Decatur Wants Your Opinion on “Bike Suitability Map” Draft
Decatur Metro | September 13, 2011
Decatur Active Living’s Cheryl Burnette sends in this note…
Bike Suitability Map Coming Soon: Bike Decatur Wants Your Input!
Bike Decatur has been working on creating a Bike Suitability Map for the City of Decatur and with the help of public comments, has a “near final” draft. We would love to have a final round of comments from the community. The map can be viewed at http://www.decaturga.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=2627.We encourage bikers of all levels to ride the routes, let us know what you think, and offer constructive comments. We hope to have the map finalized and available in both digital and print versions later this year. Send comments to .
The printing of the map is partially funded by a 2011 Decatur Craft Beer Festival Grant.
Map above is just the zoomed in downtown Decatur map. To see the full city map, click the PDF link in Cheryl’s message above.
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Man, I think it’s about time you changed the name of this blog to:
Decatur Metro: Community Cycling
Yeah, except two weeks ago, I felt like the only thing I ever wrote about was restaurants.
But if you’re fed up…
Come with me dear Walrus, let’s talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings!
I thought Lyrics Only had that copyrighted.
Don’t think so. But, oh how I wish there was a Verse Only Guy or Gal. That would be insanely awesome.
CHORUS
Vacation
All I ever wanted
Vacation
Had to get away
Vacation
Meant to be spent alone
– The Go-Gos
I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.
(Keeps them out of my chainring.)
Is it me or do the colors on the legend not match the color of the roadways?
Thanks AT. That will be adjusted in the final printing.
Great stuff. Thanks Cheryl, Fred Boykin and all involved.
To start with…
drop/replace the gray out-of-limits,
add a MARTA icon and replace the blue blocks,
use a different color for MUPs,
don’t call them MUPs
MUPpettes?
Looks good to me. I think the road labels are subjective, and one person’s moderate traffic is another person’s heavy traffic. I’d put Ponce, Commerce and Clairemont in the latter category.
I agree with Savvy. Ponce, Commerce, and especially Clairemont belong in the heavy category. They are still scary to ride on. It will put a lot more red on the map, but it’s much more realistic.
Commerce and Church is a difficult intersection. I believe traffic is fairly heavy on Clairmont and Church headed north from Commerce. Same with Commerce and East and West Ponce on both sides of Commerce during rush hours.
Glendale is a multi-use path? There are the Safe-Route-to-School signs for the kids on the sidewalk (BTW, some of the signs have come unglued) but it’s a sidewalk, and sidewalks aren’t usually as safe as the street from cyclists. Did the people who live in the homes who live beside the sidewalk receive any additional information/tips/etc. on watching out for cyclists (who may come up on a driveway very fast in comparison to a walker or roller-skater)?
I can see the need for more water stations, which we talked about in another post.
Nice work — and thanks COD!
Looks good. Can’t wait for more water fountains around the city! hopefully they’ll be the style that have the regular drinking part, a higher nozzle for water bottles, and heck why not add a bowl at the bottom for the 100000000000 dogs in decatur
Looks great! I see some roads have been left white – is that because they are too minor to mention? I just would love to see E.Pharr/W.Pharr given a green line
Also, the E. Lake yellow to continue along e. lake all the way past underwood and spring.
Thank you for doing this!
Yes, Pharr is an important route, partly because it’s so nice and level. And it should be green.
Oh, and I forgot to say that it can get quite hilly around S. Mcdonough and Hill street, and Fayettville Road is a fabulous quiet street that leads directly into Oakhurst village.
Have you thought about putting arrows on roads that have hills. Here is an example: http://www.cob.org/documents/gis/maps/COB_Bikemap.jpg They use a single arrow for slight or short hills and double arrows for moderate/steep or long hills.
Thanks for the comments. Don’t forget to send details to . Couple of comments myself. Decatur has a lot of neighborhood streets that are bikeable and most of those we left as white otherwise the map would show a sea of green. We tried to identify a network of ways that a newcomer or beginner might use to figure out ways to get around town and avoid the higher traffic streets (or at least be aware of them).
If you look at the citywide map, it does identify steep hills with arrows pointing in the uphill direction. The inset map of downtown on the DM site shows bike parking facilities, the larger map does not as it got too hard to locate them in any sort of detail due to the scale.
Lots of folks involved in getting this map to this point. Jeff McMichael, Sara Yurman, Lisa Jackson have been most recently involved in designing the map and Jeff has really made it stand out. But the map has been a labor of love for a core group of local cyclists and it’s great to get it to the point to show it to the public.
The finished product will have rules of the road, cycling tips and other bits of information on the back side and will be 11X 14 and folded so it will fit in a jersey pocket, map case or bag.
Keep the comments coming – we will try to include as many of them as we can.
Nice work, everyone! It’s a great map already, and incorporating the comments will make it even better.
One thing that might be good to have is information about traffic lights that don’t change for bikes because the pressure plates aren’t sensitive enough. A cyclist wrote on DM a few days ago about being ticketed for “running a red light” that wouldn’t change, even though he waited a good long time. He couldn’t get over to the pedestrian button because he had a trailer. What intersections have pressure sensors that don’t sense bikes? The one at Heaton Park and Coventry (near Fernbank Elementary) is an example, but it’s outside Decatur.
Maybe it’s not something that needs to be on the map, but it is something we need to address to improve bike access. It isn’t fair to expect cyclists to wait until a motorist comes along to change a light. Nor can a cyclist simply go on the sidewalk and press the pedestrian button. So what should s/he do? The cyclist who wrote the post got a $212 ticket. Not fair.
The BikeDecatur group held a ride about a year ago testing traffic signals to see if they’d change for bicyclists. We didn’t find any in the City that needed fixing, though we couldn’t test them all (some had too much car traffic to see if the bike tripped the signal._
not sure if this has already been discussed on this board or what the timeframe is for the project, but I hope it is sooner than later.
http://datelinedecatur.com/2011/08/29/east-lake-road/#more-471
I vote for the bike lanes here, too! It is a crazy place to run or bike right now.
At a recent East Lake neighborhood meeting, there was some discussion of changing the traffic light at Paden Circle to a 4-way stop. I think this would improve safety a lot, not just pedestrians, but also the homes near that intersection. The sharp curve of East Lake Road at Parkwood is banked the wrong way (to the *outside* of the turn). Fast-moving cars frequently slide off the road there into people’s yards. East Lake is due to be repaved next year by Georgia DOT so your safety comments to them may help influence their decision.
This map needs elevation contour lines at the most detailed resolution possible (10 feet? 20 feet?) Put them in the background by printing them in tan or brown, and then anyone can figure out how steep any street is…
By having a bike path enables folks who are joggers and walkers to know the route to take. We have an issue in that Forkner and Sycamore Drive ARE NOT on the map but are critical to the map as it is a standard bike route for the Sunday and Wednesday bikers. The issue, Sycamore Drive heavy traffic still needs to move to Wynn Way and DeKalb Industrial. While there are street markers on Sycamore Drive, the street is to narrow for the volumne of traffic on the street (including our joggers and now the kids on skateboards and morning bike to school parents).
Be sure to click through to view the entire city map; Forkner and Sycamore are included on that one.The one above is the inset of the downtown area.
Thanks for all the comments and be sure to send them to .
Much appreciation goes to the Decatur Bike Group donating their time and talents to pull this map together!
Maybe DM (or you) can send one email with the URL for this post.
There is nothing moderate about Commerce/S. Columbia or Trinity (in my experience).
A lot of this depends on day and time. Sunday is a great day to do a North Decatur-Clairmont loop. Both are relatively flat.
Most bike maps base their ratings on whether a street is bike-friendly. I base mine on how busy it is, how wide it is (narrow is best) and how flat it is.
For that reason I love Pharr Road, and Spence south of the city border. I love Tupelo, and Maxwell St. I generally prefer the south side to the north side because it’s flatter.