If you’ve never heard of a bicycle boulevard, don’t be alarmed. They are relatively new and I’m not aware of any that have been built in Metro Detroit.

Recently the Streetsblog Wiki added an entry that describes bicycle boulevards. That’s a great place to start and the Berkeley video is certainly worth watching.

So where does it make sense to add these in Metro Detroit?

We think of some typical street scenarios that make sense, including lightly-traveled residential streets that:

• provide direct connection to downtowns or other major destinations, but are not fire routes.
• parallel a main arterial or trunkline road with relatively high traffic volumes.
• are boulevards or one-ways.

We’ve shown two sample bicycle boulevards for Royal Oak above: Vinsetta Boulevard and Sherman Drive.

Vinsetta is a natural. It already has high recreational use, it’s very scenic, provides a park connection, and has low traffic volumes. Converting it to a bicycle boulevard would likely involve:

• removing all stop signs along Vinsetta
• traffic calming the street so cars are naturally inclined to drive a steady 20 MPH
• reduce vehicle cut-through traffic
• improving the major road crossings for cyclists and pedestrians

The advantage for cyclists is the street would be much more friendly for riding, especially with younger riders.

It really wouldn’t slow the trip time for motorists since time lost due to lower travel speeds would be offset by having fewer signs — and they’d save gas.

The advantage for pedestrians is lower motorist speeds drastically reduces the odds for injuries or fatalities in the case of collisions — even for a reductions from 25 MPH to 20 MPH. This is especially true for child and senior pedestrians.

Of course adding the Sherman Drive takes one directly downtown making this a no-brainer. Engineering a route on the commercial properties south of Catalpa would be a challenge but certainly possible. This would connect with the Sherman Drive “alley” and then Sherman Drive itself.

Tags: bicycle boulevard, Royal Oak, Sherman Drive, Vinsetta Boulevard

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 4:26 pm and is filed under On-road bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.