[BikeLongmont] Parking in Bike Lanes

[David Oliver]

Mike,

It sounds like you are saying that having no bicycle facility on a road 
is better
than a unsafe one. I guess I agree that I would rather have better 
quality ( better
clearance from both moving and parked cars) than more quantity.
Alternating streets is an interesting idea. I can see how that might 
work on,
for example, Lashley with Alpine or Collyier, or Mtn View with 9th or 17th.

I agree that many of the bike lanes in Longmont are too narrow to use when
parked cars are also present. Opening car doors are a greater risk to 
bikes than
a direct rear end, and insufficently wide bikes-with-parking lanes would 
cause
some inexperienced cyclists to play the wrong odds.

There seem to be two camps of urban cycling advocates: "every public 
street is
my bike path, so bike facilities are unnecessary" versus
"we need as many bike lanes as possible". Both make some good points:
bike lanes/paths will never go to every destination, so cyclists will 
always use
every road, and motorists do need to be better educated to expect that.
However, good bike facilities will cause some cyclists who don't feel 
comfortable
on busy streets to ride more places than they otherwise would.

My experience with our city council is that they are very responsive to 
citizen
concerns and some (especially Doug Brown) are very interested in
cycling/pedestrian concerns. I suspect city traffic engineer Joe Olson would
want to see accident rate statistics, and I'm sure those statistics 
would support
your position if you can find them.

-David

Mike Dodge wrote:

> David,
>
> Actually my concern is that according to the city these areas are both 
> for parking and bike lane. Any vehicle parked in these areas will make 
> the bike lane useless. I personally have no problem with riding in the 
> main lane, but lots of others are intimidated. I would like the city 
> to designate these areas as either parking or a bike lane, but not 
> both. This park was not the only area of the older section of town to 
> have this problem. I took lots of pictures, but the one I sent was the 
> best to illustrate the problem. The problem is general is that the 
> city streets are not wide enough to support a bike lane and automobile 
> parking. The city just needs to decide which is more important on each 
> street. They might compromise and have one side parking and the other 
> a bike lane. If they alternated every other street as to which side 
> was the bike lane, than bike lanes going both directions would be usable.
>
> One of the few streets in the city wide enough to support both is the 
> south part of Pratt.
>
> Mike
>
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