Hey y'all,
Just starting a discussion and wondering if anyone is free to show up with me tomorrow morning, Thursday , September 3, 2009 at 10am for the grand opening of the 14th Street bridge over the connector. It has been 2 years in the making and is being touted for it's wider sidewalks, median, and design. I was wondering how we could get a brand new bridge without any bike lanes. Show up on your bikes if you can. This would be a great opportunity to show another form of transportation that could have been incorporated into the design of this bridge. See you tomorrow.
Link to the bridge.
http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe6616717464057b731c&m=ff2d17787066&ls=fd...
Atlantafail.
Atlantafail.
?
really? i mean bike lanes can be convenient, but they're not necessary. is the new design really so unbikefriendly that you'd ride over to 17th or 10th instead?
I'm not a huge bike lane fan
I'm not a huge bike lane fan either, but considering their touting its design, it's a pretty big indication that (or at least it appears that) Atlanta doesn't care about bikes.
?
Is that news to anyone?
Naah, it's a pretty nice
Naah, it's a pretty nice bridge. Wide sidewalk. Also, they narrowed the %(*&*($ out of the main drag through Georgia State and have yet to install bike lanes - I don't know what the speed limit is, but nobody's topping 12mph.
I read a while back that the
I read a while back that the reason there weren't bike lanes in the new bridge design was because there weren't bike lanes on 14th street on either side of the bridge to connect. So in other words, the lack of bike lanes on 14th was their excuse for not building bike lanes on 14th.
If they accepted federal
If they accepted federal funding for the construction they must have been granted a waiver to leave bike lanes out of the design. Every bridge I've seen built using fed funds required lanes.
Probably after the success of the 17th street bridge lanes they decided to can them.
I'm with Paul. I'm a big boy and capable of taking a lane.
I take lanes, too
I'm perfectly willing to take a lane: you can't ride in most of ATL if you aren't. On the 17th Street bridge, I regularly take the bus lane when I see cars using it behind me, to force them back to their lane. (What I cannot fucking understand is why cars use the bus lane, even when the car lanes are empty. Are they blind? Or just assholes?)
I sometimes ride in a traffic lane even when the bike lane is available, e.g., on West Peachtree (if you can call that craptastic strip a bike lane.)
But I think bike lanes make less assertive/confident cyclists feel better, they ride more, there are more cyclists on the road and in the public view, people understand that cyclists do exist in ATL, and we all benefit. And I think IndyFan makes an important point about federal funding: there is a larger question here, why, when they are building or retrofitting new infrastructure with federal assistance, they aren't putting in human-powered facilities. We need our roads to be something besides "car sewers" designed to move as many cars as possible as quickly as possible.
Sidenote: I'm a little sad that the bridge and Techwood is re-opening to car traffic: that section of Techwood between 10th and 14th has been a pleasure to ride on to connect between 10th and 14th/Atlantic Station.
I don't want to debate the
I don't want to debate the semantics of bike lines(we all know Atlanta's are joke), but I agree with that bike lanes encourage newer riders to get onto the road.
To me it seemed like this
To me it seemed like this city became much more bike-friendly once I started taking lanes. It was strange - that thread about the Mayoral forum, where all the candidates rated ATL a 0 (or whatever) for bike-friendliness? When I started, I would've agreed. But now I'd give it, like, a 6/10. Maybe a 7? Which seems like a high enough score, given that they spend zilch on bike infrastructure. I'd still give it a goose-egg for walkability.
I agree with you. Candidate
I agree with you. Candidate Mary Norwood went as far as expressing sympathy for one of us that had to ride in traffic. If they don't ride they won't get it. Education would help all the cagers.
I suggest that we are Atlanta's transportable traffic-calming devices. Moving targets are hard to hit. (Or is it miss?)
I'll be taking a lane across
I'll be taking a lane across the bridge later today. But as long as we're on the subject, I think the entire connector redesign in Midtown was ill-conceived from the get-go. In my opinion, the last thing Midtown and Downtown needs is more lanes of highway and more on-ramps to provide easier access to thousands of cars driven 20+ miles to get here. Folks all over Atlanta complain about how awful the traffic is, but ironically, if you keep building more infrastructure designed to be used exclusively by surbanites in cars, what you get is a more car-centric city with worse traffic congestion, worse air pollution, and a deeper dependence on oil consumption. Remember what the connector was like before this project? There was one less off-ramp and a 50' wide green space between the highway and Turner's buildings. Granted, the 14th Street bridge was pretty crappy and needed to be replaced due to a giant sinkhole that opened up under it, but also this other garbage is just digging the hole deeper.
Making Spring and West
Making Spring and West Peachtree one-way has driven the spike into the heart of Midtown.
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I like one-way streets. They makes things simpler for pedestrians, dampen the effects of road maintenance (cutting off one lane doesn't stop traffic completely) and they make left turns for all vehicles easier.
There are very few two-way streets in non-residential areas around here and traffic moves very predictably since no one holds back traffic for an entire cycle trying to turn left (lots of left turns are prohibited down town too)
spring and w peach
those streets were one-way the whole time I lived in Midtown, but I would agree that if they were 2-way it would have been better for the neighborhood. Having them be one-way, the lights timed, and the road surface so smooth, meant the traffic was moving very fast (no left turning traffic to slow the flow, either).
I didnt even like walking along them, much less biking on them-- bike lane or not-- because they were so high-speed. If those 2 streets (and Juniper) were 2 way they would have been much more pleasant for folks who live in the area. I always rode on Peachtree instead of Spring or W Peach because the slow traffic speeds made it seem like the safest road.
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hadn't thought about the speed of those roads.
i didn't even think about at the time - but I rode on W. P'tree and Spring all the time. upon reflection though, yeah, those two roads in particular are sketchy.
coming up edgewood, i still think i'd prefer p'tree center to w. p'tree over p'tree the whole way.
Good points.But in my
Good points (to Paul).
But in my opinion these one-way streets contributed to the abandonment of retail in Midtown. Then again, retail as an urban model has mostly gone to hell in Atlanta. Anyone want to do lunch?
shopfront retail is dead
shopfront retail is dead almost everywhere, not just Midtown, and not just Atlanta.
The Connect Atlanta Plan
The plan was voted on and adopted this year, the first comprehensive traffic plan for the City of Atlanta and it calls for all Midtown streets to be 2 way, Spring, West Peachtree, Juniper and Piedmont going North/South as well as Ponce, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th going East/WEst. It also calls for an additional 200 miles of bike lanes all over the city to add to the 30 miles of bike lanes that we've had for over 13 years.
Check it out. The OW on the map means conversion from one way.
http://www.connectatlantaplan.com/images/Map_grid_images/Map%2017.pdf
http://www.connectatlantaplan.com/index.html