CommuteOrlando had a post, shown here, in which Eric talked about his "Nemesis Road." That post picked up 25 comments, with people talking about the roads they love to hate. My Nemesis is in Colleyville, less than 2 miles from my house. It's Glade Road. The roadway is in good condition, since Colleyville just paid a LOT of money to reconstruct the road. You can see, however, that there is no way at all for a motorist to pass a cyclist not inclined to pick up a cozy lane partner. This makes double yellow lines look pretty innocuous.
You can't see it in either photo, but there's a big wide "Safe Routes to School" path along the other side of the street. This path crosses a lot of driveways and such. I tried riding it - once. Nowadays, I just grit my teeth and ride down the middle of the lane. It's the longest minute I experience when cycling.
I can't say if it's coincidence, but I have not experienced harassment on Glade. Perhaps our local motorists are more tolerant than most. For those that think the lane looks shareable, imagine one of those big lawn maintenance trailors whipping along behind one of those trucks, with maybe a couple of branches hanging out the side.
Colleyville should be ASHAMED to have spent taxpayer money on such an abomination! For less money, they could have put in a proper three-lane road that would have accommodated all road users with no problems. Instead, we have brick and landscaping medians, and cyclists that have a choice between getting OFF the road or of truly slowing down traffice. The only redeeming feature of this road is that it only takes me a minute to get to where I turn off. One wouldn't think such a short ride would be a problem...
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7 comments:
I hate that street design! A minute can feel like an eternity sometimes.
We have a few of those here. One I posted last month. The other is in the much-aligned-but-never-enough-maligned Baldwin Park. This is the new-urbanist wet-dream street. A sidepath for child cyclists next to a pinched-down single lane (narrow lanes slow traffic, dontchaknow).
I want to get a group of cyclists and ride up and down the thing with signs that say: "Can't pass, huh?" "Sucks, huh?" "Call [responsible planner's personal phone number]"
We need a NATIONAL call up the dweeb planner day!
My Nemesis Road isn't a road at all, but it should be. Or at least a bike path.
It is the TX 183 (Southwest Blvd.) access road at the train tracks parallel to Vickery Blvd. in southwest Fort Worth. If you're traveling northwest on the 183 access road, it ends at the train tracks and loops around the to the other side under the bridge. At one point, the access road is less than 70 feet from River Bend Boulevard. But there are not one, but two cable fences blocking that access. Sure you can pick up your bike, but jeez, why not put in a bike path with bollards? If you zoom back you can see that 183 is otherwise a great route to get across the southwest corner of Fort Worth.
This route, even with the cable fences to carry your bike over, is used by several commuters to the Lockheed Martin plant and several other employers on the west side. Rumor has it that they will eventually connect the access road and River Bend, but they can't do it soon enough in my opinion.
Is there no way to duck over to River Bend Blvd? Presumably not, or else why would people be tossing their bikes over cable fences?
Now THIS would be a bit of bike infrastructure worth putting in. Cheap AND useful! Betcha it isn't on the Fort Worth bike plan...
Steve said:
"We need a NATIONAL call up the dweeb planner day!"
I love that idea! Let's include the cyclist-betraying bike-ped coordinators who champion 11+3 or 10+4 separation of WCLs into substandard gutter lanes, shoehorned door-zone bike lanes and other symbolic, unhelpful garbage. And the shameless "researchers" who aid and abet.
Doohickie doesn't like bike politics, but it is only though raising awareness of what's going on that we will turn the system back to creating ACCESS—exactly like solving the River Bend situation. Someone needs call attention to the Emperor's attire. Or they will continue grabbing the low-hanging fruit instead of helping to solve real problems.
Doohickie already named a candidate dopey road - and it's even low hanging fruit.
The TOUGH thing about a dweeb planner thing is finding out the particulars about the vermin that inflict such abominations on us, and on not creating the impression that our OWN favorite horrible messes somehow mean our OWN area is horrible for cyclists. If I hung around Portland, I'd have lots of horrible examples from there. I actually showed a couple of dopey Seattle things.
Are people NOT from Orlando welcome on the forums over Orlando way - this would seem like a topic. A little different than the Warrington Cycle series, but in a similar vein. We could vote for the "Turkey of the Year."
The forums are open to everyone.
They don't get much use. Orlando people are not very participatory.
That's a good idea though.
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No Need for Non-Robot proof here!