Is Lakewood Serious About Riders, Or Just Pretending?

[Jim O'Bryan]

A couple weeks ago I had a long conversation with one of the sharpest lawyers in town and a friend Matt Markling. He was telling me all about Bike Lanes and how some people do them correctly but Lakewood is missing the mark. I personally have never been a fan of Bike Lanes, especially as Tim Liston used to write about how they are not safer for the rider, but merely creates the perception of safety and making riders happy, thereby voting for council members "fighting for them."

Matt a good family man with three young ones riding bikes, and an active family discussed for mile after mile about how Columbus does them correctly, and I have to admit I was not sold. Then we arrived in Columbus, and I was taken back by not just how amazing they were, but were also safer, and really thought out well. They did not just paint little bikes on the streets and say, OK let's share. They did not paint a white line down and said "Here you go riders!" Now they thought this out and redesigned their streets in a logically and even beautiful way that made riders safer, made drivers safer, and actually added to the overall streetscape that completely won we over. They had created a bike friendly community that welcomed bikers and went farther than fluffing them off with a bike in the road here and there.




Bike lanes, on one side of the street, featuring two lanes away from traffic.


Featuring their own traffic signals, so that riders understand they must stop, no coast through intersections.


Even their own turning lanes, making it abundantly clear they are vehicles.


But it also builds up a safe zone for bikers when cars park on the street.


With no more space than with what we have on Detroit, Madison, Clifton and Lake, Columbus has thought it out and made it an amazing community to ride around, safely and fair to all.

Nice work Columbus, and Thanks Matt for another lesson on how to do things better.

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[cmager]

Protected Bike Lanes added within the existing street footprint. Well done, Columbus!

[Dan Alaimo]

I see what we have now as a first effort toward bike lanes. Flawed, but points for trying.
To prove they are serious, they need to commit to revisiting/reevaluating the concept, what works, what doesn't, what ideas from elsewhere like this one should they look at?

If they aren't willing to do that, then no, they aren't serious, just opportunistic.

(Is this Neil Avenue?)

[Jim O'Bryan]

I see what we have now as a first effort toward bike lanes. Flawed, but points for trying.
To prove they are serious, they need to commit to revisiting/reevaluating the concept, what works, what doesn't, what ideas from elsewhere like this one should they look at?

If they aren't willing to do that, then no, they aren't serious, just opportunistic.

(Is this Neil Avenue?)

Dan

Bike Lanes like the Skate Park and dogs seem to be things that get glorified in the run up to elections as low hanging branches and focal points easy to put into bullet points, and get a group of people behind.

The Skate Park is a perfect example of this. For over ten years it was merely a bullet point. Within 24 hours of voting it fell off the to do list. Finally one councilman kept his word and found some people to fight on. The unlikely partnership of Ryan Demro and Tom George, two people that could agree on nothing were successfully played against each other to make on of the more successful features in Lakewood's Parks. Then it went to, "Build the bowl..." Which is now the Brigadoon concept they comes and goes with elections.

Will they take the next step? Who knows? We have 30' painted green on Franklin, that was used for a photo op and campaign photo? Now faded and forgotten.

Of course in recent years Honesty, Accountability and Transparency has also become the ghost of Brigadoon. On everyone's brochure but strangely invisible once elected.

Lakewood needs to be what they saw, and Lakewood's elected officials need to do more than make hollow promises, then revert back to the machine of mediocrity.

But I suppose election promises come very hard for Lakewood's leaders.

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[Dan OMalley]

It's important to make a distinction between "sharrows" - arrows with a picture of a bicycle that are painted in the middle of a lane of traffic - and actual, dedicated bike lanes. In Lakewood we have both.

It's true that our bike lanes are different than the ones in Columbus noted here, but they're hardly fluff: they provide real infrastructure for bicyclists, result in an positive increase in bike traffic, and are proven to make both bicyclists and motorists safer. Yes, there are ways we can improve them (prioritizing separated bike lines as pictured above) and increase them (Clifton, Lake Ave.) but the bike lanes we have now are important, and effective.

Sharrows however, like the ones on Madison in Birdtown, are pretty insignificant in my opinion. They aren't much in terms of infrastructure and, however well-intentioned they may be, they could actually be making cyclists less safe. A few years ago the University of Colorado released a study where they examined 2,000 city blocks in Chicago - some with bike lanes, some with sharrows, some with no bike infrastructure at all. The study showed that sharrows result in only marginal increase in bike ridership, and streets that contained them actually had slightly higher incidences of bicycle-related accidents than streets with no bike infrastructure at all. It wasn't clear why that was the case, but the authors surmised that sharrows were giving cyclists the illusion of safety without actually providing any.

Anyway, we have made significant investments to increase safety and ridership for bicyclists in Lakewood but there are ways to do more, and do better. There are a lot of people committed to both.

[Jim O'Bryan]

I see what we have now as a first effort toward bike lanes. Flawed, but points for trying.
To prove they are serious, they need to commit to revisiting/reevaluating the concept, what works, what doesn't, what ideas from elsewhere like this one should they look at?

If they aren't willing to do that, then no, they aren't serious, just opportunistic.

(Is this Neil Avenue?)

Dan A

That is Summit Avenue, though it is the same all over Columbus.


Councilman O'Malley

Thanks for stopping by

Seriously. it is always good to hear that we are looking at other ways to make it better.

I live in a City where politicians give lip service to many for votes, and then do not follow through.

If you read the many comments on other Observer sites you will see, safer bikes lanes would get more use, and would also get riders off the sidewalk, another hazard.

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