Bike Lanes

From PeopleForBikes.org

By: Martina Haggerty, PeopleForBikes’ senior director of local innovation

With more protected bike lanes and low-stress bike networks being built across the country than ever before, we had a tough time picking this past year’s best new bike lanes. While numerous projects deserve recognition, we rounded up the top nine projects worth emulating.

9. Marin Boulevard Bikeway
Hoboken and Jersey City, New Jersey

In November, Jersey City and Hoboken completed construction on the Marin Boulevard and Henderson Street bikeway, which was first called for in the “Let’s Ride JC Bike Master Plan” as a way to better connect the two cities. The expansion of CitiBike into Hoboken also increased demand to ride between the two cities, says Mike Lydon of Street Plans, who worked on the project’s design. In 2022, CitiBike’s most popular route was between Hoboken Terminal and Jersey City’s Hoboken Avenue and Monmouth Street, which saw a total of 5,500 bike share trips. With the completion of the Marin Boulevard project, those rides can now be made entirely on protected bike lanes.

The bikeway is separated from traffic with plastic curbing and flexible posts, and it includes a textured painted surface that makes the bikeway more visible and improves traction. As a “quick build” project, the cities chose to move forward with somewhat temporary materials to expedite the project and improve safety, something that wouldn’t have been feasible with more permanent materials that require sidewalk reconstruction and drainage work, not to mention a longer timeline. According to Lyndsey Scofield, senior transportation planner of Jersey City, this approach “provides us with more flexibility to iterate on the design over time as we learn what works well and what could be improved.”

8. Broad Street
Providence, Rhode Island

After being declared one of Rhode Island’s most dangerous streets, Providence worked with the local community to reimagine Broad Street with protected bike lanes, bus islands, and crosswalk improvements. While balancing the needs of local businesses, bus riders, and people walking and biking, Broad Street now serves as a key component of the city’s Urban Trail Network, improving safety and accessibility for some of the city’s poorest and most diverse neighborhoods to jobs and opportunities citywide, as well as access to three major urban parks and multiple regional trails. Space for the bikeway was created by removing a wide center turn lane, which also helped reduce speeding along the street.

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From Cal.Streetsblog.org

By Melanie Curry

Advocates and would-be advocates from around the country tuned in yesterday to a webinar about how to build political power to get safe bicycling infrastructure in their neighborhoods.

“You already have the power,” said Carter Lavin, an advocate who developed the webinar. “You may just need to know how to apply it.” Lavin’s focus was on bike lanes and networks, but his outline of steps to build political power could apply to any problem.

“Bike lanes are an amazing piece of technology,” said Lavin. “They make biking safer and enticing to more people, and they increase accessibility of biking for more kinds of riders. From a global perspective, increasing bike riding can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and bike lanes are key to helping people go car-free.”

A main point to remember, said Lavin, is that local governments own and maintain streets and roads, and they are the ones who make decisions about them. They follow federal guidelines, but they also follow long-established habits that tell them to make sure cars don’t get jammed up and to worry less about the convenience of people walking and the safety of bike riders.

“The default is a dangerous society dominated by cars,” Lavin told Streetsblog in a conversation expanding on his ideas.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Decision-makers can be pushed to make streets better designed and safer – but they have to see the value in it for them.

“Politicians, like anyone, want easy and smooth lives,” said Lavin. “If it’s easier to distract you, or over explain, or tell you to shut up – and it will work- they will do that. But if it’s easier to get you to be quiet by making you happy, they’ll do that.”

A common response from local officials to requests for bike lanes and similar safety improvements is “we can’t afford it.”

“Excuse my language, but this is a bullshit excuse,” said Lavin. “We can’t afford it” means “I don’t care about it.” “Either they don’t see its potential value for themselves, or they don’t feel the pain of its absence” in the way that people outside of cars do.

“Bike lanes are cheap; there is always money,” said Lavin. “We’re talking about slivers of slivers of a municipal budget. This is not about money; it’s not even about bike lanes. It’s about priorities.”

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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