforts to improve walking and biking on these stroads cum state highways can be difficult due to Caltrans insistence that these improvements violate their highway design standards. In December 2021, Caltrans Director’s Policy 37 on Complete Streets (DP-37) established that “in locations with current and/or future pedestrian, bicycle, or transit needs, all transportation projects funded or overseen by Caltrans will provide comfortable, convenient, and connected complete streets facilities for people walking, biking, and taking transit or passenger rail unless an exception is documented and approved.”

In conjunction with this policy, Caltrans determined that new contextual design guidance was needed to detail the minimum expectations for complete streets facilities by place type. The goals for this new design guidance are to:

• Develop guidelines for comfortable, convenient, and connected facilities that maximize the use of the existing right-of-way by prioritizing space-efficient forms of mobility.
• Provide minimum expectations based on context.
• Provide additional guidance on appropriate designs, especially recommended vs minimum facilities.
• Support streamlined design development for high volume of complete streets projects, due to new policy & funding.

Caltrans says DIB-94 standards will apply to state routes were bike and pedestrian facilities will be provided; with speed limits of 45 MPH or less; and located in urban, suburban, or rural main street places.

To read the full draft design guidance, download and read this 71 page PDF. I know it’s a lot. To provide public comment, you have to this Excel “Comment Matrix” spreadsheet, fill in your comments, and email the completed sheet to Complete.Streets@dot.ca.gov. Public comment will be accepted through May 10, 2023.

Welcome to the blog that discovers the cycling-adjacent weird and wonderful tidbits as I walk the aisles of the Sea Otter Classic 2023 Expo. Today, I talked with the two representatives of Jiangsu Snail Zhixing Technology Co.,Ltd , which manufactures solar-powered scooters.

Photovoltaic panels cover the front and the deck of this scooter, which I’m told can charge the battery in roughly six to eight hours on a sunny California day. They’re trying to break into the shared mobility market with this scooter. They believe that solar charging can benefit scooter share companies that currently must pay contractors to charge public scooter batteries.

I’m curious why they named they include the snail in their company name. These slimy, shelled gastropods don’t generally carry a positive connotation for Western consumers, so I asked, “Why snail? Does the snail have special significance in Chinese culture?”

They told me there’s no special meaning behind the snail, but they wanted to convey the idea that this scooter is snail-like in that snails keep moving along despite their (ahem) snail’s pace. I suppose the Western equivalent might be “slow and steady wins the race” from Aesop’s fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

That’s when I noticed the name of their scooter — the “Sunail” — is a pun. It’s a sun-powered snail that’s always on the go despite its languid pace. Get it?

The Snail Scooter company’s booth isn’t far from the tire bridge at Sea Otter if you’d like to see it for yourself, or watch their promotional video.