I swear I’ve thought about parking a car right in front of the courthouse in the middle of the road because those bike lanes are always blocked as a statement.
However I also don’t want to waste my time since I don’t think it will make a difference. In the meantime I’ll use my faster ebike until the city gets serious. I’m already winning by not paying gas/registration/etc.
The roads and driving habits in NC are the absolute worst. Did you know that auto fatalities in North Carolina is at roughly 15/100k. This is worse Russia at 11/100k and nearly triple NY state at 5.8/100k. I find this to be fucked up.
I would assume most of that is from both of those places having most of their population concentrated in cities with subway systems that sharply reduce miles driven per person, especially while impaired.
I’ve been to Russia. We have safer drivers.
I’ve been to Russia as well. We don’t have safer drivers.
You want stats based on vehicle miles travelled? NY has safer roads and better driving habits. I really see no way to spin this.
Look at the stats - all the northern states are the safest and all the southern states are at the bottom. The difference? Culture and infrastructure. You can look at the stats on gun violence and basically observe the same trend.
Hah, you must have seen a different batch of Russian drivers than me!
I mean, St. Petersburg and Moscow are like any big European city -extremely dense and walkable. Once you get out into the less populated provinces, it obviously get much worse. The point is that infrastructure is what dictates behavior on the roads. In NC, we build roads to move cars. That’s it. Its a dangerous approach.
This is part of the problem…
Late to the party, but this is a terrible excuse. Why, you ask? Because the only route that serves this stop is the ZWX:
What’s the ZWX, you ask? It’s an express route that goes to Wendell and Zebulon. It runs a whopping three times before 9:00a and another three times between 4:00p and 6:30p. No weekends.
Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I’m pretty sure I see buses parked here in the middle of the day and on weekends, and usually for much longer than just a pick-up/drop-off. It’s pretty obvious to me that they use this spot for staging throughout the day. So yeah, I’m gonna call BS on that.
And, side note, it’s not just a problem for cyclists. Every time a bus is parked there and I’m trying to use that crosswalk heading towards Moore Square, drivers can’t see me until I’m halfway into the road. It’s ridiculous. Sorry, but no, that’s just a terrible excuse on their part.
Yup. It really sucks. I’m planning on speaking at the next Raleigh transit authority meeting on June 8th about it.
I’m adding another complaint to this thread. I was blindsided today when biking on my way home from work. I decided to ride back via the Greenway. I headed south on Ashe Avenue and remained on the road that has a sharrow. Normally once I get to Western, I could use the ramp to get onto the sidewalk. Today I found out the sidewalk was redone with no ramp and had to stop and pull my bike up onto the path at the stop sign. This was very poorly designed.
In the mornings, I would normally use the ramp, get up on the Island on Ashe and then head north. If I want to do that, I now have to get onto Western Blvd and ride against traffic or use the sidewalk which has no clearance for a bike and pedestrian at the same time.
Pictured of the new section (there is no ramp).
Two pictures of what it used to look like. I would normally use that ramp, ride up onto that island (which is shallow), then head north with traffic. I’m curious to see what effect this may have on bike ridership on that path. I know there’s a counter there. I won’t be going that way anymore which sucks because it was a decently low stress route. Note how small that sidewalk is when it gets right next to the road. The fence blocks anyone from going off.
In other news, I wasn’t sure where to put this, but here’s apartments going up on W. Cabarrus St. I tried searching the threads, but I don’t think it’s the 401 Cabarrus Apartments as those are on the south side.
im not sure of rider demographics. i assume the many from wendell and zebulon heading downtown are state employess? aside from that would some express bus from wendell/zebulon be better to go to the county offices on poole road for county services, again, assuming thats were most county offices are now?
There’s a pretty well established thread on these apartments. They have the famous sea foam green trim…
Platform and West End II - Development at W Cabarrus/S Saunders
Ugh, I noticed that ramp change yesterday on my ride. WTF? The sidewalk as is between that corner and the first entrance for Pullen is not only too narrow, it’s also rough as hell. If they’re planning to fix the rest of the sidewalk I guess it’s an okay change, but like you, I just don’t see myself going southeast from campus on that route anymore. Which is a shame, but I’ll just end up using the traffic circle to get across Pullen and the ride through the park’s parking lot (yaay, parking lot rides are so fun and safe).
Riding in to campus, where I would usually be on the street for that last bit of Ashe before getting on the path, I just rode a little further along and cut through the grass. There were multiple bike tire tracks already going the same way. Whatever the city was trying to accomplish with that, I don’t think they did it.
Every time there is a greenway survey I always provide feedback on this intersection. Right now I ride through the Pullen parking lot to get to campus, which isn’t exactly ideal, but there isn’t great connectivity to the north side of the NCSU campus. The greenway is great for the south side of the tracks, but the north side is a bit tough.
Ugh, this makes me angry. I haven’t been riding to work lately, but the removal of that ramp definitely doesn’t help me want to start riding again.
One time I had to use the sidewalk because a car was blocking the ramp, and I got run off the sidewalk by cyclists coming in the other direction because of a blind corner. I crashed into the road and thankfully no cars were coming at the time. It was a bad setup before, but now it’s a terrible and dangerous setup for cyclists.
I am going to guess that they don’t want pedestrians crossing at the Western intersection, rather at that little access road that triangulates the property around that gas station. In fact, if you look at Google Maps, it shows the Rocky Branch Trail following that path. So, I guess you need to jump onto the sidewalk/trail where that crosswalk,driveway is.
I’ve done this, but the sidewalk is extremely narrow on the Pullen side. It’s not wide enough for cyclists to pass each other, and it’s barely wide enough for a cyclist and pedestrian to pass. And the last time I cycled to work, there were sharrows on Ashe up to Western. I’m going to reach out to transportation to see if there are other plans here. It doesn’t make sense as-is.
I went back to 2018 for Google Street view, since that’s the one where I saw a pedestrian. We can see how narrow the sidewalk gets
This one shows the sharrow heading south. Not sure where they’re expecting bikes to go from this road now.
Last street view photo showing the sidewalk could be expanded out into the street a bit. From this view it looks like you can almost squeeze a 3rd lane in. We also see the sharrow heading north from the island.
I was thinking about reaching out to the Greenway and/or BPAC committee.
I’m not arguing that the current situation is correct. I was only trying to hypothesize why they did it.
FWIW, I’m very familiar with this intersection because it’s on one of my walking routes.
All good. I wasn’t aware of the familiarity which is why I put the photos. I would assume it probably wasn’t considered when the sidewalk was done.
