Regarding the parking/biking tradeoff on Walnut St., some have asked: why not both? Put on your traffic engineer hat. What would you do to accommodate bicycles on streets with legal, but light parking and insufficiently wide right-of-way to have both parking (you need 7′ or so) and bike lanes (you need 5′ or so) in addition to motor vehicle travel lanes (10 or 11′ each)?
There are significant portions of Newton’s major arteries where the road isn’t wide enough for bike lanes and parking, but there isn’t much actual conflict between parked cars and bicyclists outside of the travel lanes. For the most part, riders comfortable and willing to ride on the road without explicit bike accommodations can fairly safely dip into the travel lane to go around the occasional parked car*.
The problem is that Newton bicycle use won’t grow enough if it’s limited to those who are comfortable riding on roads that do not have explicit bike accommodations. And, regulations and guidelines preclude the city striping bike lanes where parking is allowed.
So, in a road with less than 44′ of right-of-way, how do you accommodate bikes and allow occasional parking? Putting bikes on alternative routes is not a valid answer for this exercise.
Note: proposing sharrows will get you no more than a C-. Sharrows in the travel lane are sub-optimal, because they suggest that bicyclists ride in the travel lane when there is lots of (safer) room on the shoulder. Sharrows in the shoulder are out, because you can’t suggest that cars park where bicyclists are explicitly encouraged to ride.
Good luck.
* This is not necessarily an opinion shared by the broader bicycle advocacy community.
It seems that there are 4 significant factors in all of this.
1) Level of parking on the street (and why its there … commuters, shoppers, guests, deliveries)
2) Volume of traffic on the street
3) Safety vehicle access
4) sidewalks
These are all items that affect safe bicycle riding (and pedestrian and joggers access for that matter).
Cambridge is often cited for its bicycle friendliness. Of course, the difficulties of parking and driving in Cambridge make bicycles a much more appealing alternative if one is able to ride a bike. Public transporation in Cambridge is also much more reliable and accessible. What are their policies regarding light parking spaces and bicycle lanes?
I have heard that the city of Boston has some interesting parking rules regarding Commercial plates. How is the biking situation in Boston? How do these commercial parking patterns affect bicycling?
I do tend to resist “bans” as a rule and look for ways encourage a particular behaviour without having to ban another. So my feelings on the parking ban on Walnut Street is not straightforward. Then to turn around and call Walnut St “lightly parked” and therefore eligible for a bike lane … doesn’t seem right. It wouldn’t have qualified 6 months ago.
Anyway, would like to hear more about the Cambridge policy, the Boston situation and some thoughts on how some aspects of each might apply to Newton. I’m not looking to be a Cambridge or Boston, but I do think that we can look to them for some ideas … as long as we’re realistic about when and where they would make sense for Newton.
There are really two parts to the Walnut St. story. On the southern half, Walnut St. was not likely parked. Neighbors wanted that regular parking removed. On the northern end, towards Whole Foods, there wasn’t regular commuter parking like there was to the south. The northern stretch was more lightly parked (visitors, deliveries, contractors).
The folks on the southern end are happy to be rid of the safety problem that the commuter parking created. As a collateral benefit, the city can stripe bike lanes. The folks on the northern end are less happy.
The challenge is on the northern end. Do you end the bike lane through that stretch to maintain on-street parking? Do you remove on-street parking to ensure a continuous, unbroken bike lane? Or, is there another solution out there?
I can’t think of an equivalent stretch in Boston or Cambridge: a car/bike corridor, not wide enough for parking and a bike lane, and only lightly parked. But, if somebody else can, I’d be happy to investigate.
Greer,
For purposes of this exercise, assume that it’s a corridor like Walnut or Beacon St. with fairly high volumes, assume that there is usually from none to two cars (or contractor trucks) per block, with the occasional party drawing a bunch of cars, and assume that there are regular-width sidewalks.
While there are important policy questions to wrestle with, at root there are questions because there isn’t an obvious physical solution to the problem of mixing parking and bikes. Solve that and you wouldn’t have to wrestle with the policy questions.
On a street such as Walnut, where pedestrian traffic is pretty light, would it be a problem to allow bikes on the sidewalk?
Bikes are allowed on the sidewalk on Walnut. It’s not within a commercial district. (I’m pretty sure that the board did not add an age condition to the changed rules about biking on sidewalks.)
The problem is that biking on sidewalks introduces its own risks, especially for bikes going at a decent clip (over 10 MPH). When a bicyclists rides in the street (whether in a bike lane or not), she’s part of the traffic flow that the driver backing out of a driveway is trying to enter. The driver is better equipped to see her. The driver is crossing the sidewalk and less likely to see her, especially if there are obstructions.
Similarly, it’s better at intersections to be with the flow of traffic going east/west than cross the north/south street at the sidewalk. Someone coming to the east/west street will stop before entering or crossing the north/south street, but might not be looking for someone crossing in the crosswalk at a bike speed.
Thanks for that explanation. I’d never thought of those issues.
As someone who prefers not to bike on Walnut whenever possible, I can honestly say that parking is the reason I try to find every way around it. In Newtonville, which is a commercial district, it’s not uncommon for students with shiny new licenses to be going too fast and (more than a few times) on the phone as they travel to and from the high school. (Perhaps, instead of cross walk stings, police could set up some cell phone stings around the high schools?)
Here’s the reality, people are biking more even if they aren’t driving less. We need to get ahead of things and really look at village parking overall. If it’s a case of creating public/commuter parking in key locations to free up the roads for cyclists, then it’s worth exploring but just banning parking isn’t going to fix the real problem.
The data on biking on the sidewalk are pretty alarming. According to a study published in the Transportation Research Record on bike crashes nationally, the chances look like this (am not sure of the numerator here–could be per 1,000 cyclists or less– it wasn’t on the quote I’m using):
Bicycle crashes
• On major streets without bike lanes 1.28
• On minor streets without bike lanes 1.04
• On streets with bike lanes 0.5
• On shared use paths 0.67
• On sidewalks…. 5.3
Seanarini, not everyone has the basics to be a qualified traffic engineer. As a prerequisite for first college year mechanical engineering we had to rise to a level 12 in this stationary logistics test before we were given the approval to move onto simulted road traffic. Try it yourself and see how you rate; scoring a 12 will land you an associate’s position in Clint’s backoffice…