HomeMy WebLinkAbout2/6/2018 Item 12, Schmidt (5)
Christian, Kevin
From:Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com>
Sent:Friday, February 2, 2018 12:19 PM
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Item 12: What a good cycle track looks like
Dear Mayor and Council,
To help you understand how inappropriate cycle tracks are on streets like Broad and Chorro, I thought it might help to
show you pictures of well-designed tracks on streets appropriate for tracks.
The first thing to note is all of these are on wide streets, not on narrow residential streets.
Here's one from Winnipeg designed by Copenhagenize Design Co. which shows a one-way cycle track protected both
with a buffer and a row of parked cars between track and traffic. Note, parking was accommodated, not removed. Note
this is a major thoroughfare, not a narrow residential street. Note the absence of frequent driveways. Also that it's one-
way. And that asphalt goes all the way to curb to make a smooth riding surface.
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Here's a good one from New York City from a NACTO bike facility handbook. This has a tremendously generous buffer
plus a row of parked cars for additional protection. No driveways. Intense urban street.
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Boulder CO from same source. A narrower street, but wide enough to provide diagonal parking on opposite side. Robust
separation from traffic with substantial bollards, small trees and wide non-pavement buffer. Commercial area, no
driveways.
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The best tracks get bikes off the pavement altogether. Here's an example from Indianapolis.Track built to side of major
street, with landscaped buffer (one suspects depressed strip to left is a "rain garden" for storm-water infiltration) which
provides scenic amenity and very good protection. No driveways. At the point where cycle tracks go off road like this,
they blur into what we call Class I bikeways. If you bear this example in mind, we'd have a good path forward for bikes in
yet-to-be-built parts of town.
This is a rare Davis 2-way track. They make extremely scarce use of these, or of any kind of on-pavement tracks, for that
matter. No driveways. It's a short connector between a bike boulevard and a school, to keep kids from having to zig-zag
across the street. So there's a specific safety reason for this being a 2-way. It's not a cross-town route with 31 driveways
like's being proposed here. It is wide, not skimpy like proposed here. It's on what's clearly not a threatening street. There's
great design care -- note, for example, the concrete gutter apron that extends into the street. Under NACTO guidelines,
that's excluded from the bike lane's width unless the bike lane extends at least 4 feet beyond the concrete, or a minimum
of 5 feet total. In Davis, note they've been precautionary and apportioned the asphalt width equally between the two lanes,
not counting the concrete apron as bike lane width. In SLO, look around -- you'll find much narrower lanes -- including
some of our newest -- that force bikes to use the uneven concrete surface or pull into vehicular lanes to avoid it.
Interesting also that although this is a 2-way track, because of it's function to provide school access which reverses
direction a.m. and p.m., it actually functions largely as a wide one-way, as you can see in picture. Also that there's a
typical Davis bike lane on opposite side of street. Note wide buffer, with bollards crowding vehicular lane, which one can
do better on a peaceful wide street than on streets like Broad/Chorro.
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I hope that's of some help in understanding the fundamental appropriateness and safety problems with the cycle tracks
being proposed.
Richard Schmidt
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