The newly stripped bike lane icon has a definitely laid back position. Are City staff subtly suggesting we should be riding recumbents?
Before this project was done where there was any bicycle infrastructure at all on this section of South Congress, it was a mishmash of bikes lanes that started then petered out within 50 feet or came to an abrupt stop feeding you into speeding traffic. The angled parking created so many blind spots for cars backing out and was such a nail bitter for cycling that during a 3 year period I commuted south on this stretch, I would ride into the Bouldin Neighborhood just to avoid it.
What a difference the new bike lanes make! Southbound there is now a bike lane that runs the entire length of South Congress from Riverside to Oltorf (where it meets up with an already existing bike lane that runs for miles south.) The car parking is now back in angled parking which means the driver looks right at you as they leave the space. At the SoCo District stretch, this is especially welcoming as the grade gets a bit steep and now you do not need to have the double worry of being buzzed by an impatient motorist while dodging cars backing out of parking spaces.
The view south from Riverside. Cars are now forced to merge out of the bike space and the bike lane now runs the length of South Congress.
At Academy, the southbound bike lane no longer has the abrupt end.
All in all, this is a great edition to South Congress, a major route to downtown for those of us south of the river. It is also good to see that City staff came up with a good solution without caving to hysterics from some local businesses that assume any concessions to those not in a car will destroy the local economy.
Back in angled parking is now the standard on South Congress from Academy to Oltorf.
on Aug 3rd, 2011 at 1:18 pm
The League of Bicycling Voters supported the City of Austin in order to make this happen. We anticipated some resistance from some business owners, so we waged a campaign to show public support for the project, including an email campaign that brought out over 300 supporters for the project. The City relies upon the public support that we demonstrated.
http://lobv.org/2010/11/action-alert-south-congress-bike-lanes/
http://lobv.org/2011/07/media-release-new-bike-lanes-open-in-time-for-first-thursday-on-south-congress/
We need community support too. Our work is member-supported.
http://lobv.org/join
We also need reliable, dedicated, long-haul, self-motivated volunteers to be a part of the LOBV.
Thanks to Elliott for being an LOBV member. I encourage all of his readers to join so that we can continue to have successes like South Congress or the Jollyville/360 connector. It’s no coincidence that Austin has seen so much more prominent bike infrastructure and so many more riders since 2006, when the LOBV stepped up its action. I don’t think these bike lanes would have been installed if the LOBV did not exist.
on Aug 3rd, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Thanks for your work and that of the rest of the LOBV on this.
on Aug 4th, 2011 at 10:14 am
Thanks for all the work, LOBV. The new lanes are awesome.
on Aug 4th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Huge improvement for both cycling and walking that stretch of road. Hats off to all involved.
on Aug 4th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
All in all, the new facilities are an improvement.
The next-most recent improvements–the strangely striped bike lanes with the foot-wide double stripes to the left, have seemed to me to increase the risks of right-hooks and from traffic pulling out from intersections and curb cuts to the right as compared to the previous configuration.
I remain skeptical of reverse-angle parking. As near as I can tell, it’s a traffic-calming measure (I’ve been riding S. Congress daily for years for my commute). Nose-in parkers pulled into a space quickly and waited until the way was clear before pulling out. Now, tail-in parkers stop when they see a space, pull forward, stop, put the car in reverse, back in. It works all right, but the process takes 10 seconds or so, while auto and bike traffic waits behind. That slows traffic on S. Congress, it seems to me, by a few-m.p.h. average. If there’s a net safety effect for cyclists, I’d have to wonder whether it comes from the reduced average speed of traffic rather than the exit angle of the parked cars. In many many hundreds of biking trips up and down S. Congress, I’ve never had anyone pull out in front of me in a way that caused me any inconvenience, let alone alarm.
Despite those quibbles, the continuous facilities (if different from place to place) from Riverside so far down S. Congress (far, far past Oltorf) is a very good thing. Especially the improvements to the bike lanes in both directions between Riverside and Nellie. Note however the north bound lane approaching Riverside has a hard-to-see manhole cover a couple of inches below the road surface–a nasty bump for the unaware.