Was hoping potentially the Artery project…
3 Likes
This is one of my biggest gripes with a lot of the projects that are going on around town. There is a lot of effort around car detouring but bikes and pedestrians are often left behind. This is a heavily used section of greenway for all types of people and the lack of detour routing is a bit disappointing.
5 Likes
Cars are often singularly prioritized around any public or private construction project in the city.
A project that I thought did a good job with pedestrian accommodation was 510 Glenwood. The developer erected a covered/protected pathway along the east side of Glenwood. It seems today that there’s fewer and fewer accommodations made for pedestrians at construction sites. If a bike lane is eliminated during construction, it would be nice for the city to at least paint a sharrow where the lane is disrupted.
6 Likes
This is 
Nuese River Trail is completely blocked due to construction in 2 locations. For seamingly months or years. Not really sure how long. Didn’t even attempt to make a detour.
Same for Crabtree Greenway at 440. Walnut Creek Trail was closed for many months as well (maybe still is).
5 Likes
Walnut Creek Trail is open. I did the loop around Raleigh (33 miles Crabtree > Anderson Point Park > Walnut Creek > Rocky Branch (which now is closed because of the pipe) > House Creek.
But even outside the Greenway it isn’t great. Hillsborough St bike lanes are now blocked because of construction at the old Doubletree. I’ve gotten used to riding on the road during my commute but of course not everyone will be comfortable with that. Salisbury Street/Lane same thing.
The Greenway tends to be the worse because there really aren’t good detours. I just noticed the one in NE Raleigh. Have fun with the detour saying to ride on Louisburg Rd/401.
Neuse River between 13.75 and 17.25 there’s not detour at all.
2 Likes
Glad to hear Walnut Creek Trail is back open. The NRT closure at 401 has a work around the fencing. It works on off hours, but probably not feasible when the crews are working. I have’nt seen any posted detours.
Didn’t a cyclist get hit on the 401 bridge over the Nuese recently?
Haven’t found any posts about this yet… who here was aware that Oaks & Spokes is doing a critical mass ride on Friday? I just heard about it yesterday. It’s on their Bike Month page, and they’ve also set up an Instagram account for it. I’ve always wanted to participate in one.
7 Likes
I’ll be honest, if I had somewhere to be I’d be infuriated to run into this
Critical Mass is the biggest ride in town. Once a month, riders in cities around the world fill the streets with bikes instead of cars. Critical Mass is a movement, a statement, and a peaceful protest all rolled into one – pushing back against the idea that you need a car to get around in a city. It started in San Francisco back in the early ’90s, taking over streets usually jammed with cars to show that bikes are just as viable as cars for urban transit. By riding en masse once a month, we make a claim for our right to the road, flipping the script on urban transit and challenging the car-is-king mindset.
2 Likes
It’s pretty polarizing. I think the general pushback would be that it’s just traffic in a different form. They’re starting at the NC State Belltower, and, I don’t know about y’all, but I have never once gone from one end of Hillsborough to the other quickly. It’s annoying to be stuck behind a bunch of other cars, but it’s also expected, so most people just grind it out. Why is it any different when it’s bikes?
One of the things critical mass seems to demonstrate really well is the efficiency of the mode. On Friday night, we’ll likely see far more people moving down Hillsborough than normal, but at speeds comparable to driving due to all the traffic lights, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings, and college kids who don’t know how to parallel park.
To put it another way: perhaps it’s only infuriating because streets are exclusively viewed as space for moving cars, not people.
12 Likes
That’s my bike in front of the Waverly F. Akins Building in the background!
5 Likes
Exactly - Bikes have as much rights to be on the roads as cars do. 100 bikes clogging a rd is no different then 100 cars clogging the road, except it takes way less spaces, and creates way less pollution.
8 Likes
Blame the STI Law for the lack of bike lanes in the Triangle, especially Raleigh. The law prohibits funding for standalone bike/ped projects on NCDOT roads. It can only be obtained if it prioritizes car infrastructure.
Law makers love high death rates, pretty typical. Speaking of those rates, sadly two separate hit-and-runs left a pedestrian dead and another in critical condition in Durham.
At this point, families need to sue the state or some of these politicians responsible for bringing this law forward.
4 Likes
…and also takes 10x longer to get wherever the F you’re going. I’m not saying “bikes don’t have as much right to be on the road” but I am saying that 100+ of them riding all down the same road, together, is objectively unusual and ANNOYING AF lol
3 Likes
respectfully sir, i do believe that’s the point
6 Likes
A North Carolina law passed in 2013 made it much harder to improve access for pedestrians and cyclists on state roads. The law says state funds can only go to such efforts if they’re part of projects that benefit drivers.
WTF state legislature?
6 Likes
(Disclosure: I’m on the board of Oaks and Spokes)
I think there’s a lot of talk in the bike advocacy community about the STI law being the big blocker to doing good bike infrastructure in NC. It’s definitely partially true, but I also think that it’s a fig leaf to cover up our failure to build a broad coalition for supporting bike and pedestrian infrastructure. You aren’t going to win an argument with a rural, republican legislator that his constituent’s tax dollars should be spent on bike lanes no matter how much you talk about it. Where we’ve had the most success is reframing funding priorities as not being about “transportation” but being about other issues (see: record amount of greenway funding in last year’s budget). IMO the next step should be to push for a partial STI repeal for NCDOT-owned streets that are located within a mile of any school or church and grant funding that’s handled through DPI to support increased school bike/ped travel as a means to reduce busing costs and carpool line time/costs.
19 Likes
I haven’t heard about it. If you are looking to participate in a group ride, Crank Arm does a casual ride on Wednesday nights. I’m not one of their leaders, but I know it’s definitely a casual ride. There’s usually quite a few people. I would guess at least over 20.
Again we end up doing rides on Wednesday nights. If you drive downtown after 7, there’s a chance you may already see a bunch of bikes already riding around. Some people get annoyed, but most people are generally nice. The kids enjoy it as it tends to be like a parade when we ride through a neighborhood.
On my regular bike it takes me about 35 mins to go 7.14 miles. If I took a similar route in a car, it would be about 24-35 mins according to Google. Let’s say it takes 24 mins. 2x longer would put me at 48 mins. It could be argued that it would take me 50% longer, however that’s on my non electric bike in which getting to your destination in the fastest way possible isn’t the real goal.
On my ebike, it took me 28 mins to get to work (8.09) miles according to my tracker. If I take the same route on a car, Google maps shows 24-35 mins also at 8 miles. 4 minutes longer is not a big deal. Now if we go the shortest route, which involves driving on Glenwood under 440, the distance would be 6.2 miles in a car (12-22 mins depending on traffic). The difference is that I cannot ride that same section on an ebike. My route includes a lot more stop signs and traffic lights. If speed is the main reason we don’t ride bikes, then we should opt to put in more direct routes that bikes can use.
5 Likes
You aren’t going to win an argument with a rural, republican legislator that his constituent’s tax dollars should be spent on bike lanes no matter how much you talk about it.
They don’t have to listen to arguments anyway since they are not accountable to democracy.
There are good arguments. A rural republican voter benefits from bike infrastructure in a major city even if they’ll never use it, because it means less money to maintain car infrastructure in the long run. Plus it gets those effete soy european liberals off the road so their Canyonaro has more breathing room. Unstoppable freedom. Facts and logic.
3 Likes
I imagine you could work with people who lean a little fiscally conservative as it’s just cheaper to provide trails and bike/ped infra compared to vehicle infra. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone discuss that locally, city-wide or state-wide, with numbers like “infra cost per vehicle” or “infra cost per cyclist”. If those numbers existed for commuters, I think you have the baseline for a compelling argument that a bike/ped network has a much higher ROI.
9 Likes
unfortunately these days, facts and logic no longer appeals to a large segment of voters.
1 Like