Safety First, Bike Task Force Sez

The City of Austin has convened a new Street Smarts Task Force, whose mission will be to make this burg more bike-friendly.

The Task Force (which, despite its nifty name, will not wear nifty matching uniforms) promises to investigate recent cyclist fatalities; figure out ways to make commuting and traveling more bike-friendly (important, onaccounta our city's little congestion problem); and put together a biker/motorist safety education initiative.

More here.

Image from daniel_bryant on Flickr

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By rebeccaonion on April 2, 2007 8:01 AM 0 Comments

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prj

motorists all over austin were on a murderous rampage today, and most of them were twenty-something men driving huge pickup trucks. hey you guys. you're assholes. someday you're gonna kill somebody!

M1EK

During my days on the UTC, we tried to get the city to commit to a bicycle boulevard pilot on one of the currently one-way streets west of Guadalupe (West Campus area) but never got anywhere. It's not particuarly well-suited for it anyways because you can't just stay on one road all the way through the troublesome sections due to the offset street grid + diagonal stretch of Guadalupe north of 27th.

Patrick

It'd be very nice to have something -- a bike lane or an alternate route or whatever -- established for some of the main downtown thoroughfares that can be very popular for cyclists but difficult to navigate.

Lamar, Congress and Guadalupe come to mind most readily. All are heavily trafficked but largely lack places for cyclists -- Guadalupe has an extremely brief bike lane in the area of campus but it gives out south of MLK and North of 24th, and Congress has one around SoCo but nothing more central. Lamar can be particularly hazardous unless you want to get on the sidewalks and bother the pedestrians.

M1EK

Separate facilities are a disaster in this country outside a few creekbed projects - the typical project ends up as a wide sidewalk which crosses way too many driveways; and what ends up happening is that bicyclists get shunted to them by politicians, and then can travel no more quickly than a pedestrian (because every 20 feet there's an intersection at which the assumed right-of-way lies with the driveway).

Berkeley transplant

Berkeley has what they call 'Bicycle Boulevards' that run parallel to busy streets. This might be a great idea to investigate for Austin -- tho might piss off those drivers that look to those same streets as alternatives for *them* to the busy streets. Goggle Berkeley bicycle boulevard for info. I don't have a Type-key ID. :p

But it's a good idea. Portland's looking into it too. The street I grew up on became a 'Bicycle Boulevard'. I came to Austin 10 years ago and think these ideas would lessen risky bike traffic on streets like Guadalupe or Lamar. N S streets south of the river might be difficult, however.

I know in Amsterdam, bicycles have their own separately paved 'roadways', which were ingenious-looking, but would of course be expensive to implement. But might be a worthwhile idea for New construction areas that are attempting to be VMU and pedestrian/bike-friendly.