Bicycle Improvements Needed to Connect East Rock and Fair Haven - Sharrows are not a substitute for bikeable streets Archived

249 Humphrey St New Haven, CT Show on Map Hide Map
Move the marker to represent your issue's location. The address will not change.

Issue ID:

235631

Submitted To:

New Haven

Category:

Signs

Viewed:

9799 times

Neighborhood:

Bishop-Hine

Reported:

on

Description

I ride this route often and feel that a bike route from Clinton Avenue, across Lombard and Humphrey to Orange, continues to be sorely needed.

I feel that this issue should remain open until a route that all persons -- age 8 to 80 -- feel comfortable riding their bikes on. Although sharrows are a minor improvement over nothing, adding sharrows to the road simply does not do that.

65 people previously voted on this issue: "Bike lane needed from Clinton Avenue to Orange Street," but that issue is being closed because sharrows have been installed. http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/8658-bike-lane-needed-from-clinton-avenue-to-orange-street

Sharrows are ineffective at increasing cycling rates unless speeds are reduced to 20MPH.

Portland, OR, and New York City, NY, are currently doing this along hundreds of miles of their residential streets.

Studies show that very few people will feel comfortable bicycling on roads unless speeds are strictly capped at 20MPH -- no matter what kind of paint you have on the road.

Achieving these average speeds along bike routes can be done through various traffic calming and traffic engineering methods. Berkeley has pioneered this decades ago this with its "bicycle boulevards," and many cities have since followed.
It is best to call them "slow streets", since they have a tremendous benefit for pedestrians and property owners as well.

The sharrows here should be replaced with street engineering that meets the standards of the NACTO -- whether bike lanes, buffered bike lanes, traffic calmed boulevards, or some other feature: http://nacto.org/cities-for-cycling/design-guide/ .


7 Comments

  • Carlos R. Galo (Registered User)

  • Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking (Registered User)

  • Rob Smuts (Registered User)

  • City of New Haven (Verified Official)

  • Complete Streets Statistics? (Guest)

  • Raisya (Registered User)

  • Closed Manager of Operations, Process Improvement - Transportation, Traffic, & Parking (Verified Official)

Comments are closed for archived issues.