Specifically …
The city has decided to scrap a portion of the Speck study that called for the establishment of a bicycle lane on State Street near Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services.
That’s all we got from the newspaper, so it’s left to our own JeffG to do the impossible as it pertains to local stenography, and ask a follow-up.
Excuse me Warren, would you like to give us an answer for a change — or would doing so be a burden to the exercise of your rubber-stamp bureaucratic default settings?
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A question here is what the Board of Works is proposing as an alternative bicycle corridor in that part of town, or are they just unilaterally declaring, sans any explanation, that bikes don’t belong, that they’ve already determined that people on bikes will be given short shrift? From the Speck report:
“However, beyond removing encouragements to speeding, State Street could and should be transformed in a more instrumental way. It is the only promising north-south corridor for cycling in this part of downtown, as it contains ample roadway to support bike lanes, with little impact on parking capacity. Its 40-foot cross section contains room for two driving lanes, two bike lanes, and a parking lane on one side. The parking would drop away briefly at left-hand turn lanes, but, if properly striped, could provide about as many parking spaces as are currently present in the roadway.
The only impediment to introducing these bike lanes are the small ‘bulb-out’ curb extensions now present in six locations, three of which would have to be removed. This small construction project would be a small price to pay for the introduction of a robust north-south biking corridor, particularly a pro-health ‘active living’ corridor linking Floyd Memorial Hospital to the Downtown YMCA Aquatic Center.”