Bike Lanes in and around DTR

Not to mention snow removal.

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Rig up one of those driveable lawn mowers and attach a vacuum and trailer for storage?

Probably the same way they do the greenway trailsā€¦ or not at all.

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I was just going to say ā€œthey donā€™tā€. I was out for a ride today and several bike lanes had leaves and other debris in them.

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long term answer is to get a mini street sweeper to come through and clean it: Bike Lane Cleaning: Best practices, sweeper options - Bortek PWX

Short term answer: good luck! Hope you donā€™t wipe out on wet leaves

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If youā€™re a fan of Downtown Raleigh being a more people oriented place, please consider participating in this upcoming event next week to introduce folks to the N/S Greenway Connector (our 1st separated in-road bike facility DTR). Added bonus, lots of prizes to win and a great way to support local small businesses :slight_smile:

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I also consistently see people nearly mowing over pedestrians crossing Peace Street since there is no light from that BP exit and they want to go straight instead of turning right. It drives me mad.

Big win for the bike lanes on my street! Will ~pave~ the way for more of this.

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I was watching a video @pierretong put on another thread, and I was today years old when I learned the bike lanes that just got added on Person and Blount streets could get removed because of BRT. Was this news to anyone else?

The two-way conversion was planned separately from BRT, so the fact that the two projects conflict with each other only became a problem now. Unless one of their designs changes, the two proposals will need more space on parts of Blount St. than what physically exists. Kimley-Horn looked at 4 ways to make the downtown parts of the New Bern BRT corridor work with Blount-Person upgrades:

All of these options assume that bike lanes will get replaced by a BRT lane, since Phase 1 already removed one car lane. But even this had problems:

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Iā€™d been wondering about thisā€¦ but Iā€™m curious to know how theyā€™re just now noticing that two pretty major projects are conflicting with each other? And I hope theyā€™re making the same considerations for West St, should that become the selection for the North Corridor. Bureaucracy is a wild time.

Anyway, Iā€™m wondering if one of the considerations is making the bus lane on Blount a shared bus/bike lane. A lot of cities seem to be doing that lately. Itā€™s not my favorite idea, but itā€™s better than just eliminating the bike lane altogether.

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itā€™s definitely a conundrum - we need better bike facilities downtown but until recently we had no idea what route BRT is going to take downtown (and BRT is always going to trump any bike lanes downtown). So I guess the decision was going ahead and implementing these facilities or waiting years to let BRT settle out and make their decisions before implementation.

A shared bus/bike lane could certainly be an option (Shared Bus-Bike Lane | National Association of City Transportation Officials)
ā€œApplications should generally be limited to bus lanes with operating speeds of 20 mph or less, and transit headways of 4 minutes or longer.ā€
I wonder if there are any safety concerns if cars are allowed to make right turns from the dedicated bus lanes like it seems the New Bern project is allowing cars to do.

Going back to Blount-Person, Iā€™m having trouble wrapping my head around it but how much sense it makes to do only a two-way conversion for segments of Blount/Person? Personally I would prefer just all or nothing but I havenā€™t thought through how a partial conversion might look.

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So Iā€™m watching this video while I work because I like these sorts of things. Eric Lamb basically said that they will most likely remove the bike lane and that they are indeed considering making the bus lane shared. But, as Iā€™m looking at the slide below, Iā€™m noticing that there does appear to be space for a bike lane for at least part of this corridor. Can anyone guess where?

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with a parking deck located directly to the left of this photoā€¦

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Sharing bus and bike lane is definitely not the best idea to encourage people to bike. Those are dangerous for cyclists, especially when the bus has to pass.
Source: 10 years of biking in Parisā€¦

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Definitely agree with that. Iā€™m hoping they put out a survey on this before anything is set in stone, because I have every intention of telling them that street parking is totally unnecessary on a street with a parking garage entrance and a bus lane. Not that theyā€™ll listen, but one can dreamā€¦

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I know what you mean. I have ridden the bike share in Paris as well, and through bus-only corridors. It was very strange.

That sounds like a disaster. How will the buses pass the cyclists? And how will the cyclists pass the buses when they are at a stop.

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Well, the bus lane needs to be at least 4.5m width (in Paris), thatā€™s 14ft 9in. To give comparison, on an interstate, the minimum width per lane is 12ft.

If you are young and fast or have an electric bike, itā€™s ā€œokayā€ (I didnā€™t say ā€œgoodā€) because I was usually as fast as the bus, especially when they have a stop every 200m. I would usually pass the bus when it was stopped taking passengers. The situation where the bus passes a slow bike is really the dangerous one, especially if the bus drivers does it shortly before a stop as the bycicler ends up stuck between the bus and sidewalk!
Also, in Paris, dedicated bus lanes are usually separated from carā€™s lane with a small border.
This configuration definitely excludes beginners that are not very confident or families with kids for example.
Edit: typical example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nGk7iNdRBhDNHciw7

Thatā€™s why itā€™s only recommended that shared bus-bike lanes be used on roads with 20 mph speed limits to limit the amount of times buses are passing bikes.

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If BRTs will use this corridor, though, that automatically means buses will have headways of no more than 15 minutes per line.

On top of that, major GoRaleigh and GoTriangle bus routes have to go in and out of the Moore Sq. station, and thereā€™s (hopefully) three more BRT lines coming as well. Even if that means buses wonā€™t run more frequently than every 4 minutes along a two-way Blount St., it seems pretty risky to just assume a shared bus-bike lane would be viableā€¦

The presenter mentioned it in the video you linked to before, but they said a shared bus/bike lane didnā€™t look too good in their simulations, either :confused:

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