BIKE: Link posted to Pfluger "preferred alternative"

[Mike Dahmus]

On 12:28 PM 1/22/2005 -0600, Fred Meredith wrote:
>A little less direct, but no unsignalized crossing stress, a little more 
>exercise, but hey, we expected that when we started riding bikes.
>
>Even motorists don't have direct routes to all of their destinations. Give 
>it a rest on street choices and concentrate on getting across real 
>barriers like the railroad right of way.

I didn't think you'd be able to come up with a good route. Full confession: 
I used Lamar when I lived northwest of 6th/Lamar to get to UTC meetings. 
For large parts of the day, you don't want to cross 5th or 6th at a 2-way 
stop sign. Which is the whole point - this Pfluger extension we apparently 
are headed towards will likely drop us on 6th Street (misaligned with 
Henderson) with a big fat STOP sign, and no such control for traffic on 6th St.

The practical reason this is important is that the Pfluger Bridge is 
supposed to be attractive enough to remove cyclists and pedestrians from 
the Lamar Bridge. If it doesn't do this, it will be viewed as a failure by 
the people who hold the purse strings, which will hurt us on future 
projects of any kind. It doesn't matter how nice the bridge is in 
isolation, or how nice it works for the Seaholm redevelopment in 2020, or 
how nice it works for the Gables complex in 2015; if it doesn't pull people 
off the Lamar bridge, it will be obvious on DAY ONE (2007 or so), and it 
will start to do its political damage at that time.

In other words, the Pfluger extension needs to be good enough to show the 
"bankers" that it was a good investment so they'll give us the money again 
next time. If the route is "out of the way" enough that most serious 
cyclists stay on Lamar, well, whatever you and Stuart think, we're in 
trouble. The next big project will be met with cries of "we did what you 
wanted on Pfluger, and it didn't do the job; why should we send any more 
money your way?"


Mike Dahmus
mdahmus