Hi Sydney, thanks for reaching out! I’m a cyclist too and while I like the idea of complete streets, the way that the city has implemented it in the past is what I have to second guess. And sometimes the way the city (and the federal funds mandates) does things makes it way more expensive to the point where we could be doing more for cyclists with the same amount of funds.
I’ll give you two examples: the N Street Bike Lane and south 56th between Old Cheney and Pine Lake. On the bike lane, we have the cyclist lights which aren’t timed well and have led to a lot of people using N Street still to ride because it’s faster, but the N Street lane is still one lane. But we spent $3.5 million on the N Street lane with all the landscaping when really paint and bollards and smart locations is what we need (don’t even get me started on that disaster of a ‘bike lane’ on 14th street lol), and for the cash we spent we could have built 6 or 7 bike lanes downtown or across the city and had an actual functional bike network.
So, on South 56th, trying to do the complete streets process led to excessive oversight by the Federal Hwy Administration which caused the project to be delayed by several months and double its budget and as a result there was a vehicle/cyclist injury collision in the construction zone that should never have happened because we were building berms and sound walls and the project should have been done by that point and the sidewalk constructed and accident should have never happened.
So I’m very interested in it, but also in improving the process so that we can build the network we need. But, the city does have the bike share program coming up and we have a great rails-to-trails program with the city bike paths, but the way the city does complete streets has been often a hindrance towards bicycle transportation and cyclist safety which is what I’m mainly concerned with. Hope that answered your question, and thanks again for saying Hi!. 🙂
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