13 replies to this topic

[elpingüino]

San Antonio is spending $740,000 (half its bike lane budget) to remove popular bike lanes after drivers complained. The City Council voted 10-1 to tear it out, even though studies determined that the lanes don't interfere with traffic flow.

 

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/06/09/san-antonio-to-tear-out-the-best-thing-city-has-done-for-cycling/ 

[RenaissanceMan]

Goes to show you that progress is not inevitable nor irrevocable.

[Austin55]

If I were a biker in SA, I'd be sure to grab a bunch of my friends and hit up these streets once the lines are gone. That'll show em!

[Now in Denton]

This is a ongoing topic on the Mark Davis show. Many callers in the Fort Worth Dallas area are fed up with bike lanes. I myself favor some bike lanes. And I don't care what Men's Health magazine ranks Fort Worth. I rather see Fort Worth add more sidewalks in the inner city anyway.

[Dylan]

Removing vehicle lanes for bike lanes reduces vehicle capacity and increases traffic, so I can see why drivers are frusturated with them. There are far more drivers than bicyclists in case anyone hasn't noticed.

 

I would like to see more bike trails that do not follow roads (think of the Trinity Trails).

[RenaissanceMan]

There are far more drivers than bicyclists in case anyone hasn't noticed.

And the exclusive provision of infrastructure for one over the other all but guarantees that that will continue to be the case.

[Russ Graham]

I would like to see more bike trails that do not follow roads (think of the Trinity Trails).

 

I agree with this.  However these off-road trails cost "about a million dollars a mile" according to a person I know who works for the Parks department.

 

I would also like to see lots more on-street bike lanes, continuous sidewalks, better-marked pedestrian crosswalks, and safe routes for kids to walk to school.

 

Keep in mind that (almost) all bikers and pedestrians are also car drivers.  There is no either / or.

[gdvanc]

While in our short lifetimes roads have seemed to be built exclusively for the use of automobiles, for centuries roads were built simply to get people around within and between towns by whatever means they had at their disposal.

 

Now cars have become for many by far the primary form of transportation and roads are certainly constructed to handle their bulk, so there is a common perception in much of this country that anything on the road that is not a car is an encroachment. Drivers feel the road is theirs and theirs alone. This is something that has developed over the last few decades through our unhealthy preoccupation with that mode of travel, but it should not have been inevitable and it is certainly not universal. Bike lanes do not remove from car drivers what is rightfully theirs; they are a step in restoring what has historically been available to others: the common use of a shared roadway.

 

San Antonio's decision is unfortunate and ignores the underlying issue. If traffic congestion could be resolved by removing bicycles from the roadways, few places would suffer traffic congestion. Any improvements seen in traffic flow by the removal of lanes will be short-lived.

 

To clarify, I'm speaking of local roads which, if I understand it correctly, are primarily funded by property taxes- not highways which are primarily funded by taxes on fuel.

 

And, Dylan, the Trinity Trails are lovely but they don't connect anything. They are not a solution for people who use their bicycles to travel between home and work and store.

[Dylan]

Building more trails along railroads, electric lines, and streams can help with going longer distances. For shorter distances, I typically take quieter neighborhood roads.

[John T Roberts]

All of you have raised valid points.  As a cyclist and former President of the Fort Worth Bicycling Association, I am an advocate of more bike lanes, shared roads, and bike trails.  In order to make cycling a viable alternative, you have to offer all types of routes to make the entire system work.  Studies have shown that the reduction of automobile lanes and the inclusion of bicycle lanes do not impede traffic flow. 

 

I regularly use all types of roads and trails.  However, if I could bicycle to work, the majority of my route would be on the Trinity Trail. 

[Fort Worthology]

Bike lanes don't cause traffic.  Over-dependence on a single form of transportation causes traffic.

 

Also - many, many city streets are radically over-scaled, killing other forms of mobility in the pursuit of shaving an extra second or two off a driver's use of the street.  There are so many streets that are wider/more lanes than is truly needed, which just serves to further induce more car traffic and hamper any other sort of use of the street (pedestrians, bikes, etc.), not to mention actively harming their surroundings (one only needs to look at the complete and utter wasteland that Rosedale through the Near Southside became after TxDOT decided it needed to be a ridiculous, wasteful 6-8 lane highway full of speeding sheet metal, and how the street seems to have at least a spark of turning around now that it's been taken back down to four lanes + bike lanes + parking).  Reallocating space on streets to make them safe for *all* users encourages the increased use of those alternative methods.    And slowing traffic, making the street safer, is another important benefit of projects like these.

 

The photo of the street in question reminds me a lot of our own Magnolia Avenue, actually - and Magnolia's current renaissance can absolutely be attributed in part to the street's post-road diet configuration, slowing the cars, providing space for cyclists, making the environ safer for pedestrians, and as a result encouraging more business and activity.  Taking Magnolia back to its old four-lanes configuration now would seem backward - it's a shame that San Antonio didn't stick it out and let things adapt.

[johnfwd]

Building more trails along railroads, electric lines, and streams can help with going longer distances. For shorter distances, I typically take quieter neighborhood roads.

Yes, but I'm not sure you could get railroad right-of-way for bicycling and I'm not sure that's a good idea, safety wise.

[Russ Graham]

 

Building more trails along railroads, electric lines, and streams can help with going longer distances. For shorter distances, I typically take quieter neighborhood roads.

Yes, but I'm not sure you could get railroad right-of-way for bicycling and I'm not sure that's a good idea, safety wise.

 

I think People was talking about abandoned railroad rights of way - as in the Rails to Trails conservency.  A great example of this is the Old Dominion bike trail that leads into Washington D.C.  Lots of people commute fairly long distances into DC by bike on this trail.  The great thing about abandoned ROW's is they tend to be fairly level.   A good local example is the Bomber Spur trail - there's another thread about that around here somewhere.

[Dylan]

There are bike trails beside the future TEX Rail line and Denton's A-train line:

 

https://maps.google....h&lci=bike&z=19

 

https://maps.google....h&lci=bike&z=19