Brad Gorman Memorial at base of Mt. Lemmon to be completed this spring
From KVOA:
Trailhead near Mt. Lemmon to remember cyclist
author
Quinn SchulerTucson, AZ – It’s not easy going there but Jean Gorman and her husband still do.
“It’s just devastating without him,” Gorman said.
On his birthday and on holidays they visit the cross along the side of Catalina Highway. It’s the exact place where their son was killed.
Brad Gorman, 41, died in 1999 when a car hit him from behind. He was training for the annual El Tour de Tucson.
“Hit him at 50 plus miles per hour and killed him instantly,” Gorman said.
Since then she has pushed to have the bike lanes widened on Catalina Highway and the road re-named, “The Brad P. Gorman Memorial Bikeway.”
“My first thought was we had to make something good out of this situation,” Gorman said.
She says her work isn’t done.
Near the base of the mountain, they are planning another memorial. The county donated the land years ago, which is in a flood plain and not buildable.
She says with county money and donations they will begin construction in a few weeks. It will be a trailhead with parking, benches, water, an air pump for bike tires and most importantly it will be a safe place.
“This is a very dangerous area for cyclists at the base of Mt. Lemmon with no place to park,” Gorman said.
Jean Gorman seems to be everywhere advocating for bicyclist’s safety, and she is always there for others who, like her, have lost a loved one due to a motor vehicle accident. She’s a powerhouse who doesn’t seem to tire. Check out the first comment to the above article, and her response:
TUCSON CYCLISTS = ORGAN DONORS
12/9/2009 at 7:32AM
That’s what i call them. Every cyclists i see…i think….that’s a new kidney riding down the road. just a matter of time before he/she gets hit by a drunk illegal
Jean M. Gorman
12/9/2009 at 11:46AM
# 1. So sorry you feel this way. I do not totaly disagree with you, but join us in trying to improve the laws. The point of Memorials such as ours, Dan’s, Paul’s and Allen’s on Old Spanish Trail, Jose JR, on Broadway, David Bell Path around Reid Park, I could go on forever with names, Ghost Bikes and Crosses, never mind the injured by the 100,000’s in wheelchairs, or lost jobs, lost limbs. Memorials remind you that as a driver, pedestrian, or cyclist to be Aware, have gratitude not attitude, and respect each other life is precious, because it can happen to you. Help prevent that because a death or an injury has too many victims! Stay Safe Always
I think we could all learn a lot from Jean Gorman.
–Erik Ryberg
December 9th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Jean Gorman, I do not know her , I have never met her, but she is one classy person. I bet she was a great MOM as well. I wish I had the patience to deal with people she has. You’re right Erik, I’m one who can learn a lot from her. Thanks.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
[...] Photos of the CalTrain bike car. A Tucson mother fights for a memorial for her cycling son — and politely corrects thoughtless car-head commenters. Copenahgenize reminds us that us that New York’s recently [...]
December 10th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
True story about Jean:
I was at a community meeting a few years ago. I’d parked my bike outside the meeting, and had detached the headlight and tail light so they wouldn’t grow little legs and walk away.
Jean was one of the people who attended the meeting, and, when it was over, I noticed that she’d left a couple of presents on my bike. There was a new headlight and tail light.
She was standing nearby, and, she told me that she thought I was going to ride off into the night without lights. I pulled my lights out of my panniers and set them up for the ride home. This greatly reassured Jean — and freed up her lighting kit for someone who *really* needed it.
December 12th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
CLEAR PRISTINE DESERT FOR A PARKING LOT ? WHO’S GOING TO PATROL AT NIGHT PEOPLE SLEEPING THERE THEIR TRASH MOTION ACTIVATED LIGHTS CRIME PATROLLED COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN HOW COME HOMEOWNERS AND LANDOWNERS NOT NOTIFIED ARTICLE IS IDIOTIC THERES LIT SHOPPING CENTERS 3 MILES AWAY FOOD RESTROOMS ETC. tHE STATE HAS CLOSED REST AREAS AND WERE OPENING UP A NEW ONE
December 20th, 2009 at 8:25 am
I totally agree Bob! Catalina highway is NOT A NATIONAL PARK, it’s a 50 MPH highway with much more vehicle than bike traffic. This is a very dangerous undertaking, especially since the beginning of the so-called “trailhead” (where’s the trail?) placement for bicyclists will be on the west side of the highway, not the east, and the bicylists will have to cross traffic to get to it going north on Catalina Hwy! Sadly, no courtesy was extended the homeowners as near as 50 feet away from this project; I am, however, not surprised. We have a quiet neighborhood, especially in the evening, and want to keep it that way. Constructing this rest/picnic facility (not trailhead!) in this location open 24 hours a day is absolutely absurd!
December 21st, 2009 at 11:42 am
There’s no NIMBY quite as whiney as a Tucson NIMBY.
“Now that I’ve ‘clear(ed) pristine desert’ for *MY* house, all you riff-raff need to STAY AWAY!”
So how is a safe clean facility off the road with security lights that is patrolled and maintained somehow worse than people just parking all over the side of the road like they do now?
December 21st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Safe? Clean? Patrolled? Maintained? GET REAL!
How is it a good idea to spend $100,00.00 of taxpayers money to build a bike rest area when we are closing other rest areas due to budget cuts? We are also laying off police/firemen (And you think they will patrol it all night, every night)? Do you seriously think that this is going to make riding a bike on Catalina Hwy safer, when it will hold only 14 parking spaces and vehicles travel well over the 50mph speed limit? Where will the overflow park: On the Hwy and obstruct vision to the area residents (now you are putting more people in danger. Who is going to maintain/repair it, empty the trash and clean up the place? Answer: Volunteers…Ya, right! Where will the people go to the bathroom, and will the volunteers clean that up too? Another brilliant idea by our government officials to waste more money!
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
You’re worried about overflow parking, safety, cleanliness? That’s just it – people who ride in the Catalina National Forest are parking along the road there now, this just gives them a safe place to park and unload bikes off the road. I agree this is probably a whole lot fancier and expensive than it needs to be – all that’s really needed to accomplish the safety objective is a parking lot off the road, it doesn’t even really need to be paved. But I have no doubt that the surrounding NIMBYs would whine even louder about a public use facility that’s actually UGLY.
You’re not fooling anybody NIMBY; your one and only concern here is what it might do to your property values to have a public mini-park within sight of your foothills property.
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 am
I will not stoop to your level in name calling.
This is about safety and unecessary spending of taxpayers money. People do NOT currently park on the side of the highway, they park 2.5 miles down the road in a parking lot. This is NOT a trailhead, it is a PARKING LOT/REST AREA in a neighborhood. It is dangerous for EVERYONE if it is built just a few feet off of a highway that has a posted speed limit of 50 mph. You are obviously not thinking this through, which does not surprise me.
END OF STORY!
December 24th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Yeah, it’s dangerous to your sense of elitism that they should park safely within sight of your foothills home instead of unsafely along that “highway” down a bit where you don’t have to see them. Anyone who’s ever taken that road knows exactly where they park now because they’ve seen the cars lined up on the shoulder. It’s pretty obvious what this is really about for you. Funny how the only ones who claim that this lot is somehow less safe that the current shoulder-parking status quo are the folks who own property adjacent to it.
January 9th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
[...] Reader comments on his blog show the nature of the opposition to the planned trailhead. From the Tucson Bike Lawyer blog: BOB Says: December 12th, 2009 at 10:14 [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
From Paul’s Thing; http://pwoodford.net/blog/?p=3455
“First of all, I think it’s highly unlikely the trailhead memorial organizers screwed up. Clearly, they’d gone to the proper agencies and put in the required plans and paperwork. If anyone screwed up, if anyone really did fail to notify neighborhood residents (which I rather doubt), it is the Pima County Department of Transportation.”
Interesting perspective. While I do not disagree that the DOT failed to notify nearby (less than 50 feet in some cases) residents, I believe the DOT program manager intentionally did not seek public comment so that the rest area (Trailhead – YGBSM!) would be under construction by the time anyone knew what was going on. The site is not appropriate, a waste of funds (what is wrong with the Emily Gray Trainhead less than 1/2 mile away?) and was rightfully removed from consideration.
The organizers did screw up – an article was published in the paper and the public found out what was going on and spoke up before construction had begun.
The fact that the county could get through 2 years of planning, expend RTA funds for a project that isn’t in the RTA charter and let an organization collect donations for a project that hasn’t been fully vetted should outrage everyone in Pima county. “Jesus, this berg.”
January 14th, 2010 at 10:14 am
The objections to this project are petty
and unfounded. Trailheads for various
recreational activities exist all over
the county with no reported problems.
This tactic of ‘not being informed’ is
commonly used to thwart public projects
and is simply an ‘adult’ temper tantrum.
The idea of bicycles getting something
is grating to the car culture that
thinks it should have it all. REALLY!
January 16th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Coghauler said:
“The objections to this project are petty
and unfounded.”
Please expand?
“The idea of bicycles getting something
is grating to the car culture that
thinks it should have it all.”
Meaning?
The project hasn’t been cancelled. It will be located at another site.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
I’m not convinced, DLC, that you are not
aware of the objections to the project.
If you don’t think they’re petty and
unfounded, then I’m not going to convince
you otherwise in the confines of this blog.
Likewise, if you can’t recognize the under-
lying selfishness of the car culture, then I
guess you’re just predisposed to not seeing
it.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:32 am
I’m not convinced either that this can be categorized as a bike vs car issue; after all, it seems to be the fact that this is essentially a car parking lot that is the sticking point. Based on past NIMBY observation, I don’t think this is any more complex than the neighbors fearing that a public (i.e. riff-raff) facility like this would make their foothills property, and themselves by association, less “special.”
January 17th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
See tucsonvelo.com for what
seems to be the most informative
article I’ve seen on this project.
January 20th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
Reviewed the article – thanks for pointing it out. Not sure why you think it is informative. The last line is very telling – there is nothing safe about the location, and it is all about memorializing Brad Gorman.
I ask again – what is wrong with improving the existing trailhead at Emily Gray County park now that there are bike lanes on Melpomene? It has lights, water, parking for 50 plus cars, very low cost, etc..
CH – sorry you couldn’t expand on the “petty and unfounded” objections; it would have been nice to hear a rational counter point. I suspect there isn’t one…..
January 21st, 2010 at 12:23 pm
First of all, where exactly is this Emily Grey County Park located? Is it somewhere near the school? I’m not familiar with it, and apparently neither is Google, Mapquest, or even the Pima Co Parks & Rec website. If it’s not something that anyone can find, it won’t get used, and we’ll still have everyone parking on the shoulder of a busy road.
I don’t speak for CH, but *I* think the objections are petty and unfounded simply because the supposedly non-petty ones are such red herrings. Traffic safety? Any possible thing they can do on this property will be safer than the current roadside parking – red herring! Security i.e. parties, homeless camps etc? Has not been a problem at any other similar facility – red herring! Wasted tax money? Yeah, this pisses me off too, but you notice that there is stimulus package road construction/improvement going on all over this state despite our financial insecurity – funded by monies that cannot be used for general fund stuff even if all construction projects halted. Red herring!
All this is about is a bunch of whining NIMBYs who just don’t want a public facility built on public land in view of their foothills property – nothing more nothing less. Petty.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:58 pm
The Emily Gray Trailhead is on the Pima County bicycle map produced by the county. I figured most riders would use the bike map to find out about bike stuff – my bad. http://www.pagnet.org/documents/bicycle/maps/BikeMap2009page1.pdf
I figured you had a copy – sorry. There is also a trailhead at Molino Basin. Oh, there are 600+ parking spots at the two shopping centers at Catalina Hwy and Tanque Verde; I can see why we can’t live without these 14 parking spaces along a 50 MPH road.
Now I get it – let’s stick it to the whinning, car driving NIMBYs! Talk about petty. (We ride bikes too!)
BTW the foothills are west of the Sabino Creek wash and north of River Road. The area we are discussing is called the Tanque Verde Valley.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:51 am
Funny how this one special document is the only place that acknowledges the existence of the place – so is this a real facility or is it just an extra name given to a school parking lot (with all the attendant school parking lot restrictions on hours, access, etc.) to pad the bike facility count and bluff our way into a higher “bike friendly” rating than we deserve?
And nobody is “sticking it” to anybody – the very few adjacent property owners that are objecting to the project won’t actually suffer any *real* consequences from this existing public land being put to legitimate public use and they know it. Even they know how lame the “because I don’t want to look at it” excuse really is, that’s why they have to make up all the red herring stuff to pretend that they’re not just being petty.
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:43 pm
That is right…hiding their private
desires behind public concerns.
These owners expect to be granted
de facto ownership (by denying to the
public the use of public land), yet
deferring to the public the
responsibility for that land.
Only through de jure ownership can
anyone reasonably expect protection
from upsets to their world.
This concept- Responsibility and cost
born by the MANY for the benefit of the
FEW- doesn’t seem all that attractive.