by Jack Lee
For years rural Bruce road has been an important leg of the spring Wildflower Bicycle Race. It’s also the only connection for the bike path starting at Little Chico Creek estates, and works it’s way behind the Hank Marsh Jr. High School and eventually goes under the freeway and ends on Humbolt a few blocks from Main Street (an access the downtown).
Bruce Rd. is an key corridor for bicyclists and it’s become increasingly popular for cars traversing from the Skyway to East Ave. in the morning commute and back again for the evening commute. What Bruce Rd. is not, is safe.
If you have ever had an occassion to travel Bruce from the Skyway to Hwy 32 on a bicycle you will soon become very aware of the various choke points where slow moving bicycles are forced to share the pavement with fast moving cars or take to a loose, rocky shoulder and risk a spill. There are some areas of Bruce Rd. that are so narrow a bicyclist and a fast moving vehicle are separated by mere inches, even if the bicyclist is on the road’s rocky shoulder. (See picture above) Unless I’m forced into it I won’t ride my bike on Bruce Rd. It was so dangerous at one point I had to dismount and walk my bike carefully along the edge of the road as traffic flashed past me, just north of the stop light at Picholine Way.
As the traffic flow increases on Bruce, so do the odds that we will have a fatal between a bicyclist and a car. Why it hasn’t happened before now has simply been a matter of luck. Of all the places around Chico that need improvement for public safety I believe Bruce Rd. ranks right at the top. A copy of this article will be sent to our City Council, but adding your voice couldn’t hurt!
Goodness, I’m more out of the loop than I thought. When did the fake lakes off 32 go in?
I don’t think that I will be standing for any more “poor mouthing” re the city finances. There is no small quantity of money in the little town.
Libby, you are right the City of Chico has been awash in tax dollars, we’ve alway had a pretty well-to-do City, thanks in no small part to the University. The problem has been unbelievably foolish decision making by the past City Council. They indebted the City. The last count I heard was we owed about 23 million dollars more than we could afford to repay. Anyway…when the true financial picture finally became known, we had been two years in decline for tax revenues, thus exacerbating the situation. This caused the substantial tax reserves to be drained quickly and the next thing we knew we were running up against heavy debt without the revenue stream to pay it back. There was a choice, either raise taxes, default on loans or start cutting services and layoff positions. This was an awful choice, and it was the fault of City Council, the City Manager and the Finance Officer. We elected the wrong people to the council. They were clueless about how to run a City budget and they blew it. The taxpayers were mad and they didn’t feel like they should be forced to pay for mistakes the Council made. Yet, many of those same citizens voted for those people and two of them still remain on the council!
Raising taxes to cover up the mistakes of liberals has never been a very viable fix, as this allows them to escape responsibility and then it happens again because they never learned.
I’m not a native but I’ve been here for 25 years and they were there when I move here.
Poor mouthing? No. Poor management and nefarious or crony spending is the thing…and that isn’t good for any municipality of any size.
There’s plenty of money to support the formation of the state of Jefferson. Some of it has bailed out of the Bay Area. Most of it is home grown.