Bike Lanes in and around DTR

Those would be really helpful. When I rode the pilot cycle track on Harrington it wasn’t clear who should do what and who had right of way at intersections when cars, bikes, and pedestrians all arrived at the same time.

Also a bit confusing as to how to exit the cycle track when needing to turn on to an intersecting street. That experience reinforced the need for a network of protected cycling facilities

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Included in tomorrow’s Council agenda is information on cycling infrastructure projects throughout the city, as requested by Oaks & Spokes, and there are some noteworthy tidbits:

Gorman Street Cycle Track – This project is currently in design between Sullivan Drive and Hillsborough Street and is scheduled to begin construction in September 2019.

Cameron Street bike lanes – Bike lanes along Cameron Street were installed earlier this year as part of a resurfacing project between Oberlin Road and Woodburn Road. Additional work is also slated between Woodburn Road and Smallwood Road to add bike lanes with the final pavement marking, which will be installed in July 2019.

Blount/Person Street Cycle Track – there are two pending projects along Blount Street and Person Street as part of the Blount/Person Corridor Plan implementation. Phase 1 will resurface and restripe portions of the street and will include the installation of a bike lane. The construction bid for this project has been awarded by Council and construction is imminent. Phase 2 will convert portions of the corridor from one-way to two-way operation. That project has just begun design and the projected construction date is being developed currently. Neither the Corridor Plan nor these projects contemplated the installation of a cycle track, however that concept may be evaluated with the Phase 2 project development.

Johnson Street bike lanes – As part of the Cameron Village area planning work, the idea of adding new bicycle infrastructure was proposed between Clark Avenue and St. Mary’s Street as a means of providing an alternative to cycling along Peace Street. That project scored within the second quartile of all bicycle marking projects proposed in the adopted BikeRaleigh plan and is not currently funded for implementation.

(emphasis mine)

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Charlotte has them already (see photo I took, below)! City has been using that as a talking point, but it’s not correct :+1:

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Hmm ok so I’m going to go ahead and guess that’s a City of Charlotte road but NCDOT doesn’t have any yet on their roads so obviously they need to do their own bureaucratic stuff and come up with their own standards (shrug)

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Painted bike lanes are waste of money, say cycling commissioners

The government has wasted hundreds of millions of pounds painting pointless white lines on busy roads and calling them cycle lanes, according to Britain’s cycling and walking commissioners.

In a letter to the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, the commissioners – including the Olympic champions Chris Boardman (Greater Manchester), Dame Sarah Storey (Sheffield City region) and Will Norman (London) – say painted cycle lanes are a “gesture” and do nothing to make people feel safer on a bike. Recent studies have shown they can actually make people less safe, they argue.

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I agree with what they are saying about white painted lines only, but disagree with their omission of referencing green painted bike lanes. I cycle a lot and it makes a big difference to how drivers perceive bike infrastructure.
I find the article a bit disingenuous and misleading when they show a poorly kept green painted bike lane in a photo while talking about only white painted lane markers. I understand where they are trying to go with their narrative, but it’s just too disingenuous to me.

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Really positive positional shift happening! I’m listening to the last Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission meeting and Commissioner Dwight Otwell as recommend that the city should mould future bike infrastructure guidelines with Danish/Dutch-style bike lanes vs the, imo, awful two-way cycle track/path idea floating around.

If you look below, Comm. Otwell has recommended the top design.

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How does the community feel about bike lanes and infrastructure in Downtown Raleigh at this time? More specifically, do you feel “safe” enough to comfortably ride a bicycle using the provided lanes and dedicated routes in town?

  • Yes, I feel comfortable riding a bike in DTR on roads using provided infrastructure
  • No, I do not feel comfortable riding a bike in DTR on roads using provided infrastructure

0 voters

I don’t feel safe walking, biking, or driving anywhere in Raleigh/North Carolina. We’ve created quite a hostile environment for ourselves. It amazes me how transportation/pedestrian safety is not higher on people’s agendas. I don’t know that there is a bigger day to day threat to my mortality than getting mangled in an auto accident.

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I don’t feel safe sleeping, eating, or working here either.

In seriousness though, it seems that compared to northern cities the roads lack engineering, and that the infrastructure for bike lanes and sidewalks, (not the amount of them but the infrastructure for ones that are already here) is lacking.

Here is an example of a well built bike lane

image

Here is what our lanes look like:

Also parking that is separate from the road

We could also use a way to terminate the bike lanes like this

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Just to tack onto that but that design shown is for 2-lane NCDOT roads. They require a clear zone between any cars and any trees along the side (if you drive off the road, it’s ok to run over bicyclists, not trees!!). For City of Raleigh roads, the design would flip flop the bike lane with the strip of trees to provide additional protection for bicyclists/pedestrians

(The 1st one on each page is the current standards, 2nd one on each page is the recommended future design for NCDOT roads and the 4th one is the recommended future design for City of Raleigh roads - the 3rd and 5th “Sidepath” options were put aside for now)

There was some sort of discussion last night about context and what size of development would trigger these standards (some concern about having blocks with bike lanes and then others without which could be dangerous) - at the very least they can be implemented with any resurfacing or capital improvement projects.

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Poll is currently showing not comfortable/comfortable riding on streets at about 2/1. Is it possible to change that spread by providing more or different bicycle paths, routes, and lanes? Or is the reality that some people are just not interested in riding a bike for transportation? If it is possible to get more people riding comfortably, will it be worth the amount of money and effort that will have to be spent to create such improvements?

I’m interested just not here in Raleigh. Drivers are too aggressive, road speeds are too high, and things are too far apart. Used to ride around Buffalo on a daily basis.

I think it’s possible but only if we are serious about providing a network of separated and protected bicycle facilities AND if we ever get serious about reducing sprawl in Raleigh.

Bicycle trips are amazing but only really feasible for most people if they don’t have to travel more than 3 miles.

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Well to be fair Raleigh is adding very little to sprawl at this point in time. It’s all the other cities in Wake County that is adding to the sprawl.

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I wasn’t attempting to pin blame on anybody - just stating that the current situation is that unless we start integrating more uses together in our zoning, it’s going to be not feasible for a significant portion of the population to bike regularly (even with protected bike lanes or other high quality bicycle infrastructure)

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That is actually a big point, 2017-2020 pop growth is going to be small while Raleigh makes the change to density and it definitely is.

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Raleigh will end this decade a slower growing, but more densely populated city than in the last several decades. The key to Raleigh’s future is how to add 500ppl/m2 each decade while not sprawling outward. I think that’s a very modest goal given how large our limits currently are.
Bicycle infrastructure in the most dense areas of the city is a key component to supporting that growth, as the additional 500 ppl/m2 are not likely to be be spread evenly across the city, rather more densely in some specific nodes: especially downtown.

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In my suburban area I have Not seen any dense building, and zero bike lanes. But four of the new, quite large, subdivision plans recently filed for my area only have triple story townhomes attached. My area is almost completely single family homes with apartments going up in a few areas. This will add a lot of density to my area, and it will provide a nest look to. Especially since two of these three of the four subdivisions are going to add connected street networks (their streets will connect to all of the other subdivisions and connect to major arteries) making driving and walking a lot easier, as well as connecting to high schools, hopefully this will have them add Bike lanes.

New suburban development is a lot more dense than old suburban development, and it’s more likely to consider pedestrians and cyclists, opposed to a lot of past development where even sidewalks weren’t always provided.

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