Read on Twitter
Hello @TimFlynn4ward4 - saw your Facebook video this morning and wanted to share some comments as someone who was involved in the planning and design of the safety improvements on Willson Street (1/x) https://www.facebook.com/1273142558/videos/10223574020319939/
First and foremost, the "squeezing" or "squishing" that you reference was absolutely intentional and purposeful. Narrow lanes are universally proven and accepted as the best way to calm traffic. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-28/a-new-study-finds-that-10-foot-traffic-lanes-are-safer-and-still-move-plenty-of-cars (2/x)
The lanes on Willson are now 11 ft wide, plenty of room for regular vehicles as well as emergency vehicles or garbage and recycling trucks but still narrowed to slow vehicles down, which is critical for safety as this image shows (thanks @SmartGrowthUSA and @JeffSpeckFAICP) (3/x)
You mention a few times that you're surprised about bikes mixing with car traffic. In Massachusetts, bikes have the legal right to use the full lane of any road except limited access highways or where signs have been posted preventing them https://www.massbike.org/laws (4/x)
Bike lanes are intended to keep cars out, not to keep bikes in. Even on a road with a bike facility, a cyclist would be entirely within their rights to travel in the middle of the vehicular travel lane. (5/x)
Obviously many folks aren't comfortable doing that, which is why we are working to implement safety improvements like those now on Willson Street. We can't snap our fingers and magically fix all our streets overnight, which is why these facilities end where they do (6/x)
Eventually these facilities will connect to bike facilities on Jefferson (a City project) and Highland Ave (a larger, longer term state project) but we had an opportunity to implement a portion of our Bike Master Plan via a state grant and we took it https://www.salem.com/sites/g/files/vyhlif3756/f/uploads/2018-11-02_salem_bike_plan_final.pdf (7/x)
We worked very closely with the Ward Councillor for this area, and she actually went door to door along Willson to talk to residents about it, and reported to us they were resoundingly in favor of the project (8/x)
I'm sorry you don't like the look of the white flex posts, but they are used across the Commonwealth and across the country in projects just like this one. If they got knocked down, our excellent DPS crew will be out there to replace them (9/x)
In terms of emergency vehicle access, as you can see, there are plenty of gaps between the flex posts, so if a vehicle needed to pull out of the way for a firetruck or police cruiser or ambulance, it could do so easily and frequently along the entire street (10/x)
Finally, bike facilities are like the baseball field in "Field of Dreams" - if we build it, they will come. We've spent decades building just for what we see a lot of (cars) and that's resulted in more cars. (11/x)
If we want to ease traffic and provide safe options for every, we need to be willing to take every chance we get to build facilities like this that will connect to future changes and eventually create a city-wide network of safe, comfortable bike facilities (12/x)
. @TimFlynn4ward4
- I know you want everyone in your ward and across the City to have a high quality of life, and so do I, but to achieve that takes a willingness to change and do new things. Happy to answer any other questions you might have on this or other projects (12/12)
- I know you want everyone in your ward and across the City to have a high quality of life, and so do I, but to achieve that takes a willingness to change and do new things. Happy to answer any other questions you might have on this or other projects (12/12)
Also some great stuff here form your colleague @PattiForSalem https://www.pattiforsalem.com/blog/lets-talk-about-bike-lanes
