Separated Bike Lanes: Could Jacksonville Benefit?

[thelakelander]

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-apr-2030-mobility-plan-bicycle-network

[Ocklawaha]

That trail was never a real plan.  It was a line a group drew on a map at a visioning charrette over a year ago.

Lake, in the charrette they talked about the trail as a given item, something the all knew something about. TUFSU1 posted in some thread a few days ago that it was/is a proposal in some plan within the city. Yes we all knew it was in the charrette too, but I think it's roots are a bit deeper then that.

BikeJax, If you'll look at the route it is basically a bike/pedestrian version of University Blvd with some aspects of 9-A tossed in. While not a distributor trail, it sure would be a major connector. It would tie the Arlington and Mandarin areas together with easy connecting links to JTB, UNF, Southside, Arlington Expy, JU, a large number of tech schools and private colleges, and one of the largest stretches of WILDERNESS remaining in the City. With very little work a parallel canoe trail would be fantastic, Pottsburg Creek has been calling me!

There should be a ton of grants to get this done that other trails couldn't be considered for. Think woods, water, wetlands, creeks, rivers, canopy, wildlife, conservation, preservation, Audubon, World Wildlife fund, Nature Conservancy, Historical Society's, etc...



OCKLAWAHA

[thelakelander]

Ock, I was a part of the Southeast Visioning Committee.  In fact, I may have been the one to originally draw it in a brainstorming charrette held a few weeks earlier.  The meeting you all attended at Cuba Hunter was one of our final charrettes that included all of the work produced in the earlier ones.

[fieldafm]

This is the bike path on Kernan in b/w Beach and Atlantic. 




Here is the path that was implemented in the Beach Blvd widening(The Beach and Kernan projects were both part of the Better Jax plan... maybe Delaney wasn't so bad after all  )





And the bike lane extends across the intracoastal bridge and dead ends at 3rd Street in Jax Beach.

[brainstormer]

While both of these are improvements, in my opinion they still miss the mark.  Obviously there is plenty of ROW to fully implement safe pedestrian and bicycle lanes with better design.  

The bike path on Kernan is perfect, but notice there isn't a sidewalk, so pedestrians and cyclists must still share the lane.  In this, it is pretty much the equivalent of a sidewalk with a stripe down the middle.  The path could have easily been widened enough to have three lanes with one designated for pedestrians and the other two for cyclists.

Many adults and kids are still afraid to ride on small paths on the edge of the road, similar to the new Beach Blvd lane.  With the crazy Jax drivers whizzing by at 50-55mph, this isn't safe.  So on this street we got an unsafe bike lane as part of the street and a sidewalk.  Again there is plenty of ROW for a three lane, divided path, with a sidewalk for pedestrians and two bike lanes.

These design changes with full implementation are not going to increase project costs by much and would result in safer and better utilized paths.  Notice that Kernan has a school zone and the picture you took on Beach is right next to the library.  Parents drive their children a couple blocks to school because there aren't safe paths and well marked crossings for walking/biking.  With better design, Jacksonville could make its streets safer for everyone!  To me, it seems like a no-brainer.  

[thelakelander]

The bike path on Kernan is perfect, but notice there isn't a sidewalk, so pedestrians and cyclists must still share the lane.  In this, it is pretty much the equivalent of a sidewalk with a stripe down the middle.  The path could have easily been widened enough to have three lanes with one designated for pedestrians and the other two for cyclists.

Going above the minimum design requirements: The new Dequindre Cut Greenway in Detroit.

[tufsu1]

path design is usually determined by expected use....the minimum width for a shared ped/bike trail used to be 8'....now the recommended minimum is 10' with a more common desirable 12'.

heavily used paths are often being built up to 16' wide as shown in the Detroit example...of course, notice that the bikes still use the ped lane!

[thelakelander]

Yes, the Detroit example is a rail to trails project.  However, unlike the S-Line, they left room for a future rail line.

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

This could turn into a turf war between motorists and cyclists.  It's probably more politically doable to put something like this on streets in the urban core not typically used by suburbanites passing through.

There already IS a turf war between motorists and cyclists, albeit a rather one-sided one. There seems to be an awful lot of motorists in this city who think cyclists have no right to be on the road. The point of separated bike lanes is to assuage, not exacerbate the situation.

With physically separated bike lanes, motorists and cyclists have their own designated areas to operate their vehicles of choice with minimal hindering or endangering one another. I can't see that being a problem for anybody except motorists who enjoy terrorizing cyclists and pedestrians and don't want to jump a curb to do it.

JUST FOR KICKS AND GIGGLES HOW ABOUT A "TOUR" OF THE POTTSBURG - JULINGTON CREEK TRAIL?

That's very pretty, but who cares? It won't get me safely from Springfield to Arlington, or from Arlington to Riverside, or from Riverside to anywhere else in town I want to go.

It's a catch-22. There's not enough bike lanes because there's not enough cyclists, and there's not enough cyclists because there's not enough bike lanes. Simply put, it's scary to ride bikes here, and with good reason.

Preliminary numbers released by the state last month have 113 cyclists being killed on Florida roads last year. That is a marginal drop from 2007, when 121 cyclists were killed -- the most of any state in the country, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

via http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-05-10/story/florida_the_most_dangerous_state_for_bicyclists

That's more than even California, which has similarly year-round-outdoor-activity weather and a much larger population.

Personally, I would cheerfully ride a bicycle all over town if the idea didn't reduce me to a gibbering lump of completely rational stark terror of dying a hideous, mangled death. I saw a freshly-killed cyclist lying in a crumpled, bloody heap in the street downtown one morning about two years ago, and I see him again in my mind's eye every time I think about getting on a bike. Him, and/or the grille of the pickup truck that ran me into a ditch after unsuccessfully trying to run OVER me the last time I rode a bicycle. Maybe I could banish those horrible visions if there was a barrier between myself and the motor vehicles...

[CS Foltz]

It should not be that hard to seperate the two, unless your thinking of the median concrete barriers favored on major roadway projects! I'm sure Gate Concrete could fix the City up with a proposal that would be cost efficient...........right? Those puppy's go down and bolted together and a semi would be hard put to cross over!

[e2ride bike tours inc.]

With healthy trends replacing couch potato lifestyles, bike routes would be a niche or attraction for many to make a move to Jacksonville. You are all so right.  Our historic bike tours ride the back roads at a slower pace touring R/A, and San Marco and Old Mandarin, and have very little traffic, so we feel safe, but it should be that the people of Jacksonville may ride safely everywhere, anytime.   Flat terrain, great weather year round... City Council, how about attracting people, businesses and revenue to Jacksonville by making us a bike friendly city?

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

With healthy trends replacing couch potato lifestyles, bike routes would be a niche or attraction for many to make a move to Jacksonville. You are all so right.  Our historic bike tours ride the back roads at a slower pace touring R/A, and San Marco and Old Mandarin, and have very little traffic, so we feel safe, but it should be that the people of Jacksonville may ride safely everywhere, anytime.   Flat terrain, great weather year round... City Council, how about attracting people, businesses and revenue to Jacksonville by making us a bike friendly city?

I'm not sure that's possible unless they actually do place physical barriers between the bike lanes and the car lanes, after reading the comments on this article I quoted earlier. The naked hatred for cyclists is absolutely appalling. There are yahoos in this town who think you're asking for it if you ride a bicycle on a main traffic thoroughfare, and apparently would have no compunction about hitting a cyclist who got in their way. Being a pedestrian in this town is bad enough, but I don't know if I want to ever ride a bike again knowing that there are motorists who actually think you deserve to die for it.

[CS Foltz]

DeadGirlsDontDance..........might I suggest what is called a slingshot! Best one is called a "Wrist Rocket" and a few marbles or ball bearings! You steer with body, hands off the bars and load and fire! Of course this is a last resort but there is no license required and you would have some protection! If my knee's could handle the load, I would not mind peddling around but that is not to be................whatever, be safe!

[Ocklawaha]

Could be a bad side to this too... WHAT IF, we put all the bicycles in restricted, separate lanes? For good ol boy's Earnest and Bubba it would give them a reason to dive down the sidewalk!

"YEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWWWWWW Got me anotherin Earnest..." "Yeah Bubba, thatin got away last time in  this here ditch, but she didn't count on them there new mud tires!"


OCKLAWAHA

[dougskiles]

Segregated Bike/ped infrastructure is something we at Bike Jax have been pushing for for sometime. We even did an post in January of last year proposing what we think is a better and more economical way to build roads in the suburban landscape. http://www.bikejax.org/2009/01/rethinking-how-we-build-our-roads.html

We are continuing to refine that original post into a viable idea and during this period we have learned so much about the road building process and its funding. The hurtles we have to over come are many, a city with a part time bike/ped coordinator that does not believe in or support segregated paths, A state department of transportation that is still desperately clinging onto 1950's design principles and most important of all is that all funding comes through the federal government which dictates certain criteria that city or state must abide in order to attain that funding.

I also personally feel that on what segregated we have already are under control of the Department Recreation and not under roads and planning doesn't help. If these paths are to be respected as alternative transportation corridors then they should be treated as such.

We are working with cycling groups in other cities to refine the idea suggested in the above link so we can take it to the source, the USDOT. If it we can get it adopted by the agency that sets the standards and provides the funding, then it won't be long before we start see some real change in our streets.

PS. We are desperate need of an engineer with cad accessibility that would like to contribute to this project.

Mr. Bike Jax - you found your engineer - let's get started!