West Ponce/West Trinity Bike Lanes One Step Closer to Reality
Decatur Metro | February 15, 2010
Cities are products of the state. And don’t the cities know it.
Decisions by local municipalities may have the largest impact on our day-to-day lives, but in many cases the state still has the last say. And sometimes cities have to hold their breath a very long time waiting for the state to say ANYthing.
Especially when that state entity is the Georgia Department of Transportation.
One such Decatur bond project, which has been sitting patiently in the queue since 2006, is the construction of the West Ponce de Leon/West Trinity bike lanes. It’s original, optimistic construction date was October 2008-March 2009. But as you may have noticed, when you venture out on Ponce or Trinity, there is no mini-lane for our two-wheeled friends; much to the chagrin of Decatur’s new bike advocacy group.
However, it looks like the city may finally be making some progress. Amongst the items on the docket for tomorrow’s city commission meeting: a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute an agreement with GDOT for the West Ponce/West Trinity bike lanes. Under the agreement, the city would provide $65,465 to match the $261,860 in federal transportation enhancement funding to be put up by GDOT.
As for next steps: according to a note from City Manager Peggy Merriss, “Once the agreement is executed by the Department of Transportation, the city will receive its authorization to advertise for bids and proceed with construction.”
The “hurry up and wait” period for this particular project may almost be over.
Is the plan to keep the on-street parking currently on W. Ponce, or to have the bike lanes use that space? I tried to enlarge the photo above to see, but couldn’t.
Two things: 1) If on-street parking is permitted in the bike lane, then, from a biker’s perspective, this is a waste of money; 2) Hopefully, we (the city of Decatur) earned interest on any money that has been already collected but not spent over this period (recognizing that interest rates are at record lows!).
West Ponce has no on-street parking within the project area. All its on-street parking is east of Trinity, where the lanes will veer off.
Those projects seem pricey. I wish the “click to enlarge” link worked.
Where can we go to get a better look at the budgeted projects?
Try this
http://www.decaturga.com/client_resources/cgs/citysvcs/ced/bondfund/westtrinity_bikelanes.jpg
I will be good to have this project *finally* on the move! I’ve been trying to get GDOT to free up the funds for this project for quite sometime now. This is a TE (Transportation Enhancement) grant project and the funds come from the federal level – GDOT picks the grants and administers the funds. They also have final approval on the plans. It is an 80/20 split – Decatur is putting up 20% of the project’s costs and the Feds put up the rest. This is not state money and it’s been frustrating trying to find out why GDOT has gotten so far behind on these TE projects. This project is so long overdue that GDOT had to re-submit some federal paperwork because the orginal “okay” was only good for 6 months!
Basically, it is a classic “road diet” – taking W. Ponce (the section from the city limits to the post office)from 4 lanes to 2 travel lanes and a center turn lane. There will be parking along the curb. The bike lanes will turn down W. Trinity and stop at City Hall. This is really a re-stripping/painting project – the major cost comes from having to mill and repave part of W. Ponce because the road surface is pretty shot.
So, hopefully, this project will help slow the traffic speeds on that stretch of W. Ponce, add some lanes for the cyclists, and some parking for the residents.
Fred,
If parking is added, how can we be assured that people will not park in the bike lane portion? Will there be two distinctly different lanes–parking & biking? And will Decatur PD enforce a clear bike lane?
Thanks for your efforts.
My earlier post should have read “It will be good…”.
As far as folks parking in the bike lanes, the pick-up/drop-off line at St. Thomas Moore will be allowed to “idle” in the bike lane on Trinity in front of the Mary Gay house. There’s no way around that. As far as as W. Ponce, there’s no on-street parking there now and residents did not indicate much of a need for it – so I don’t think the City is even marking spaces on W. Ponce. From what I remember, the rest of Trinity was okay.
There are very, very few examples of Road Diets in GA, so we’re leading from the front on this one (at least compared to the rest of the state – you can’t position Decatur against Portland or Seattle in the same context for bike friendliness).
So let’s see how it goes – at least the project is showing some life!
Two examples of successful road diets traveling from Decatur to downtown are McLendon and Edgewood, both popular commuter routes.
It is my hope that new bike lanes on W Ponce will soon connect to the PATH via the real Ponce.
Edited to note: McLendon does not have striped bike lanes. It just happens to be a very useful route to and fro.
“… taking W. Ponce (the section from the city limits to the post office)from 4 lanes to 2 travel lanes and a center turn lane. There will be parking along the curb.”
Much needed.
Even if I don’t use that path, it may slow the cars screaming down that blind launch ramp into downtown.
Great news. I don’t live in Decatur, but I visit fairly frequently. When I don’t take the MARTA, I tend to come out the DeKalb PATH, then cut over to W. Ponce on Adair before heading down the hill into town. This will make the trip much more pleasant. Thanks for the efforts.
Does this include the block of Trinity immediately west of McDonough, along the south end of the DeKalb County Courthouse and across the sole entrace/exit to its parking deck? Unfortunately, I have to travel to the courthouse regularly for my job, and the traffic in that block is frequently gridlocked already. Please, please tell me that there still will be four travel lanes there. Pretty please?