jjakucyk

All it would do is make already fearless cyclists more comfortable. So maybe you get your mode share up from 1% to 2% (woo hoo, a 100% increase!). When people still bike on the sidewalk next to painted bike lanes, it shows that your solution is mostly ineffective. Calming residential side streets is important for cycling and also for pedestrians as the "last mile" connection to and from destinations, but once you need to go more than a few blocks, "just ride with traffic" doesn't cut it, no matter how slow that traffic may be going. Thinking otherwise is delusional. The below photo will never happen, but it's what our policies are suggesting. Here's a good comparison between what actually works and what many say should work. https://departmentfortransport.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/more-dutch-cycling-scenes-in-a-british-context/

That reluctance is exactly what to expect when the administration's focus is on traffic throughput. In a neighborhood like this, parking is arguably more important than throughput, and safety is definitely more important. Focusing on unimpeded traffic flow is antithetical to those and pretty much all other goals. It's worth noting that Kenwood Road between Cooper and Pfeiffer has a similar traffic count of 18,700, and it's a 3-lane configuration. Linwood has 14,000-17,000 and in most places has no turn lanes at all. There's some information here, though most road diet information is on 4-to-3 conversions, not 5-to-3, though it is at least mentioned: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/road_diets/info_guide/ch1.cfm

Overall one traffic lane can accommodate up to 2,000 vehicles per hour (about one car every 2 seconds). That goes for small surface street lanes and major highway lanes, because the faster the vehicles go the more spaced out they have to be. I don't know exactly how the turn lane figures into that, but the general consensus is that a 3-lane configuration (one lane each way with a turn lane) performs the same as a 4-lane configuration (two lanes each way with no turn lanes).

The major streets are the ones that need the bike infrastructure because they're so dangerous and unpleasant to ride on. They're major streets because they provide important links to where people want to go, cyclists included. You don't see many there now because of the fast moving traffic, poor pavement, and overall hostile conditions, not because of the route itself. It's the only connection to the northern part of OTR from the east, even though Reading/Elsinore isn't at all pleasant either, but that's the entry point for nearly the whole east side of town. Diverting to 12th/13th means many stop signs, traffic signals, granite paving, and zig-zagging when you get to Main or near Washington Park. Centrail Parkway is a big detour, then you're slogging up one of the north/south streets. It's the same "you don't gauge the demand for a bridge by the number of people swimming across the river" argument. Build it and they will come; don't build it and they won't. You can't build a comprehensive and useful transportation network, whether that's streetcar, light rail, subway, highway, pedestrian, or cyclist if you leave out links like this and don't build up a critical mass of lanes to ultimately stitch together.

That's the same configuration it has now. Just with slightly narrower lanes to squeeze in bike lanes?

Two-way cycletracks (especially one so narrow) is not in any way a "best practice" for cycling infrastructure. They have some merit on difficult one-way streets, but nowhere else. You can gain space by shifting the street trees and lighting into the parking lanes (take up one space every so often for a tree and lights, parking kiosks, etc.). That ensures that the street remains narrowed even if the parking isn't used, and it allows the sidewalk area to be narrower but more functional. Like so:

These excessively wide streets are an asset that could be used for creating world-class transit, bike, and pedestrian spaces. The trick is properly reallocating that space within the right-of-way to achieve those goals, which by necessity will require taking some (or a lot) of space away from cars, whether moving or parked. I think trying to physically narrow the right-of-way, while possible in some cases, would only serve to make the street just like all the others around it that are of a similar width. That's not really all that attractive. We have so many 40-foot streets with 50-60-foot rights-of-way that it's not really a differentiator.

This whole thing smells so sour, because if a highway interchange was such a catalyst for growth, why hasn't this sort of development been popping up all around Taft/McMillan, or Hopple, or Mitchell? The Keystone developments on Dana have been a very slow burn, with not much to show anyway. Do they think Smith/Edwards is all because of the highway and not a combination of other factors? And is that really something to be pushing for? I love how in this rendering MLK is shown at such an angle that you don't notice it's been widened to 9 or 10 lanes (it's already 7, and you can bet ODOT isn't going to settle for mere 10 foot lanes either).

^ Reminds me of when Macy's bought Marshall Field's *sadface*

If Hyde Park is near the end of the line, then single-track should be fine. I don't see it penetrating much farther than Marburg or Erie as light rail. The trail proponents like to say "just put the tracks on the street" but Wasson is already kind of a cluster f*** at its intersections with Edwards and Paxton so I find that to be untenable. Either way, for light rail and the trail to coexist you probably couldn't have a stop between Edwards and Paxton anyway, because the stops take up that much more room, even if they are single-track, more so if they're double. The only really feasible stop locations are immediately east of Paxton where Wasson moves about 50' north of the tracks, and west of Madison behind LaRosa's and Mulligan's/Pig & Whistle which would need to have its rear demolished most likely. I don't think you could squeeze anything in between there, nor would you necessarily want to make the stop spacing more frequent since the trail itself would be a good route to walk or bike along the right-of-way to get to the stops.

Trouble with these ODOT/Cranley bike paths is that they're just on one side of the street. That's OK if you're riding west and the path is on the north side of the street, but going the other direction you have to do a very awkward and time-consuming crossing like a pedestrian at each end of the path. West MLK is the same thing.

^ Nevertheless, that's the idea that's getting into people's head.

Maybe, but I can at least buy that they'd install decorative historic light fixtures in OTR or in any number of other city neighborhoods. In this case though, it's really reaching, especially in the trenched area near Marburg and Erie. They show EVERY side street paved with brick/pavers in contrasting patterns, including brick paved parking bays and curb bump-outs on Wasson itself. That's so over-the-top it would probably cost more than the whole bike path alone. It's just WAY too precious, like something you'd expect out of Deerfield Township or Carmel, Indiana.

There's several cool old industrial buildings on that block of McMicken along with a smattering of rowhouses and apartment buildings. It's a very nice mix of building types in a small area, good for lofts, live/work, small offices, workshops, even a restaurant or gallery.

The retaining walls are interesting. Not sure yet if I like them or not, but they're much better than the fake stamped stone that ODOT uses everywhere down here.

It's all the decorative lamps, brick paving on all the adjacent streets, and meticulous landscaping that really irritate me about the renderings. It's overly precious and blatantly manipulative.

^ All that 5th Street really serves is a bunch of very low-value fast food chains and hotels that are 80% paved parking lots anyway. If real value and "economic development" came from the highway then downtown Covington would have shifted over to that area, but it obviously hasn't. Instead we get Taco Bell and Holiday Inn Express, which *newsflash* don't even come close to paying their way for the infrastructure that serves them due to low-value buildings, low-value sites covered with parking, and low-paying jobs. So if all that land by the CWB Bridge can be repurposed for something a bit less dependent on large traffic flows then all the better, even if they don't know it yet. Just so long as they don't pull an MLK Blvd on Pike Street or something to try to "improve access" to downtown.

^ Highways are incredibly destructive and have been net-negative in ROI for quite a while now. It's apples and oranges compared to the streetcar.

They're going to be replicated out of wood. I'm anxious to see how they turn out.

The cornice brackets are going to have some red accent color, along with the two entry doors, but the lintels are going to be all cream.

Paint and stairs (the replacement lintels for the two first floor windows are still in process).

Awful ground presence, blank walls and louvers, as usual.

^ I doubt more than a tiny fraction of people actually see it that way.

The Hopple Street subway tunnel (or at least the portals) was specifically mentioned in the Mill Creek Expressway EIS from a handful of years ago. That doesn't mean they couldn't have messed it up, but my guess is they didn't.

You have to draw a line somewhere though. It's not ok to walk down the street completely naked (well maybe it is in San Francisco), so whether actual or implied there *IS* a dress code already, the question is just what the boundaries are. Public indecency as a law is dangerous when it's left so ambiguous, leading to abusive targeting and selective enforcement, but few would argue that there shouldn't be any laws to that effect at all, so it's better that they're more clearly defined then.