Downtown planning review made easy (sort of)
by D'Amico ... LOBV @ 1:51 pm []
As noted before, LOBV participated in stakeholder meetings for the downtown planning effort. Latest doc from the city is a final “framework” — a doosy at 174 pages.
We’ve made the reading a bit easy at the LOBV Web site at http://www.lobv.org/downtown/index.html by dividing up the work into documents highlighting bicycle circulation, along with key maps and cross sections. Also worth reading is the “San Francisco’s Shared Lane Pavement Markings: Improving Bicycle Safety” study, which outlines the case for and possible uses of sharrows.
[...] the Bicycle Austin Blog (revived recently by Rob D’Amico of the League of Bicycling Voters) and ATXBS, there is some [...]
Pingback by Downtown Plan Framework Available, Looks Good for Cyclists | Austin Bike Blog — December 4, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
So, Trinity St. remains a bicycle priority street while the less hilly alternatives, Red River St. and Congress Ave. are left out. My assessment is that despite the bike lanes and designation of Trinity St. as a “bike route”, it remains an undesirable route for bicyclists in practice.
The big hill on Trinity between 6th and 15th Sts. doesn’t go anywhere. The Congress Ave. hill (going north) goes up and stays up, to meet with Speedway at MLK. Red River St. (northbound) doesn’t go up considerably until 15th St., when the street leaves the Waller Creek valley. Trinity goes up to the elevation of the capitol hill then right back down to the Waller Creek valley. It’s no wonder that bicyclists usually avoid it after checking it out a few times.
I wouldn’t say that Trinity is a completely worthless route, but its primary benefit is it’s low level of motorized traffic. The only other benefits I can think of are 1) on its northern end at MLK, it leads directly to San Jacinto through the UT campus, 2) it provide a complementary route to San Jacinto south of MLK (even though San Jacinto is then oddly absent as a bicycle priority street), 3) it has a painted bike lane and easily enough room for one as well, and 4) it is designated as a bike route.
Why not designate Red River St. as a bike route instead of San Jacinto? The major obstacle seems to be Red River’s current use as a primary private motor traffic route or, as this downtown plan calls it, an automobile priority street. It’s arguable that Red River St. between 6th and 10th Sts. is a horrible route for automobiles. There is only one through lane each way, usually only one lane each way at all, such that car traffic gets stacked several cars deep when one car wants to turn across pedestrian traffic. (If it really is such a priority route, then the current traffic light timing certainly doesn’t reflect this either.)
Why does Red River St. need to be designated an automobile priority route? Where are these people driving from and to? From what I can tell from my many trips down this street, most automobile people are using Red River St. not for trips to or from Red River St., but rather as a way to _avoid_ I-35 and to _avoid_ the I-35 Frontage Road. Even the plan show the automobile priority route for Red River St. ending at MLK. Why couldn’t motorists use the I-35 Frontage Road instead of Red River St.? Those two roads are separated by a couple of blocks with no traffic lights inbetween, aside from the frontage road light that northbound traffic would have to traverse.
What is Red River St. to most automobile users other than a way to avoid I-35? Furthermore, do automobile users actually save considerable time, if any, by using Red River St. instead of I-35 or its frontage road? My experience when driving the two routes north of MLK is that the frontage road would be faster, but that traffic light timing would need to be adjusted on the frontage road.
Bicyclists would benefit a great deal from a redesign of Red River St. prompted by a recognition that it is in fact already a bicycle route in practice. Red River should be designated a bicycle priority route officially. The designation in this plan of Red River St. as an automobile priority route should be removed. Arguably, automobiles could be given Trinity St. and San Jacinto Blvd. without any considerable loss to bicyclists.
Comment by Tom Wald — December 7, 2008 @ 9:17 pm