Bicycle Austin forum

Jack

Member

Registered: 2013-03-27

Posts: 344

Great Northern plan

Great Northern has a pretty bad bicycling facility already--a two-way bike lane on one side of the street.     
Pedestrians like to walk there too, bless them, and therein is the start of trouble.
Every cyclist is better off in the street than they are using it.

The proposed solution?  Make it worse by putting up pylons.  See the notice on the proposed plan here:
http://tinyurl.com/j4phbym

A cyclist riding on the path, as proposed, who must veer to avoid a dog-walker would have a new hazard to avoid too--the feel-good pylon.  These kinds of pylons (1) easily take down bicycles and (2) are expensive to erect and expensive to replace (they break easily--see Barton Springs Blvd. where thankfully they finally removed them and stopped trying to replace them).  Who is going to want to ride on the path instead of in the street?  The cyclists who are least likely to be aware of the hazards and how to avoid them.  Putting pylons in the road to segregate bicycle traffic from motor traffic violates MUCTD standards, and those standards are based on what we know prevents/contributes to dangerous conflicts.

The US Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, section 9C.02 says:

"Posts or raised pavement markers should not be used to separate bicycle lanes from adjacent travel lanes.  Support:
Using raised devices creates a collision potential for bicyclists by placing fixed objects immediately adjacent to the travel path of the bicyclist. In addition, raised devices can prevent vehicles turning right from merging with the bicycle lane, which is the preferred method for making the right turn. Raised devices used to define a bicycle lane can also cause problems in cleaning and maintaining the bicycle lane."

Better solutions include:
(1) removing the path and putting sharrows in both directions
(2) putting sharrows in both directions and making the path pedestrian only
(3) leaving the path as is and putting up a new path for pedestrians only
(4) removing the path and putting two conventional one-way bike lanes on the street.