It's America's Stupidest Bike lane but not for much longer. Ending it's reign as the Cedar Street Wrong Way Bikeway, Finish the Trail points to a plan to redesign it with two options. DOT and FTT state, and I agree, that option 1 is the best.
DOT recommends an Option 1 that avoids the problem of getting "doored" by moving the parking lane to the opposite side of the street from the counterflow bike lane. (Shown)
Alas, the plan suffers from a tragedy of the anticommons issue.
But the parking lane on Cedar Street is under residential parking permit zone regulations. That means that the lane cannot be moved without the agreement of over 2/3 of the residents on that street, plus the approval of the local civic association. There are 13 homes on that street, it will only take 4 residents to say "no" to block the Option 1 that would move the parking to the other side of the street. So - that makes very strong odds we will get Option 2 since it does not require approval of the residents.
Option 2 puts the bike lane in the door zone.
Everyone please submit input on this project! One thing we're demanding is that if they choose the door zone option, they must widen the bike lanes to 6.5' instead of 5' (we want 7', but anything less than 6' is criminal next to parking). Saving grace is that 13 residents only own so many cars.
Posted by: Jack | October 27, 2008 at 09:01 AM