@GovernorSilver 137732 wrote:
I agree, Huntington Ave. could use sharrows or bike lanes. Either should be doable as practically nobody parks on the street anyway and the lanes are nice and wide.
I have a colleague who rides home from the Washington St.-Rt.1 connector bridge – he does this move where he rides halfway through the pedestrian crossing at the east side of the Huntington-Rt. 1 intersection, and parks in front of the cars to the left of the left lane, so that he’s already in position to ride the left lane and make that left turn into the apartment complex next to that corner strip mall (w/ Planet Fitness, the Thai restaurant, the dentist, etc.). He just puts up with the confused honking and whatnot from the motorists for that short distance. It’d be nice if VDOT could solve his problem in some way – he doesn’t like riding up Rt. 1 to access the other entrance to the apartment parking lot for the same reason (sidewalk abruptly ending in that dirt mess).
It’d also be nice if somebody could solve the access problem on the other side of Eisenhower bridge. If you’re riding on Eisenhower (street) westbound, you have to make an abrupt left turn and get onto the crosswalk – unsafe imo. If you’re riding eastbound on the street, you’re a little better off because you can cut into the crosswalk but then you still have to deal with the motorists making right turns from the bridge onto eastbound Eisenhower. If you’re approaching from Stovall (street), you have to make a left turn then make that awkward immediate right – potentially confusing both the driver behind you and the drivers coming off the bridge – also unsafe imo.
I think a lot of the original designs were never actually done by someone walking/riding the area. But the new VDOT team seems better at it. Or at least they seemed to get how to do the Belle View/Beacon Hill Rd lanes right. They correctly did sharrows, switch to lane where it can work, back to sharrows, and even at Quander, they run the lane to the light before it switches to sharrows to avoid a cyclist tired from climbing the hill having to try to merge with traffic. Whomever did that should be in charge of figuring out the rest because I really haven’t noticed any mistakes in how they designed it. Supposedly they’re working with FABB too before they put stuff in, which is nice.
Yah, I don’t like the bottom of that Eisenhower connect bridge. It’s just bad news. Cars are all trying to go right in the morning and just not looking. It’s not the worlds greatest design. Plus, the dumpout on eastbound side isn’t all that helpful either. I used to take the sidewalk at Kings until giant gravel appeared and then I realized I was safer in the road (often the case) than trying to navigate the sidewalk/crosswalks.
The Rt 1 trick your friend uses is interesting. I use the light timing in rush hour from Huntington to easily make it to access road. But to make that work requires being at the crosswalk from east side of Rt 1 when Rt 1 has green lights. Then proceeding across as soon as the light flips green. I think it goes eastbound and then westbound. Either way, it’s about 30-45 seconds. I’ve never had the cars from Rt 1 catch up to me, just people who turn right from Huntington onto southbound Rt-1 and then they have plenty of room. The only issue is the 4-to-3 lane switch.
But I still don’t like going that way. The need to constantly switch sidewalk-to-access road-to parking lot-to sidewalk and then the obstacles in the sidewalk from poles, broken glass, gravel, etc, just make it annoying. I really hope they do a real rework of Rt1 sometime. I mean it’s a shame they have little pedestrian infrastructure. Add in the pedestrian/cycling infrastructure and I bet some of the crappy stripmall stores disappear and you see much nicer stuff move in. The area is otherwise well-situated for folks to live in, imo.
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