Please take 10 minutes to complete this survey on greenways, bike lanes, and more in Detroit. The survey only runs through Wednesday! For more information on this project, visit the Villages CDC web site.

Dear Friends,

Your participation in a survey is requested to assist in the planning of a network of greenways in the Greater Riverfront East District of Detroit. This area is also known as the Lower Eastside. Its boundaries are the Detroit River to the south, Mack Avenue to the north, the Dequindre Cut to the west, and Alter Road to the east.

The survey should take about 10 minutes to complete. The survey will run until September 1, 2010. Please feel free to share this survey with others whom you think would be interested.

Please click on following link to complete the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/765DW9R

Thank you for your time and participation.

The Greater Riverfront East Environmental Network (GREEN) Task Force

P.S. If you would like to receive paper copies of this survey, or if you have a question, please contact:

Sheu-Jane Gallagher
The Villages CDC
theVillagesofDetroit@gmail.com

That question was recently posted on the Detroit Bikes email list.

Perhaps it’s best to first answer the question, “What are sharrows?”

Sharrows are standard pavements markings as shown on the right. They are used on roads that are designated bike routes where there is not enough pavement to include a bike lane. The sharrows provide guidance to the cyclists on where to ride on the road. Cyclists should ride through the center of the marking.

Of course these pavement markings also let drivers know about the presence of cyclists.

All signs and pavement marking designs and uses are defined by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). We’ve listed the MUCTD information at the end.

Would Sharrows work in Detroit?

Yes, but only in limited instances, primarily when:

• There is not enough road width for bike lanes (even after a Road Diet)
• There is either no on-street parking or high-use on-street parking

Most city of Detroit roads do not meet the above checklist.

There is enough room for bike lanes on a majority of roads. For example, a recent non-motorized planning analysis found that over 90% of the roads in Detroit’s near east side would support bike lanes without any widening. The planner said 50% is considered excellent in other cities. He’s never seen a street network more readily available for bike lanes.

On Detroit roads without enough room for bike lanes, the parking is typically sporadic and not high-use. Why is this a big deal? On streets with parking, the sharrows would be located 11 feet from the curb. But, if there are rarely any parked cars on a road, does it make sense to ask cyclists to bike 11 feet from the curb irregardless? Probably not.

But there are some Detroit streets that could benefit from sharrows. For example, the curved entrance ramps from Jefferson and the Macarthur Bridge (to Belle Isle) could use sharrows to lead cyclists to and from the bike lanes.

Another good use of sharrows is to provide continuity to a bike lane when some sections of the road become too narrow. We’ve heard excuses that a road can’t have bike lanes because one short section is too narrow. Sharrows eliminate that excuse.

Of course the Detroit suburbs may also have more opportunity for sharrows since their roads are less overbuilt compared with Detroit’s.

Currently the cities of Flint and South Haven have sharrows with at least a couple others looking into them.

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The Road Commission for Oakland County and the city of Rochester Hills are hosting a public meeting tomorrow night to discuss their Tienken Road improvement plans. It would be great to see some cyclists attend and provide comments.

As m-bike readers know, the Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) has a long history of ignoring the safety of bicyclists. They’ve continued that streak by failing to provide bike lanes in their Tienken Road plans.

We submitted comments to the RCOC a year ago regarding bike lanes on Tienken and provided justification. Those comments were never responded to and altogether ignored based on the latest Tienken Road Environmental Assessment which recommends three vehicular travel lanes and sidewalks.

No bikes lanes. No wide curb lanes. Not a Complete Street.

Our preferred option should be three 11-foot lanes with two five-foot bike lanes (or wider, buffered bike lanes.) That would be a Complete Street and support Safe routes to School.

Why 11-foot lanes? Studies show there is no safety advantage for having 12-foot lanes and they induce speeding.

Former Rochester Hills City Councilman Scot Beaton has gone even further with his suggestions and developed an alternative cross section that includes bike lanes. He’s left his comments at the end of this Oakland Press article.

We must also mention that the RCOC plans failed to include any discussion of bicycling safety despite the nearby parks, trails, and schools. Three has been three bicycling-vehicle crashes in this road corridor since 2006 — all three occurred on safety paths. RCOC’s response? Build more safety paths.

City of Rochester Hills guilty too

Just as the RCOC ignores AASHTO guidelines for bicycle facilities and best design practices, so too does the city of Rochester Hills — which helps explain why it is one of the least safe places to ride a bike in Oakland County based on crash data. Their “safety path” network does not meet AASHTO guidelines. In fact, John LaPlante, a primary author of the guidelines called the term “safety path” an oxymoron. LaPlante said the guidelines were clear that “safety paths” (or the correct term, sidepaths) are rarely an appropriate bicycle facility.

According to the Oakland Press, “Mayor Bryan Barnett said he’s happy with the outcome.”

It’s frustrating that cities like Rochester Hills and others (e.g. Oakland Township, Orion Township, West Bloomfield Township) refuse to follow the national design guidelines. It’s really up to cyclists to turn this around. Taxpayer dollars are being wasted on off-road bicycle facilities that would be much less expensive and safer on the road.

Friends of Tienken Road

And finally, it seems the Friends of Tienken Road are no fans of safe cycling or Complete Streets either. This is the group that fought against widening Tienken to five lanes.

We sent them emails with the regards to bike lane proposal, but they never responded. This is despite that fact that we helped them with their community outreach, paid for their web domain name, developed their web site, and provided free web hosting.

It seems their priority is in limiting the RCOC’s plan to three lanes of motor vehicle travel, rather than bicyclist safety (or responding to emails.)

Unable to attend?

According to the Free Press, “Those unable to attend the meeting may send concerns about the proposal in writing to the Road Commission for Oakland County, Permits and Environmental Concerns Department, 2420 Pontiac Lake Road, Waterford 48328.”

Former Red Wing Chris Chelios biking home from work on Woodward in Royal Oak

The Oakland Press has an article on the newer planning efforts to make Woodward more bike friendly.

Heather Carmona, the executive director of the Woodward Avenue Action Association, said the study is a step toward making the Woodward area more attractive to businesses and young residents, who tend to view walkability, rideability and mass transit more favorably than their older counterparts.

“The economy as a whole is forcing us to look at new ways of doing things, but this is more about making living in the Woodward area more pedestrian-friendly and livable,” she said. “We have users of all types — those who would like to walk, others who would like to ride their bikes. We’re looking at ways to make moving around without a car easier.

“Look at cities like Portland, Oregon and other cities have plans in place for non-motorized transportation,” Carmona said. “It’s one of the factors that we believe is attractive to the younger people that we’d like to see stay in the area.”

The initial plan has received much feedback. We’re not convinced the plan is where it needs to be. If you want to be like Portland (or even follow AASHTO bicycle design guidelines), you don’t put in sidepaths where there is a fair amount of cross streets and driveways.

We prefer Planner Dan Burden’s suggestions to treat the outside lane of Woodward as a local lane for turning traffic, buses, and bicycles. That lane could even be painted or marked to indicate it’s not designed for high-speed through traffic. That is an inexpensive solution that doesn’t remove a vehicle lane yet improves bicycling opportunities for intermediate and advanced riders.

UPDATE: Heather Carmona also discussed this on the July 15th Craig Fahle show on WDET. The Woodward discussion begins 38 minutes into the show.

A bicycle detector symbol on Connecticut at 12 Mile Road in Royal Oak

The intersection of 12 Mile Road and Connecticut in Royal Oak was recently changed. The traffic signal no longer cycled automatically.

Instead, the light remains green for 12 Mile traffic until a car or bicycle pulls up on Connecticut.

Loop detectors were installed in the road to detect steel. As one might imagine, detecting the steel in a car is trivial. But for bikes, especially those with non-steel frames, it can be more difficult triggering the system and getting a green light.

After testing with a few area cyclists, it was determined that cyclists really needed to locate their bikes directly on top of the loop. And where is that? You can usually scan the pavement to find where the loops were cut into the pavement.

Or in this case, we asked Royal Oak to put the standard bike loop symbol on the pavement. When you locate a bicycle directly on top of the symbol, you should get a green light. At Connecticut, it takes roughly 10 seconds to get a green. (Why wait 10 seconds? That gives the system time to ignore traffic turning right on a red light.)

Since this is a popular bicycle route, it really made sense to let cyclists know how to get a green light. Otherwise one could expect some cyclists to simply ignore the traffic light.

This really should be a standard addition to any new loop detection systems. These symbols don’t cost much compared with the entire project cost and they really are a good example of how to make a Complete Street.

Some had asked whether a carbon fiber bike would trigger the system. We asked John LaPlante, a top transportation engineer formerly of Chicago and now at T.Y.Lin who . He said loop detectors can detect all bike types if they are set sensitive enough.