Council unanimously expands cyclist harassment ordinance

The ordinance now has a ban on harassing other people alongside streets.

By Rachel Krause

Published Oct. 20, 2009

City Council voted unanimously Monday night to amend the bicycle harassment ordinance to include a ban on harassing pedestrians and people who use wheelchairs traveling alongside the street.

This issue was tabled during the Aug. 17 meeting.

The original ordinance, which was passed June 15, made it a Class A misdemeanor to throw an object at a cyclist, honk at a cyclist with the intent to frighten them, or knowingly place a cyclist at risk for injury.

Robert Johnson, education coordinator of PedNet Coalition, spoke out at the meeting on behalf of PedNet Coalition, a Columbia cyclist advocacy group.

"We certainly support expanding it to include other vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and people in wheelchairs," Johnson said.

City Manager Bill Watkins was in support of tabling the amendment for a later meeting.

"At council's direction, we have formed a group that is reviewing this," Watkins said. "They have torn into this, and they have very good ideas and suggestions. I think it will be in the next two months that we will get a report. My recommendation would be to table this again until we can get this group's thoughts and recommendations ready."

Despite Watkins' and Fourth Ward Councilman Jerry Wade's efforts to table the measure, Mayor Darwin Hindman expressed strong desires to pass it.

"The vulnerable groups, clearly to me, includes pedestrians and bicyclists and people in wheelchairs that are on the street," Hindman said. "I just think that we passed the original ordinance and that we ought to include these other people. I think we ought to tell these vulnerable groups that we are including them."

After a discussion, the council approved the measure, noting a committee would conduct further research and report back to the council at a later date.

Johnson was pleased with the outcome of the meeting.

"I think it's something that should've happened the first night back on June 15 when they said they were originally going to amend the ordinance," Johnson said. "It's just the common sense thing to do."

In other business, the council unanimously adopted a $64 million master plan for the renovation of Columbia Regional Airport.

The master plan for the airport involves short term plans to conduct major runway reconstruction and repair, the purchase of land adjacent to the airport and the extension of the airport's main runway. Long-term plans involve terminal improvements and expansion of the parking lots.

Joe Jackson, vice president of aviation for the facilities and infrastructure firm Reynolds, Smith and Hill, expressed the need for the plan to the council.

"It is a comprehensive study of what the facilities require for the next 20 years at the airport," Jackson said. "It describes those developments in the short to medium to long term, and it's essential for grant funding from the Federal Aviation Administration. If you don't have an approved master plan and airport layout plan, you don't get grants and that's one reason we moved forward with this study."