Traffic and Bike Safety Improvements

I recently proposed two improvements to the city of Tempe's bike ways via email.
http://www.tempe.gov/tim/
1) Add 1-2 new north-south bike routes across the railroad that runs east-west half way between Apache and Broadway through much of the city. As it stands now there are no N/S bike worthy routes that cross this railroad blockade to the east of college avenue (a 3 mile stretch all the way to Mesa). Thus, cyclists must leave bike routed streets and travel the sidewalks of McClintock or Rural Road to continue north from routes on Dorsey and Country Club. This is unacceptable, especially in an otherwise bike-friendly city such as Tempe. The city employee that I communicated with is very sympathetic to this problem. Unfortunately, the railroad which controls the land around the tracks will not allow any more crossings, even for bikes only - like the one across the tracks parallel to Mill Ave on Alameda. This moratorium will eventually cost the city ~ 1 million dollars as they do plan to add a bike way in the long term, but it will have to either be an over or underpass of the railroad.

I see this railroad issue as quite a silly conundrum. A million dollars seems like a large price to pay for a single pedestrian/bike route. I am relatively sure there would be few to no additional accidents with an additional pedestrian railroad crossing and such a crossing could be constructed with a 6 people a couple sledge hammers and some concrete in a weekend's time. At every rail road crossing there is nothing preventing people and bikes from entering the tracks while a train is coming, so adding one more of these places would do little to the overall chance of an accident. Even where these proposed crossings are located people can find there way to those spots by traveling inward from one of the major streets. So it is not like it is opening up some pandora's box to add another crossing. Moreover, The mile long corridor of rail tracks between streets such as Rural and McClintock have no openings to the neighborhoods. This is currently a potential area of vulnerability where bad things could happen because it is so isolated. This past fall I had to report a brush fire burning along these tracks. Opening it up would make the area seem much less unsightly and people would be able to hold each other accountable for their actions. Oh yes, and we would have bike/walking routes connecting parks, neighborhoods, and shopping areas thereby reducing car trips and hazardous bike trips on main streets!

2) The one other problem with Tempe bike routes is the timing of lights at the intersections of these routes with major mile x mile streets. The lights at these intersection are timed for the passage of approximately 2 cars during a single light. Hardly enough time for a cyclist to cross the street from a standing stop. Especially, if they forgot to shift prior to stopping or are just simply not an avid cyclist. The city states that there are buttons on the side of the intersections to get longer crossing lights, which is true. However, sometimes the light turns just as you have stopped, before you can press the button, or when you are just approaching the intersection. This is a dangerous situation, because the yellow is so short you can get caught in the intersection when the other direction gets the green. Thus, there is the possibility of getting mowed over by a bad driver not paying attention. While, those drivers would be at fault for not yielding to a vehicle that has entered an intersection legally. That is no consolation for the cyclists that get hit (I was with a friend who had this happen to her just this past month - fortunately she did not get killed!).

Traffic lights should be timed for the most vulnerable legal users. If the intersection is on a bike route then the lights should be timed to accommodate cyclists (thus they should last long enough for more than one cyclist to cross). It is legal for a bike to go on green, therefore the lights should not be timed as a trap for cyclists! That is discrimination and pandering to whiny drivers.

Drivers in this city have no complaining to do. Every street is as wide or wider than the major highways of 95% of other cities and the speed limits match those of back country roads (of course drivers exceed those limits by 10 mph). These streets are some of the most unwelcoming I have seen for pedestrians and cyclists, but they are the smoothest and best marked I have every seen for cars. Thus we need to do what we can to make the good biking streets better and safer! Moreover, when there is traffic in town, adding a longer wait at the half mile intersections might actually be better for not accumulating very long lines at the major intersections and keeping drivers to the actual speed limits. In turn, possibly reducing overall idle time and traffic accidents.

Just my thoughts!

If you support Tempe's strides toward improving cycling and multimodal transport than write in and tell you city representatives about it! http://www.tempe.gov/elected/ They want to hear about it because they too enjoy it and want the positive comments to outweigh the negatives received by intolerant car drivers.