Last night at the Urban Transportation Commission Bike and Pedestrian Subcommittee meeting, one very important point came up that needs feedback from Austin cyclists involving the Downtown Austin Plan.
Currently, Trinity street is proposed as the east downtown bicycle priority street for north-south travel. Several cyclists spoke last night, though, and proposed that Red River be used instead.
Their main reasons were:
- Topography: Red River is a lot less hilly than Trinity, and, as one speaker brought up, taking a flatter route can even trump safety in some cases.
- Destination access: Red River is closer to the places that cyclists want to visit most, and has better connections to the Waller Creek area as well.
On the other hand, of course, Trinity is often quieter than Red River, as far as motor vehicle traffic is concerned.
Which route would you prefer? Tell the city which street you would prefer for traveling through the east side of downtown (Nueces is slated to be a bicycle priority street on the west side). Get involved in the process with LOBV if you can.
The Downtown Austin Plan recommendations will have a lot of influence on the upcoming update to our city bicycle plan when it comes to downtown, we need the guidelines to be the best they can be to get more people cycling in Austin.
on Jan 28th, 2009 at 11:24 am
San Jacinto/Trinity currently work great for an east downtown route, there is much less traffic and the travel direction is not multi-directional
on Jan 31st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I couldn’t make it to the UTC meeting, but I was one who raised the question of Trinity vs. Red River.
I just want to make one point since this seems to be missed. With the current configuration, Red River St. has some disadvantages that Trinity does not. I think that misses the point. The point is to _make_ Red River St. a better route for bicyclists. To make Trinity an inherently better route, engineers would have to grind down the hill. I think that working on Red River St. would be easier in comparison.
(But there are many other needs around Austin, too.)