I run into the same situation on Harrington. I try not to let it bother me. Sometimes I so badly want to push it into the middle of the road or down the street but takes too much effort and isn’t worth it.
Other bad areas are right in front of the courthouse which is pretty sad. I’d be curious what would happen if I was to go park in the far right lane while others are blocking the bike lane. My guess is that the ones blocking the bike lane would be fine, but the one fully blocking the right lane would be ticketed. Only a guess, but who knows?
This is why I want slow roads instead of bike lanes (although enforcement would be good). Experienced bikers can still use the road while slower riders can remain on wide sidewalks. When I was in Germany, I saw a lot of shared pedestrian and bike paths. Netherlands had more bike infrastructure but in the city center it was slow roads. Sidewalks get blocked here as well.
DC has similar bike lanes that in the middle without the median. Look at Pennsylvania Avenue NW. I’m mixed on them. I don’t know how I feel about them. I kind of don’t like them if you want to stop by a business. However since you might have to go to the end of the block to make a U-Turn anyway to get to a business on the opposite side of the road, then it’s not that different.
I like that it’s a 2 way cycle track. I’d prefer to have a 2 way cycle track on one side of the road. You run into the same issue of crossing the street, but at times there’s no avoiding it with any of the options.
I checked out some youtube videos of the Penn Ave NW lanes. Interesting. I think I’m mixed on them too. Having 3 lanes of car traffic on either side of me would make me nervous. Not sure that would induce the “interested but concerned” into biking. But they do have lots of signage, markings and signals to help cyclists navigate the lanes - I like that. Still, I think I’d have to ride the lanes at an off time, e.g., 5am Sunday, to get comfortable with the navigation.
But yeah, my preference would be a 2-way cycle track that was parking protected or behind the curb.
Hey @Brian, speaking of 2-way cycle tracks – is there any particular reason one couldn’t be installed on Morgan St. between Hillsborough St. and Dawson St.? Seems like one of the two eastbound lanes could be easily transformed to make a quality east-west connection. However I always felt like there must have been a reason it hasn’t been considered by now. As a BPAC guy, any thoughts?
I think one of my favorites is next to West St. in Manhattan although it only seems to run for a half mile. Search “West Thames Park” area. I’ve only walked down the area. I haven’t been there since Feb 2020. I’ll have to make another trip.
We have a city bike plan from 2016 that sort of guides those staff decisions around bike lanes and I don’t see that section of Morgan St being included in the 10-year priority plan so that’s why it hasn’t been discussed ever. We’ll probably need to update that Bike Plan sometime in the near future.
That section of Morgan is designated as having bike lanes in the Raleigh Bike Plan. It certainly seems like there’s enough space to convert one of the east bound lanes to a two-way cycle track. I’ve bike this section of Morgan St. many times and two lanes for cars seems unnecessary from my experience. Just doesn’t seem to be the volume of cars here to necessitate two lanes. As always, a potential issue is the loss of on-street parking. But as I look at it on Google street view it seems like there’s a lot of off-street parking. I don’t know who owns what or how that parking is assigned.
The real challenge is funding. There is very little money for stand-alone bike lane projects. The way we get most new lanes is through the street resurfacing program. Every year a certain set of streets gets new asphalt, i.e. they are resurfaced. At that time city staff look at the bike plan to see if any streets due for resurfacing are included in the bike plan and how feasible it would be to actually add bike lanes. BPAC is then asked to weigh in on the designs. The other way we get new lanes is during major street improvement projects, e.g., Lake Wheeler Road.
I see @pierretong has already responded more succinctly than me - thanks Pierre!
That’s really the driving issue - we can’t even complete projects that we had in the Bike Plan. At one point I think we had completed less than 10% of the projects proposed from 2016 from the 10-year plan so in 2020, staff asked BPAC to scrap that list from the 2016 plan and focus instead on a list of projects the city would actually consider doing due to the lack of progress on the 2016 list (the 2020 revised list being focused around resurfacing projects and corridor/intersection projects the city already had in the pipeline)
Frustrating. Maybe the City could do more to allocate funding, but I really wish that SB-643 had a chance of passing. Seems like it could make a big impact.
If there were a way to quantify “carbon emissions prevented per x miles of bike lanes,” my other crazy idea is to set up a nonprofit and sell carbon credits for the purpose of providing municipalities more money to install bike infrastructure (assuming there is even some mechanism to do so). Buying carbon credits is pretty popular amongst climate conscious and/or PR-savvy businesses, but turns out a lot of carbon credits are BS.
With the current makeup of the state legislature, feels like someone’s gotta get creative.
There’s going to be a big push behind the 2024 transportation bond to include a lot of funding for standalone bike/ped projects - potentially up to 1/3 of the bond.
Oaks & Spokes is inviting avid bikers and supporters of bike lanes to this meeting tonight from 6 to 8 p.m. This is a meeting regarding the Person St and Blount St Improvement project. Please spread the word!
VDOT and Fairfax County listened in and made your dream a reality!
And yes, the continuous path is on the north side of the at-times-16-lanes-wide freeway, ensuring maximum sunshine on the trail even in the depths of winter.
Oh, that was a nightmare, not a dream? Well, nightmares are just a variety of dream!
. Curious what the actual size will be.