North McDonough and Railroad Crossing Improvements Meeting Next Thursday
Decatur Metro | November 7, 2013 | 9:45 am
From this month’s Decatur Focus…
Update on N. McDonough Streetscape improvements and railroad crossings
The community is invited to a workshop for updates on the N. McDonough Streetscape improvements and railroad crossing improvements at both Candler and McDonough streets. The workshop will be held Nov. 13, 6-8 p.m., in the City Commission Meeting Room, Decatur City Hall, 509 N. McDonough St.
The goals of the projects are to improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians, bi- cyclists and others using these facilities. They are based on Decatur’s 2008 Community Transportation Plan, a major goal of which is to encourage healthy lifestyles and active living in Decatur.
URS Corporation of Atlanta, a planning and engineering design firm, will help plan the projects along with Sprinkle Consulting of Lutz, Florida, a design firm that special- izes in bicycle and pedestrian planning. The projects will be funded through the Capital Improvements Bond program, grants from the Georgia Department of Transportation, the Atlanta Regional Commission and MARTA.
Mock ups of N. McDonough from way back in 2010.
You May Also Like:
-
November 6, 2014 City Considers Alternatives to East Howard Ave Pedestrian & Bike Detours (18)
-
April 5, 2010 Decatur Gets $1.77 Million For N. McDonough Streetscape Improvements (11)
-
September 18, 2013 Trinity Triangle Project Should Begin Construction Next Year (16)
Nov. 13th is next Wednesday.
It’s shocking that these 2 intersections have been a disaster for pedestrians for so long. Glad to see them being addressed.
+1
While the horizontal scale of the mock-up looks realistic, the vertical scale of the depicted objects sure does not. The people are twice as tall as the cars and the trees are awfully tall for newly planted trees. Seems like the mock-up is trying to depict an unrealistic sense of space.
Not when we institute the new Tiny Car Ordinance. It’s just easier than requiring giant people, frankly.
With or without a moratorium? Is it too late to buy a minivan or can we hurry and get one before the ordinance goes into effect?
“Seems like the mock-up is trying to depict an unrealistic sense of space.” — Why the ongoing suspicion that They are trying to put something over on Us? (Not always you, AHID, but it seems like there’s always somebody who thinks the City or CSD is trying to hoodwink us in some manner.)
The people are not twice as tall as the cars, the sidewalk is higher than the street. Mature plantings are always used in renderings, at least all of the ones I’ve ever paid attention to.
Not suspicious just always bewildered by mock-ups–the actual product never looks like the plan. Case in point would be the Emory Roundabout, which I happen to like. But it looks nowhere near as bucolic as the mock-ups showed it. On my computer screen, this mock-up of N. McDonough has cars that are tiny (7/16″) compared to the people on the left (11/16″), even taking into account the curb height. Maybe by the time the improvements are done, everyone in Decatur will have converted from regular size cars, minivans, and SUVs to Smart Cars and Prius Cs.
You’re obviously missing the artist’s clever use of perspective.
Ah, that clever converge-on-a-point thing. Would have worked if the front edges of all the objects weren’t lined up on the same line in the foreground.
i wish everyone felt the same way i did about separated bike lanes. i generally hate them. but they seem to be the way of the future. makes some cyclist feel safe, makes some drivers happy by keeping bikes of their roads, perpetuates the prevailing view that bikes aren’t vehicles and don’t belong on roads.
And in addition to your complaints, ant1, it creates numerous bike/car intersections (at every street intersection) where bikes and cars mix and then re-segregate, doubling the number of stop signs needed and potentially increasing the bike-not-stopping problem, since they’re “only” disobeying a bicycle stop sign, not an all-traffic stop sign . . . I could go on.
As a cyclist, I also agree. I feel it’s actually more dangerous to be pinned between curbs than to have a painted bike lane where you can exit quickly and safely should something unexpected happen.
Jim D. and Ben – couldn’t agree more. but to play the devil’s advocate, i think that in certain situations, and if well implemented, they can have a place. for example, ponce de leon, from decatur to downtown. it’s a major thoroughfare, where most of the bike traffic would get on at some point and ride it all the way in to town and cars on the road travel at a fairly high speed. if they built the separated lanes wide enough so that faster cyclists could pass the slower ones, than i would approve. a small short wide road with low car speeds where cyclists come from all directions to go many different places like mcdonough does not call for the added expense and pain in the butt-ness of a separated lane.
good point. I guess it’s all in the details. I agree that a wide bike lane that could accomodate 2 side by side bikes would be great.
At least cars won’t use the bike lane as a passing/turn lane like they do on Ponce.
Ant1, it seems that you’re concerned that separate bike lanes perpetuate the view that bikes don’t belong on the road, and I understand where you’re coming from. I used to be worried about that until I spent some time in Holland. It’s as close to a cycling utopia as we might realistically get, and the secret is the core principle of their urban planning: the separation of slow and fast moving traffic (or cars and bikes). The separate bike lanes feel so safe that almost everyone cycles. It’s amazing — elderly people, kids, girls in high heels — all smiling on a Saturday, flowers in their panniers. In fact, I think that the separate bike lanes actually translate to better motorist behavior in spaces where there aren’t bike lanes. The special infrastructure demonstrates how important cycling is considered, how normative, and so bikes feel like they belong. Motorists are so careful of cyclists there. Other countries (and some cities in the US) are emulating the Netherlands and Denmark. So, separated lanes are the future, and I think that’s ultimately for the best.
i’ve been there, i’ve seen it. and i agree, their separated lanes are great. but they’re great mostly because, like you said, “motorists are so careful of cyclists there.” not yet the case here, and won’t be for years, imo. over there, drivers pulling out of a driveway, or side street, or well aware of the presence of cycle paths and that the riders have the right of way, here, not so much. and they didn’t develop their cycling infrastructure a few hundred feet at a time. it was a concerted countrywide effort. an amsterdam-like state is a wonderful goal for metro atlanta, but we’re not going to get there by piecemealing little aspects of amsterdam.
As a bike commuter, I like the lanes. I love the new ones on Ponce in VaHi/midtown – they improve my commute time and I would not ride on Ponce wo them. But the lanes often attract the road debris. And as Jim noted, the “interfaces” become problematic even more so than wo lanes.
Bikes are not people, and bikes are not cars. The idealist in me would love a rationale set of traffic laws that recognize bikes distinctly. I see these lanes as another transitional step in public thinking/awareness on this.
Oh – I just realized the above picture is physically separate lanes (read before I post!). I hate those, for reasons others have noted. But even the on street lanes also have transition issues,
my personal preference is wide lanes with sharrows. sycamore dr between the hospital and east ponce, for example. now, of course, that road is not a major artery, so it doesn’t have some of the issues a lot of other roads have. but it’s wide enough for a car to easily pass a bike with oncoming traffic. the sharrows remind the cars that bikes are to be expected on the road. i don’t have to ride all the way to the right when there are no cars behind me.
Good example of trade-offs and competing interests. I tend to be more involved with pedestrian advocacy than bicycle advocacy so, viewed solely through that lens, I’d typically argue against wide lanes. Unless we reach a point where cycle presence is heavy and consistent on such roads, thus forcing caution on the part of drivers, wider lanes encourage faster driving, which is the number one threat to pedestrian safety and comfort.
But, of course, we’re not engineering for one kind of user. That’s the mistake we made in the past in favor of cars. We have to confront what works for all modes and try to find overlap where everyone’s needs are represented to some degree. I think that’s why cycle tracks are becoming popular (despite completely reasonable cyclist objections). They allow for the slimming down of the roadway to keep car speeds in check but carve our meaningful space for cyclists and, along side them, peds.
great points. hadn’t thought of the width of lane from the pedestrian’s perspective.
Agree, wide lanes encourage fast cars, which is not great for pedestrians or bikers. My personal favorite is narrow car travel lane, and painted bike lane- just like on West Ponce.
Upon reading this I immediately thought of Elaine from Seinfeld.
“Hey, look at this. Wide lanes. This is so luxurious…”
In fact, I think Elaine would deem the architect sponge-worthy.
But she wouldn’t be able to spare the Decatur Square.
“But she wouldn’t be able to spare the Decatur Square”
She could if she were queen of her domain.
Let’s make that “MASTER of her domain.”
i’m out
I would like to see a couple extra inches of asphalt on the down slope of the Trinity crossing so buses and trucks don’t get stuck in the path of approaching freight trains. But, not on the agenda.
I probably won’t make a meeting on this, but would be interested to know if the grade “problem” is addressed in these plans. That hill from the high school to College is a killer for little bikers.
I don’t see how it would be rememdied though, since Howard is halfway down the hill and the worst part is between Howard and the tracks.
I can’t tell if you are joking or not, so I will take the bait. ‘The hill is killer’? It is about 100 yds long and maybe a 5-6% grade.
Kids can get off their bikes and walk em up the sidewalk for goodness sakes. Little ones, mine included, can suck it up and walk when they don’t have pedal-power yet.
I’m hoping to use it as a life lesson for my daughter not to be a fixie riding hipster when she grows up…
Not sure why this bothers me so much, but alas, it does. So far as remedies, how about installing magic carpets like they have at bunny-hills and we can all just ride up those and be even lazier than we are today?
Damn, get some coffee man. That was kind of my point – we do get off and walk. Of course as of now there is not much of a sidewalk between Howard and College, so it’s a slog that I would hope an “Improvements” study would address.
Plus, as AHID said above, this rendering looks bucolic, but doesn’t jive with my experience of that crossing. I couldn’t find any other renderings for the improved railroad crossing, so was asking a question as to what was planned for that intersection.
I read it as just the opposite hence my snide remark. No offense meant.
“The goals of the projects are to improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians, bi- cyclists and others using these facilities….” Notice how the property owners have been lumped into “others”. I hope some consideration will be given to these folks.
So where are all those bikes we’ve allocated so much asphalt for?
That lane would be perfect for strollers.
Wide pedestrian lanes just encourage double wide strollers.