From The Decatur Minute…
The City of Decatur is exploring ideas to improve the safety, comfort, and sense of place along West Howard Avenue using low-cost, semi-permanent materials.
Join us for a public open house about this project on Tuesday, June 20th to learn more and share your feedback on a preliminary design for the corridor.
When: Thursday, June 20, 6- 7:30 p.m.
Where: Atlanta Friends Meeting, 701 W Howard Ave, Decatur, GA 30030
For more information, contact Michelle Hirose, Senior Engineer, at [email protected]
The city’s press release appears to have the wrong date. June 20 is Tuesday.
Thanks Dan. Is it tomorrow or Thurs? Do you know?
Tomorrow.
Thanks!
How does a preliminary design work with input from the whole community? If the preliminary design ends exactly as initially proposed, how can community input/supported claim be accurate? There has been severe criticisms of past implementations, yet has any of that input resulted in any changes?
Yes, for one example the road diet on Commerce between Clairemont and Ponce was to have happened two years ago. Public input at that time caused the project to be redesigned.
Well, it sounds like that redesign went in the wrong direction. Complete Streets remains a bad idea. Putting an unneeded cycletrack across from a bike lane, cutting down numerous trees, as well as many others for a parking lot is a bad idea. A bicyclist is safer going by the new rec center, before cutting back to Commerce. It is, also, safer for a bicyclist to have options, being able to go from the road to a more protected position, ie, the sidewalk or a side road, yet there is little opportunity to do that often, an example The Path on West Howard.
There will not be truly safer roads for bicyclists until drivers of cars learn how to drive. Driving fast does not mean you are a good driver. More often it means a poor driver. Many drivers are very poor drivers, running stop signs, racing to lights. Which is partly from bad designs & bad ideas, but also, from poor driving. The road designs of past twenty-five years have seemed to have only encouraged more bad driving. It is not a good idea to continue on this path.
If there is any concern for bicyclists’ safety, the lights should be timed so a bicyclist can ride in safety & not have to worry about making a panic stop at the last minute at every light, especially coming down hills. Whatever has been done for bicyclists safety has for the most part been of little use to actual safety, aside from a few sidewalk ramps here & there. The Path that is completely separate, ie, not along a road & is actually more of a trail, as in Scotdale is a good idea.
Marked bike lanes are the way to increase safety for bicyclists. Drivers of cars simply need to realize that bicyclists are there, as well as people walking- though people walking need to learn to be safe on their own by trying to go around moving vehicles, rather than the ill fated idea of some invincibility that doesn’t exist in physics. The roads have been poorly adapted to travel by making the roads safe for no one. The newer ideas are no better. I hope there is some serious reconsideration about what has been done for the past two decades, as there needs to be serious rework- & Complete Streets is not it.
Roads should be designed so they can be properly used. What has been done in Decatur has made the roads even more dangerous for bicyclists, cardrivers, & pedestrians. leading to even more excessive bad driving & nonnavigable roads. It is time to requestion the proposals to come up with some truly good ideas that work for everybody, rather than what has been shoved down our throats- & rejected.
Does anybody know the status of Atlanta’s effort to “re-do” DeKalb Ave? It seems like we should imagine something similar since W Howard is basically an extension of DeKalb.
http://renewatlantabond.com/
You will have to search for DeKalb Avenue Complete Street Project.
There is a lot of information.
I believe the deadline for public comments was April 27th and construction is scheduled to begin in March 2018.
I will add that the piece of The Path that goes through the park, the small one across from the larger one with the playfield, just outside of Avondale Estates, at Clarendon should be avoided by bicyclists as it extremely dangerous, particularly when wet. There needs to be a sign explicitly stating this. Take the small road next to it, instead. It is much safer.
The existing path fails in many ways to meet modern design standards of a safe bike lane.
A few suggestions based on years of bike commuting this route.
Don’t put a bike path through the Valero gas station. The cars at the station don’t know they are sharing a bike lane (I had a car cut me off and plowed into the side of a car there — just yesterday! Yes I still hurt today. I have video – yes I bike with bike-mounted cameras — that I can share if COD wants to see how such an accident can easily happen)
The car-crossing at Atlanta Ave routinely has cars blocking the path during rush hour when they are waiting for the light. Repaint/sign so they don’t block it.
The track crossing is dangerous. I know many bicyclists (including myself) who have fallen there when the tracks are wet — tires slide easily and the path does not cross the track in a perpendicular trajectory, which would be safer.
There needs to be better striping, signage, and signaling to leave the path and cross to the bike lane at W. Commerce and W. Howard. If a bike wishes to cross, intentions by bicyclists are not clear to the cars, maybe the signaling should change (ped button on both sides?), or a crosswalk on both sides of the intersection.
Did this meeting happen? How did it go?