More Room For Cars In Downtown!

[tufsu1]

^ I don't think so.....this may just be the first step

[Charles Hunter]

Sad, doing the bike Lane would have cost no more money and could possibly save lives.
How does something like this happen without public hearing? Do they not need to announce things like this?

They do have them at public meetings, but we gave all the authority to the DIA.  And our correspondent, Noone, who goes to every single one of the meetings, reports nothing back at all except whether or not they talked about kayaks or fishing and the fact that he's the only one at the meetings

I thought JTA was at least going to repave Broad and Jefferson.  I think the sidewalk upgrades are limited to the bus stop areas - which are much bigger than the existing 6 foot shelters.

[urbanlibertarian]

Wouldn't Davis or Pearl streets be better choices for bike lanes than FDOT maintained streets like broad and Jefferson?

[JaxUnicorn]

Unless I totally missed it (which is possible), I don't recall this ever being brought up at the Urban Core CPAC meeting.

[thelakelander]

Wouldn't Davis or Pearl streets be better choices for bike lanes than FDOT maintained streets like broad and Jefferson?

Although this article doesn't suggest that bike lanes should be on these streets as opposed to roadway lanes, ideally all streets should be designed for multi-modal use in mind. On busy streets with cars moving at high speeds, a cycle track or parallel facility may be more suitable than a bicyle lane.  On limited access corridors, you'd need a barrier separating motorized and non motorized traffic. On streets with low levels of traffic, sharrows or nothing at all may be more suitable. This is where a change in FDOT and local roadway design standards is needed. Such a move would be instrumental in incrementally reducing pedestrian and bicycle accident and death rates.

[Gunnar]

If there is sufficient space, bike lanes could be separated from road lanes via e.g. low bushes. As an additional benefit, this should reduce noise levels at least a bit and create a visible barrier (vs. simply painting lanes on the road).

[simms3]

Reading some of the comments here...oh man.  MJ easily has the most "progressive" base of followers in Jax and yet I find myself feeling like I'm on a Fox News set, even here, on MJ, concerning the comments on this daily piece.

Jax needs to think more "small town" like Greenville, SC than "big city" like Manhattan/SF.  One ways are not needed.

And I believe the point of the article was that if a town with no money, no real traffic issues, no real parking issues, etc can find it in themself to spend money to accommodate more cars, unnecessarily, the town can surely do the same for bikes and pedestrians.

And RE: why spend money if there are currently no bikes or pedestrians?  Well let's look at a couple of things:

1) The existing infrastructure is not there, so of course there are going to be no bikes/peds, though building the infrastructure could attract more

2) The peds aren't there because there isn't a lot of office/residential in a dense environment to promote that activity, and there are a lot of reasons why, but perhaps one reason why more multifamily/office gets built sporadically around the burbs as opposed to downtown is that downtown isn't made a nice place to build/house offices/workers/residents, much of that to do with aesthetics/infrastructure

So I think a small, minor step that can be taken is to basically copy the Greenvilles of the world when building out sidewalks, planning for streets that can accommodate both cars and bikes, and infusing a touch of charm into the area, which in Jacksonville's case, one-ways do not do.


And anyone talking about "major bottlenecks" downtown simply has never left Jacksonville.  What a crock.  A major bottleneck would imply an abundance of office in a concentrated area, or a super high density of people and commercial street level uses creating a constant hive of activity that would slow down traffic, or street transit and trucks loading/unloading constantly to cater to that level of commercial density.

Downtown Jax is neither large nor dense, and is served by more interstate access and wide open roads than most.  I would say it literally has NO traffic compared to most.  Certainly not enough to justify road expansions.

Jacksonville's citizens, including the mentality of a few on this very board, are Jacksonville's own worst enemy, and the city's City Council/mayor, even the business community, is a direct reflection.  It's a tad sad.

[simms3]

Wouldn't Davis or Pearl streets be better choices for bike lanes than FDOT maintained streets like broad and Jefferson?

Although this article doesn't suggest that bike lanes should be on these streets as opposed to roadway lanes, ideally all streets should be designed for multi-modal use in mind. On busy streets with cars moving at high speeds, a cycle track or parallel facility may be more suitable than a bicyle lane.  On limited access corridors, you'd need a barrier separating motorized and non motorized traffic. On streets with low levels of traffic, sharrows or nothing at all may be more suitable. This is where a change in FDOT and local roadway design standards is needed. Such a move would be instrumental in incrementally reducing pedestrian and bicycle accident and death rates.

This.  One has to start somewhere.  Part of the BRT project or not, whatever I was just looking at in the pictures looks like a wasteful turd.

[Adam12]

Wow! It's amazing how quickly and efficiently government moves when they care about something. They didn't even have to bicker about how to pay for it. They just did it. It's like magic! lol