Ironically, I lived within an easy(ish) walk/bike ride to where the RR line crosses Durant Road. I thought it was a good investment (at the time) hoping that someday commuter rail would run b/w Wake Forest and DTR, and I could hop on that and easily get to where I needed to go. But no, Wake County doesn’t want that, so I was stupid to think it would ever happen. 10 years later, I said “F This Capital Blvd crap”, I’m moving. haha
1 Like
So screw the thousands of people who drive so a few people on bikes can have a special route? I don’t see that working in a democratic society
2 Likes
“Screw the drivers”? There are 2 main N-S arteries within a half mile on either side of Atlantic. The entire region is built for drivers’ experience and ease. Why would 1 true bicycle artery in all of Raleigh solicit this kind of response?
4 Likes
Atlantic is a tough one fellas. It’s also my preferred route into and out of north Raleigh from downtown. It still has the leftover aspects of a future freeway with almost no traffic lights and a healthy dose of light industrial stuff along it. A road diet to Six Forks seems like it’d impact traffic the least and thats about the northern limit of the current push for downtown-like build out. North of there it probably does need to be substantially more pedestrian friendly but I don’t know that I’d take out a lane. Six Forks, Wake Forest/Falls and Capital really cannot handle any more vehicles at peak.
It’s car supremacy. Nothing can infringe on the car’s domain in even the slightest.
3 Likes
Needs to be five lanes with protected bicycle lanes. If that is even possible with the width of right of way that would be needed.
1 Like
I’m not sure exactly what would work but there really should be something. It’s not like any of these roads are limited access freeways but any suggestion of making room for alternative modes of transportation is met with instant rebuke and outrage.
2 Likes
A lot of good discussion. The thing is right now the city is discussing actually widening Atlantic Avenue between 440 and New Hope Church Road. If that project goes through, then that sort of kills the road diet idea on Atlantic between Six Forks and Capitol because it doesn’t make any sense to dump a 5-lane section into a 3-lane section if not a lot of that traffic is going to divert onto Six Forks. I would say that’s the primary problem at the moment with that idea.
I definitely agree though that the bike/pedestrian experience definitely needs to be improved with all the potential redevelopment of the industrial sites along Atlantic Avenue. I live in Five Points and it’s frustrating not having a safe way to bike over to Mordecai/East Raleigh and Atlantic Avenue is a huge piece of that.
4 Likes
4-3 road diets don’t choke capacity as badly as many think. Raleigh has done several of these on lightly traveled roads like Glen Eden, and has more planned including Wake Forest below Capital. These are all happening with little controversy.
The only one I am aware of that happened at the expense of commuter traffic capacity is Hillsborough, and many people were angrily predicting the end of times as a result, but it’s mostly been a non event. I am not talking about narrowing all of Capital, Wake Forest, Atlantic, and Six Forks into two lane roads. I am talking about, of the 8 (Capital), 6(Six Forks) 6 (Wake Forest) and 4 (Atlantic) lane roads into downtown from the north, turning the 4 lane one into a 2 lane one. About an 8 percent reduction in total travel lanes. Carmageddon? Hardly.
9 Likes
And Hillsborough actually seems to have improved with the changes they’ve made. But I’m not on it that much so maybe other people have a different experience.
When it comes to demand for bike and ped infrastructure: you can’t measure demand for a new bridge by looking at how many people are swimming across. (outside of the most dire situations in the developing world, anyway.) If present infrastructure means doing something comes at significant risk of injury or death, people just won’t do it, and that tells you absolutely nothing about what the demand would be if proper infrastructure were in place.
7 Likes
Hillsborough has gone from a road I seldom use, to a road I NEVER use unless its earlier than 6am or its a Sunday. However, I think this is what Hillsborough St needed. Its a college street with massive amounts of pedestrian traffic that will never diminish thanks to NC State being right there.
As for Atlantic, I’d think the best route would be to create a dedicated bike lane from Person, down Boundary/Brookside, to Atlantic. This way you wouldn’t have to take away the lane of a major artery.
Then from the bridge after the Circus, you’d have to build out a bike bridge of sorts that ran alongside Atlantic going towards FullSteam. Eventually it would tie into that IronWorks property and then you’d widen the road where that grade ends (getting closer to Bojangles) at the Six Forks intersection and thats where the bike infrastructure would probably end for the time being.
Cost would be way more, but in that scenario both the car commuters and the bike commuters would win.
5 Likes
Being adjacent to a college campus, it 100% makes sense to convert Hillsborough to what it is now given the large number of pedestrians, cyclists and transit users. If I drive to work, I’ll sometimes use Western to go west from downtown (which is horrible for pedestrians and they need to do something with that) but if I bike, I’ll definitely use Hillsborough to go west from downtown. I’m a fan of what they’ve done to Hillsborough.
6 Likes
Speaking of which, does anyone know if there’s been any further discussion about the Pigeon House Branch greenway trail that would link the Peace Street area with the Crabtree Creek Trail? I heard about the concept a while ago but I’m guessing nothing serious has been done with that yet.
1 Like
I would be fully in favor of a new dedicated bike route, and if you can make it by stitching together existing discontinuous routes into a cohesive bikeway then that sounds great. But it can’t be full of zig zag, beg buttons, steep climbs to grade separations, and signal-less crossings where cyclists must yield. Why do cars get streamlined, arrow straight roadways while bikes have to slowly meander their way through to find a safe route, when the extra distance required has a MUCH bigger impact on comfort, energy expendature, and trip time for cyclists compared with motorists.
I did at one point hear of a plan for a “High Speed Rail Trail” along the CSX tracks towards Petersburg, Virginia - but that was not planned to go any further into Raleigh than the Neuse River. If you could find a way to fit a decent sized (meaning 15 or 20 feet wide) trail next to the CSX tracks, without harming the line’s future use for commuter, high speed, and freight rail, then that would be the absolute best case scenario. But I will not hold my breath for anything like that.
4 Likes
I hear you, and in theory I agree but in the real world, if you want bike infrastructure in a southern American city then its always going to be a give and take.
Eventually they are going to make the Atlantic/Capital/Brookside intersection a lot safer. This would be one single turn for those coming from Whitaker Mill/Full Steam/ North Hills / IronWorks, and then you’d connect right to Person St, which is likely your eventual destination anyways (you pass through even if you’re heading to downtown proper).
This would be a LOT easier to implement and would face a LOT less contention than changing the entire traffic pattern of Atlantic for a bike lane.
I think you may also want to think about the future of bike commuting. More and more cities are moving to electric assist bikes, and while I dont think those ever will completely take over, those who commute to work via bike are likely to go that route once prices start to come down. Point being, having to deal with a hill might not be something that deters biking. And having to deal with a hill and single turn is certainly better than not having a bike route at all…which is likely the outcome if you fight for Atlantic losing a lane.
I work at one of the apartment communities right at the intersection of Six Forks and Atlantic and we have people that comment all the time about having a sidewalk that will lead them closer to downtown.
5 Likes
What you are suggesting doesn’t sound awful, do you think you could draw up a map on mymaps.google.com ? I don’t quite follow the written description.
I totally get that Raleigh is hilly and you can’t avoid that, and when there is a freeway to cross there is seldom any alternative to building a high bridge, but it is really annoying as cyclist to have to slowly zigzag back and forth a 400 foot long, 30 foot high ramp, cross a street, only to have to zigzag back and forth 400 more feet to descend 30 feet down to the other side. All that work and time to move 100 feet. Things like that are expensive to build, miserable to use, and invariably come from bike/ped funds - when they are in fact really car infrastructure: built because they couldn’t bear to put a stoplight that would slow car traffic.
2 Likes
I’m a little confused - what are you exactly proposing between Capitol and Whitaker Mill? It sounds like you and orulz have the same or similar idea, the wording is just confusing everyone haha
14 posts were merged into an existing topic: Bike Lanes in and around DTR