The city of Boulder Transportation staff has recommended Alternate B for improvements on Iris Avenue. Community Cycles enthusiastically supports Alternative B and encourages letters to City Council in support of Alternative B.
Four alternatives were put forward- all included protected bike lanes. Alternative A and B converted the 4 lane roadway to one lane in each direction with a center turn lane. Alternative C and D widened the road to maintain 2 travel lanes in each direction. Alternatives A and B have a short time frame and a relatively lower cost. C and D would take 20 years and cost at least four times as much, removing mature trees and requiring extensive new right of way.
Alternative A has one way bike lanes on each side. Alternative B has a two way cycle track on the north side. While we understand some bicyclists may feel a little trepidation about a two way cycle track, Community Cycles honestly believes that Alternative B is the best outcome and wholeheartedly supports Alternative B.
Here’s why:
1- The single most important aspect of this project is reducing the 4 travel lanes to 3. This will calm traffic, reduce deadly vehicle speeds and make Iris easier to cross and more pleasant to be on. If we can reduce travel lanes on Iris and the world doesn’t come to an end, it will allow us to consider similar treatments on unnecessarily large, fast roads, many that carry less traffic than Iris. 4-to-3 conversions will no longer be a third rail in Boulder traffic planning.
Studies show traffic would still flow smoothly in the three-lane configurations, just at safer speeds. That is because intersections are the primary cause of congestion on Iris and the designs would preserve the existing number of lanes at the “bookends”: the intersection with Broadway on the west, and the section from Folsom to 28th Street on the east. We have seen this work before. On Broadway north of Norwood and on Arapahoe between Broadway and Folsom, streets with similar traffic volumes to Iris, the three lane configuration does not cause delays.
2- Alternative B is the preferred alternative of our firefighters and emergency responders. The importance of this should not be underestimated. In the long history of battles to get on-road bicycle and traffic calming facilities, bike advocates and emergency responders have not always been on the same side- mostly because the emergency folks need to move large vehicles through streets and don’t generally like tight turns and narrow lanes. But thanks to great work by city Transportation staff, Boulder’s emergency responders are the biggest advocates of Alternative B. The middle turning lane is much more useful for them than two lanes in each direction and in the case of an evacuation, the cycle track can be turned into a one way vehicle exit lane – a big advantage over Alternative A.
3- Working together, making compromises, makes a project better and makes the next project possible. This is a big, difficult project in a town where a lot of people have strong opinions and where a similar project was taken down, not because the engineering didn’t work, but because the politics didn’t work. It is incumbent on us to build the largest base of support for this project as possible and to make the political compromises necessary to get there. Community Cycles has been working tirelessly on this project for the past year. Most importantly we believe the nonnegotiable key to this project is the 4 to 3 conversion. To get there, we willingly embrace and support the two way cycle track. As Barack Obama said,”A good compromise is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‘Huh. It works. It makes sense.’”
4- There are many examples of great, well functioning cycle tracks and to build a truly bike friendly city, we must be willing to use all the tools in the toolbox. Two- way cycle tracks are currently used in Philadelphia, Cambridge, MA, New York City, NY, Portland, OR, Saint Petersburg, FL, Washington, DC, Montreal, Quebec and many other cities in both North America and Europe. Of course, there are known, general concerns around cycle tracks but we think that these concerns either do not arise on Iris or else have good design solutions. For example, most of the connections to Iris from the south are at intersections, where the cycle track can be easily accessed. In addition, it is safe and easy to cross Iris at the east end of the project area using the Elmer’s Two Mile underpass. And for any given round-trip journey, Alternative B will require no more crossings of Iris to use the cycle track than Alternative A. We also believe that the concern about attentional blindness to eastbound cyclists can be addressed with automatic signaling devices that warn drivers when a cyclist approaches from the west. When combined with overall slower speeds, drivers should also have greater opportunity to notice cyclists and pedestrians, regardless of the direction from which they approach. We will be working closely with the city’s Transportation Department to address these and other concerns. They have already welcomed our input about how to make this the safest design possible and we are certain those discussions will continue.
Some residents have expressed concern that drivers might cut through neighborhoods adjacent to Iris. The city is putting forward a plan to address these reasonable concerns through installation of speed mitigation features on Kalmia, Hawthorn and other nearby streets as part of this project.
It’s important to note that for people biking, those side streets are not an adequate alternative to protected lanes on Iris. Off-Iris routes are circuitous and include safety dangers of their own where they cross 19th St. and Folsom. And they do nothing to fix the current dangers to pedestrians and motorists. The new design on Iris will include rebuilding sidewalks on both sides.
Community Cycles applauds the city of Boulder’s Transportation Department for their hard work on this project using best practices and arriving at a compromise design that incorporates all the feedback and concerns expressed by members of the community, while still holding true to the goal of the project- to make Iris (a road that sees at least one crash a week) safer for all users.
Community Cycles also applauds City Council members in advance and hopes council shows leadership by making the choice to honor their campaign commitments to road safety for every user.
Community Cycles is all in on Alternative B. Let’s get to it.
Sue Prant – sue@communitycycles.org