Bicycle Austin forum

I work in West Campus, so I walk past this spot quite a bit. I think this is a dumb idea and should be replaced with a sharrow in the right lane of Guadalupe.

One thing I'd like to point out is that there is a very long row of bike racks that separates the sidewalk proper from the protected bike gutter. I'm guessing that the advocates for this project will say that this row of racks will discourage pedestrians from walking into the gutter, erm, bike lane. What I've noticed in practice, however, is that pedestrians do avoid the bike racks when going to the bus bulb-out, but they do it by walking into the gutter, down the whole length of the bulb-out, and then onto the bulb-out. The fence and bike racks seem to encourage more pedestrians in the bike lane/gutter than if they were just crossing straight across.

I also want to add that I think that this is a terrible project and should be opposed, but the real problem here is that there was no public input process about a change to a bike facility, particularly one as important as this one.