Jenifer and 41st Street Bicycle Boulevard Design

Though I mentioned that the 41st Street "Bicycle Boulevard" had been installed back in April, I hadn't looked at the design of that facility until the brouhaha over the Jennifer Street one cropped up. Here's a link to a schematic of both of those facilities. 

While Jenifer Street has some features that one associates with a bicycle boulevard mostly these are just bike routes with sharrows and a few blocks of bike lanes. There's signage calling them a "Neighborhood Bikeway" as shown in the image at right, which I like better based on the design.

Other than the sharrows, signs and bike lanes, other features include:

• A contraflow bike lane on 41st between Chesapeake and Davenport streets, where 41st is one-way
• A diverter - real bicycle boulevard infrastructure - at Jenifer and 43rd. (see the image below).

This doesn't really rise to the level of "Bicycle Boulevard." The Portland State Bicycle Boulevard Design Guideline defines a Bicycle Boulevards as

low-volume and low-speed streets that have been optimized for bicycle travel through treatments such as traffic calming and traffic reduction, signage and pavement markings, and intersection crossing treatments. These treatments allow through movements for cyclists while discouraging similar through trips by nonlocal motorized traffic. 

I don't think these have been "optimized" and don't seem to include intersection crossing treatments. Not do I see anything (other than the extant diverter) that discourages through trips by non-local drivers. Still it's not a bad facility, I just worry about the watering down of the term.

I'm also not sure what to do with the bike mixing zone image in the middle. I guess it is for cyclists to use after they cross through and need to get to the other side of the street? Maybe it's just something I need more experience with. 

Comments

[Uptowner]

Thanks for this post! You are spot on that this is mainly just sharrows, with almost no effort to actually reduce car speeds, reduce car volumes, or prioritize cycling.

I went by there last Friday, and the diverter, the only real piece of bike boulevard infrastructure, was not built yet.

Also, the section of 41st St, north of Reno is classified as an arterial, with high vehicle volumes (7,400 / day), which are almost 5 times as many vehicles as are recommended for a bike boulevard (<1,500 vehicles/day).

Bike boulevards could be a great tool for linking DC together with high quality bicycle infrastructure, but this is certainly not a bike boulevard.