and does not make you stink after a 3 mile ride to work on a 100f and 100% H day.
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Raleigh didnāt build that, tho. That was the state and NCMA
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and because youāre provided with direct and dedicated routes to everywhere you want to go.
no one ever said driving is not convenient in our current system. convenience should not be the driving factor in providing public services. Nor should it be how we order our lives.
No doubt its fun. Please continue to enjoy at a safe speed, taking all due precautions.
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Convenience should be a driving factor in providing public transitā¦
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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Raleigh Bikeshare
Saw someone riding their bike on Wade Avenue yesterday and then another riding on McDowell this morning.
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Lord bless their souls.
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@dwight Letās keep it on topic.
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It seems to me that bike lane proposals should be studied/addressed/considered from both a demand side and a supply side. Itās easy to look at a map and identify where weād like a bike lane to be, but it might also be useful to look at which roads in the city are already sized properly to accept bike lanes. Iād love to see an audit that identified every road in the city where bike lane installation would easily be accommodated, and use that information to inform decision making vis-a-vis our ideals. It would seem to me that looking at both sides of the equation could accelerate installation of bike infrastructure and expand opportunities more rapidly.
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As someone whoās currently helping with a bike plan for another city in NC, thatās what every bicycle plan should do. I would be shocked if the consultant who worked on the 2016 Raleigh bicycle plan (who is very highly respected in the bicycle world) didnāt take that into account.
The problem is that the roads that can be easily retrofitted or restriped are right now 100% devoted to vehicular travel so even if you can maintain travel lanes/turn lanes for cars, telling the public they are going to lose some space on the road is going to make people lose their minds and react irrationally.
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Oh well, hate it for them.
Iām not even talking about taking away lanes. Iām saying that there are roads out there that simply exceed the minimum design requirements for their intention, and that should be considered. For example, if the speed limit on a road is 25 MPH, whatās the optimal lane width for that speed? My guess is that there are many roads that exceed that width and bike lanes would be an excellent way to calm speed by design instead of relying only on a sign.
That said, I do realize that thereās a battle of public perception to fight, and that many drivers will perceive any change to the roads that they drive to be an attack on them.
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The blue line would be a 2-way bike lane down Boundary/Brookside.
The small orange section would be TBD. That intersection is getting an update at some point if Iām not mistaken, and when that happens, depending on what they are proposing, weād want to tie in an interchange for the bike route too that keeps it flowing and keeps it safe.
The red line is a new construction bike bridge alongside the road. I know this would be expensive, but with the amount of residential units being proposed at the IronWorks location and the connection from North Hills starting to happens (MidTown East development / Wegmans) this may be a pretty high traffic bike route.
All of this comes out to Person St. where the new bike lanes will soon be put in that connect to downtown proper. (This may also end up being the preferred biking route to downtown from the 5 Points / Whitaker Mill neighborhoods)
** Just a note. I havenāt spent a ton of time thinking this through. There may be a ton of flaws, but its just what I always envisioned for this route.
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So Wake Forest Road from Person/Blount St to Brookside Dr is getting a road diet this summer that would add bike lanes. Theyāre going to install a roundabout at the Wake Forest Road & Brookside Dr intersection if Iām not mistaken (not sure if itās part of Phase 1 or not of the Blount/Person project). So thatāll be a much more direct route than the blue line but I would welcome improvements there as well!
The bike bridge would definitely be expensive unless you got one of the developers in the Whitaker Mill area to pitch inā¦and given how the history of pedestrian bridges/tunnels have gone so far in my time in Raleigh, I wouldnāt be optimistic at all about it. As part of the Capital Boulevard project, they looked at a bridge between Five Points and Mordecai/Seaboard Station and deemed it was too expensive.
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The red line could be something like thisā¦ http://www.makeabridge.com/retrofit-narrow-bridges-with-new-aluminum-walkway.php
Edit: or orange line?
Access and flow is one thing. The other thing to take into consideration is the future redevelopment opportunities of the corridor. No one likes to live on or directly off a freeway like road. A road diet and sidewalks would add significantly to the atmosphere and attractiveness for future development along this corridor. The apartment and condo complexes near the Six Forks Intersection can easily connect to Dock 1056/Iron Works, which easily can connect down to Person St. Like I mentioned above, Light Industrial seems like the path of least resistance for redevelopment and zoning changes. Raleighās growth is huge, and it needs density. Although not ideal in a perfect world, this corridor is probably best option to try something different with a realistic shot of being feasible.
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Donāt forget that some of the amendments to the Capital Blvd plan include proposals for pedestrian bridges running over Capital from west Mordecai to east 5 Points. Although, where you go on a bike after that, I have no idea.
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More bike commuters = less cars on the road.
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I get this. Iām not anti-bike lanes or anti-bike. Iām just saying despite the bias on here for bikes, 99% of commuters will take their cars over a bike. Ideas on here about eliminating parking decks, on street parking, parking requirements, major thoroughfares, etc are just self indulgent pipe dreams. Itās a free discussion place here, and thatās fine, but it gets a little old sometimes. Iāll just mute the threads and keep it to myself.
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The thing though is that more people wonāt bike until you build the same quality infrastructure for them as we have for cars. Itās like saying nobody will drive when there are dirt roads and unconnected roads everywhere
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I fully understand that car supremacy is the reality we live in. But of all places, this should be an appropriate space to dream of and discuss an alternative (IMO better) world.
I would also point out that the changes I suggest are actually quite small, like an 8% reduction in travel lanes to downtown from North Raleigh. Give up some percentage of on street parking (which itself amounts to a relatively small portion of total downtown parking spaces.) And yet note the visceral reaction. Of course any reallocation of a limited public resource is going to make winners and losers, but the point is, in the US, for a full century now, absolutely nobody has been on the winning side other than motorists - and they are quite accustomed to this treatment and arenāt going to let go of it without a fight.
Most people are so inured to the way things are that they donāt even realize how bad the situation is. Do you think sidewalks are pedestrian infrastructure? Nope theyāre car infrastructure. For millennia, pedestrians were always allowed to use the full street. There may have been paved sidewalks (āpavementsā) for their exclusive use, but those were there so they didnāt have to walk in the dirt - pedestrians were not required to use them. Only in the past 100 years has the change to the present status quo happened. The concept of sidewalks and jaywalking arose as a way to keep those pesky slow moving pedestrians on the margins (literally and figuratively marginalizing them) so drivers can have nearly the whole street to do their thing.
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