City of Spokane Master Bike Plan Approved By Council
This just in (not really, I'm just trying to be dramatic): the City of Spokane's Master Bike Plan was approved at last night's City Council meeting.
The plan originally went on the agenda in May but was delayed until this week. If you haven't read it,
here's a link to the document and information on it.
About SRTC
SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.
SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.
6 comments:
Just picked up a copy of the Master Bike Plan Update at city hall tonight. Still see the city is ignoring the promise they made to people living along Crestline from Francis to Illinois. When they widened Crestline in the 1980s they promised a bike lane along both sides of Crestline, to slow traffic, keep the traffic away from pedestrians on the sidewalk, and most importantly to use the bike lane to plow snow on in the winter so they would not have to bury the sidewalks. I was worried when they rebuilt Crestline they would forget the bike lanes, but they did not. The outside lanes of Crestline are about 4 feet wider than the center lanes except at the major intersections, so why do they list shared area for bikes from Euclid to Francis? Bikes have their own lane.
So the outside lanes are wider but are they not striped? I'm trying to envision Crestline in that area but can't off the top of my head, I haven't been up there for a while. Unless they're striped, the roads are usually considered 'shared use' so that's probably why it's listed that way.
No the city has never painted a bike lane, nor put up any signs saying there is a bike lane, but they left room for one. I don't think I would ever ride my bike on Crestline, too busy especially now as the Market detour, but I keep looking at all the new bike lanes on the new streets and wonder why Crestline has been passed over.
Well, I no longer work at the City and couldn't get ahold of anyone over there this morning who knew anything about this off the top of their heads, but my guess would be one of two things. They either decided it was too dangerous to encourage people to ride on Crestline so compromised and made wider lanes in case people DO ride on it, but didn't stripe it so it wouldn't occur to people to ride on it. OR it was someone's pet project who used to work there so the lanes were widened but when that person left the actual striping got pushed under the rug because the next person either didn't like it or forgot about it.
Again, just a guess though. It could be something so simple as they just haven't gotten around to it yet. Am I a pessimist or what?
I think they forgot about it, the 1980s few people worried about bike lanes, gas was cheap and everyone had a car to go 3 blocks to the store, but since it is there and shovel ready they could develop it quickly. I don't think they should till after Market opens though, as it is real busy now.
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