BIKE: SoCo

[Thorne]

Thanks, Eric.  Depends on what you mean by "fine space."  It's not
recognizable as a travel lane for a car or a bike.  It appears to be there to
give space to delivery trucks and folks backing out of parking and such.  For
bicycle travel down Congress, it's the rough equivalent of riding the sidewalk
or a parking lot, i.e., a relatively lawless area where you can't really
predict where the next hazard will come from.  Defacto bike lane my arse. 
It's poor design and thinking of it as a cycleway treats cyclists as other
than legitimate traffic.

Usually, I ride the lane.  When I ride the space, only if traffic is really
heavy, I ride just right of the travel lane--that is just about the space I'd
ride if the lane was a bit wider as I proposed.  Others ride it near the curb,
and some of those are riding against traffic--not so safe.

------ Original Message ------
Received: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 11:41:20 PM CDT
From: Eric Anderson <bikeeric>
To: forum: Thorne <jeffrey.thorne>
Subject: RE: BIKE: SoCo

Bike folks:

Re: Diagonally striped SOCO non-travel lane on north-bound Congress,
Jeffrey is correct that it is not a travel lane. However, it is a fine
space for cyclists.

I brought up the same concern when striped just over a year ago, when the
SOCO CAG was assembled. Both then bike coordinator Linda DuPriest and COA
traffic engineers confirmed that it is a defacto bike-lane, just like
-diamond lanes- downtown when they are not used for unloading.

One could argue that the SOCO lane should be signed?, use diamonds, or
perhaps, just give us the damn bike lanes!

Eric

--- Thorne <jeffrey.thorne> wrote:

> On second thought, I should amend my position:
> 
> Between Nellie and Annie and maybe farther south than that, a cyclist
> would
> benefit by having more room created in the lane by replacing angled
> parking
> with parallel parking--no bike lane stripe in the door zone please!  I
> didn't
> mention that before because I thought the idea is too much for the
> businesses
> to take, with a net reduction in parking, or so it had already been
> decided. 
> Is a parking solution available?  Maybe Stuart can help with revisiting
> that.
> 
> Also, I'm unclear about how the construction on Congress over by the
> School
> for the Deaf and south of Nellie will affect cycling traffic.  I'm sure
> Stuart
> is on that too.  How is that supposed to look?
> 
> Another situation on Congress is that wide painted area in the
> northbound lane
> by the apartments and Starbuck's.  With it painted like that, it plainly
> isn't
> a traffic lane, so I feel odd riding in that area.  On the other hand,
> the
> traffic lane immediately left of it is too narrow for autos to pass
> cyclists
> while remaining in that lane.  If that painted area were just a bit
> narrower,
> the lane to its left could be made wide enough to accomodate a bike and
> a car
> safely.  I'd prefer that to having to take the lane and push passing
> autos
> over to the left lane.
> 
> Jeff (amended)