Earlier this summer the City's public works staff was contacted about a potential traffic problem along 3rd Avenue. just north of Great Western Drive. The caller was correct in his assessment that the left turns in and out of the new credit union built on the northeast corner of 3rd Avenue and Great Western Drive created an issue. The existing striping alignment worked until the new credit union added two new driveways along the east side of 3rd and just north of Great Western Drive. With the new driveways in place, the customers entering and existing the Credit Union from 3rd Avenue would have to cross two solid double yellow lines. This is an illegal turn and a driver could get a ticket in doing so.

In response, the City removed the existing striping along 3rd Avenue between Great Western Drive and Iron Horse Drive and added a center turn lane to accommodate the two new driveways. Because 3rd Avenue narrows substantially at Great Western, we were not able to stripe the five foot bike lanes all the way south as before. Instead we stopped the bike lanes further north between the northern most driveway and Iron Horse Drive. We also made the southbound left turn pocket as narrow as we could to give the bicyclist wide outside lanes to maneuver and share with vehicular traffic. This treatment of dropped bike lanes is a common practice when roadways are re-designed to include turn pockets at T- intersections.

As per the bicycle rules of the road, when bike lane are not present a cyclist is expected to merge with traffic and take his/her position in the travel lane approaching an intersection, which is the expected and common practice for this type of intersection.

Feel free to contact me via the information below.

Len Marques
City of Longmont
(303) 651-8757
(303) 651-8696 fax
len.marques@ci.longmont.co.us

We recommend that you use our City of Longmont Request for Service Form in the future. This will ensure that staff receive your request in a timely manner and can follow up directly with you. Visit http://www.ci.longmont.co.us/support/feedback.htm.