Now is your chance to help us make your own rides on our city streets better and safer, and make it easier for more people to choose bicycles for trips around town.
Next Wednesday evening, September 9th, at 5:30 pm planners from Toole Design Group will be joining us for a "working ride" along parts of the two major commuter routes in and out of downtown from the east. Toole is the firm that has been retained by the City to conduct the Bike Plan Update, which is now getting started.
We are looking for a people who know and ride the East Side to ride with them and share what they have learned from experience about riding conditions and areas that need improvement. We will be riding out of downtown at the tail end of rush hour up Gilbert through Walnut Hills to O'Bryonville, then to Mt. Lookout Square, and back into town along Riverside Dr. Along the way we will stop three times for 20 minutes each to discuss the conditions we've seen, so the ride will take about 2 hours. We'll debrief afterwords at a restaurant/bar downtown.
If you are willing to share what you know by riding with us, please send me an e-mail to wrightgw (at) fuse.net. Please include your phone number. We'll get back to you with more details.
If you ride in other parts of town, other rides are in the works: Clifton/Northside/Spring Grove Village on Saturday, October 10th, and the West Side at a date to be determined. The first public meeting on the plan will be October 8th at McKee Recreation Center in October, and a web site is being created to collect other input.
More details on the October events will be made available as they are confirmed.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Do You Ride the East Side?
Posted by Gary Wright at 7:40 AM
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5 Comments:
I'm going to be out of town that day, but I would still like to get my voice heard.
The simple fact is that there is no good route into/out of the city from the east side.
The pain points for me on the way into town (from Hyde Park):
- Making the left hand turn from Madison to Woodburn. The traffic flow in this area is dreadful, and it's difficult to get over to the turn lane unless you hit the lights at just the right time. This seems worse since they've redone that intersection and the light cycle at that light.
- Gilbert where the bike lane ends. I've tried riding this route a number of different ways and I'm convinced there is no safe way with the traffic merging in from the right coming off of 71. Cyclists can either stay in the middle lane (and risk getting plowed down by someone doing about 50), or try to move over to the right hand lane only to have to come to a dead stop by a bus stopping down by Court street.. If you do make it over to the right hand lane, that becomes a turn only lane onto Court. I often use Reading instead, but this route has its own share of issues.
Heading out of the city:
- Turning from Court left onto Gilbert. With cars desperate to get onto 71North as quickly as possible, this is a very scary intersection.
- The entire stretch of Madison from Victory through Obrionville. If Madison had full bike lanes rather than sharrows (and don't get me wrong, I've noticed a huge difference in motorist respect with the sharrows going in), bikes would be much much faster through that section than cars. Instead there's not enough room to get between traffic and parked cars - at least not safely. I often will take a "back road" route along Woodburn/Fairfax to avoid having to go this way.
- Madison after Obrionville. With the speed limit ignored, numerous buses, and an incredibly large number of manholes along the path that I seem to want to take, this is my least favorite stretch of my entire commute.
- Observatory between Madison and Edwards...is it one lane or is it two lanes? Cars will often treat it as two once the road gets busy, but it's really not big enough. I would love to see Observatory painted as a two lane road (one each direction) with lanes for bikes/parked cars clearly marked.
I too commute downtown by bike, but will be unable to attend. Cool thing, is I commute on Riverside, the other route from Luke above.
Of course crossing Columbia Parkway on Delta is a little hair raising with the speed of traffic through the intersection. Cyclists need to be in the center lane to continue straight on Delta toward Riverside. The Delta/Walworth/Eastern/Riverside intersection(s)is(are) confusing to traffic. It could really use a traffic signal.
Riverside's main problem in drive time is speed of the cars combined with numerous semi-blind areas where motorists have a hard time seeing cyclists ahead in the right lane due to cars/trucks in front of them, curves & slight inclines. The big pinch point is going under the RR trestle. Secondly, going inbound to downtown, it's a tough choice to continue in the right lane at friendship park or get in the left lane to go into the park's paths. Be nice to see less cars parked in the right lane during rush hour.
Would love to see the bike path come to fruition along the RR tracks.
Totally agree with Joe on the challenges presented by Eastern/Riverside, and completely agree that a bike path would be the smartest/safest option. Having to trust that the person behind me driving over 50 mph is paying enough attention to not dart over into my lane is not my idea of a good time.
Thank you for your comments...we will pass these on and keep you up to date on additional opportunities to be heard.
Any word on what time the ride will be on Saturday?
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