Imagine biking down a quiet residential street next to a wooded creek. Imagine clearing snow of the frozen creek for outsdoor ice skating in the winter.

Now imagine that in Royal Oak.

Impossible?

No, not at all. It used to happen in Royal Oak According to historical accounts. At least two tributaries of the Red Run passed through Royal Oak with the more prominent one being along Vinsetta Boulevard.

Those bridges crossing over Vinsetta used to be bridges over the creek as shown in this photo.

Then in the 1920s and 1930s, Red Run was buried in a large drain.

Other Michigan cities such as Detroit and Pontiac have also buried rivers.

The city of Pontiac has discussed daylighting the Clinton River through the downtown area.

In Detroit, on planning expert suggested daylighting creeks in the more vacant parts of the city, damming them, and creating lakes surrounded by forests. Imagine biking past around that in Detroit. Perhaps the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority could create a Metropark within the city boundaries.

But this discussion is occuring beyond Michigan. The New York Times published an article about river daylighting both inside and outside of the U.S.

Certainly it costs money. Everything does. But there are benefits to doing this besides creating more recreational opportunities.

How much would home values along Vinsetta increase if the Red Run was restored? Would that justify the cost?

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.