The city is finally going to fill the Roosevelt bike lane missing link between NE 75th and NE 85th. The open house is Tuesday from 7 – 8:30 p.m. at Northgate Community Center.
Two years ago, the city installed bike lanes on Roosevelt/11th Ave from the University Bridge all the way to NE 115th St, except for the ten-block stretch between 75th and 85th. Now, after far too much studying, the city has made some modifications to the plan and is moving forward.
The Maple Leaf Community Council, which opposed the project a few years ago, is still concerned a bit about the parking loss. But their main concern now is getting SDOT to install more painted crosswalks in the area.
Joshua Newman, a former member of the MLCC, said he would like to see the project happen, and hopes the MLCC and bike advocates can work together:
Hi Tom,
We talked a couple years ago when I was on the MLCC, and we asked SDOT to delay that half mile of bike lanes. It was the right decision then, and finishing the lanes is the right decision now. I’m no longer on MLCC, but thought you might encourage your readers to attend the meeting and support the new lanes.
MLCC is a strong advocate for pedestrian improvements and it’s disappointing that they are nominally pitting themselves against cyclists, and that Cascade Bicycle Club further aggrivates with strong language.
Anyways, looking forward to more bike lanes – especially separated lanes – in the city.
Joshua
For more background, see our story from July or check out this SDOT presentation:
Comments
7 responses to “Reminder: Roosevelt bike lane open house Tuesday”
The removal of in-lane bus stops is extremely unfortunate. Roosevelt is a frequent service corridor where we need to be adding bulbs or islands to avoid pull-outs; instead, SDOT’s letting the corridor regress.
I agree. Honestly, what we need is funding to turn all our half-assed bike lanes into parking-separated ones with bus islands for frequent service bus corridors. A sustained partnership between the city and King County Metro to accomplish this would be fantastic. I know they are pricey, but the benefits for safety and transit reliability are huge. Maybe someone needs to crunch the numbers on how long it would take for them to “pay for themselves”….
Or maybe (I’m sure some biking folks will disagree here) put the bike lane on the left curb, then parking, then traffic lane, then bus-only or peak-only bus lane on the right. That would be pretty cheap…
Roosevelt is a compromise project. Everyone feels like they lost. Bike lanes in the door zone that drop at intersections, buses have fewer in-lane stops, less parking (though it wasn’t being used at all, so this is really a non-issue), etc…
What’s so great about parking-separated bike lanes? Instead of being in a door zone to your right you’re on a door zone to your left. Your only way to make left turns is the hook turn. You’re less visible to oncoming and cross traffic in intersections, which is where most collisions occur. And you have a serious visibility problem with overtaking traffic.
Separated bike lanes (parking or otherwise) have proven effective all over the world at both decreasing collisions and encouraging more people to cycle around town. The door zone problem is addressed by keeping a buffer space between the cars and the bike lanes. Imagine the new Dexter bike lanes, except with the parking and bike lanes swapped.
The advantage of parking-separated lanes is that they are cheap (most just paint unless there are buses, in which case bus islands are needed) and they preserve parking (though this is not my biggest concern, parking is traffic-calming, and removing parking can make enemies of potential allies, like small business owners). Essentially, it is a globally-tested compromise road design that should simply be standard on Seattle roadways.
If door zone bike lanes and sharrows are bike facilities 1.0, separated lanes are 2.0. A lot of us cities (Chicago, New York, etc) are skipping straight to 2.0.
So… I can understand how when you switch the order of the parking and the bike lane you reduce conflicts with buses and people pulling in and out of the parking spaces. But on the other hand they really put cyclists far out of the picture for turning traffic. Doesn’t that make things worse? Intersections still are where most collisions take place. If drivers coming from cross streets have to see across the bike lane and the parked cars to make uncontrolled movements onto the arterial, won’t they be perpetually nosing into the bike lane? If drivers making uncontrolled turns off of the arterial can’t see cyclists because they’re blocked by a huge row of parked cars, aren’t we just asking for more collisions there?
And I still am not satisfied that I can turn left out of one of these things. Between 75th and 85th a lot of the cross streets don’t line up on both sides of Roosevelt. So… I either can’t turn left in a whole lot of places, or there must be breaks in the parking wherever there’s a cross street on the other side (this is not super easy to envision, but I’m saying there will have to be breaks in the parking on the east side of the street at 81st, 82nd, 83rd, 84th, 85th, and 86th where there’s a cross-street on the west side but not the east). Now I don’t give a rip if there’s a break in the parking, but it surely puts a dent into the “no lost parking” promise.
So… maybe parking-separated bike lanes in places where you’d also consider a cycletrack. Downtown areas with think pedestrian traffic, roads without many driveways and where most/all intersections are controlled with traffic signals. That’s not Dexter, and that’s not Roosevelt between 75th and 85th.
Tom, I like your first idea. Also, seems like MLCC wants more painted crosswalks. More painted crosswalks would be a good addition to your proposal.