Capital Mobility: Some paint, some signs and viola! Bike lanes

By DAVE HUMPHREYS, Capital Newspaper
Published 04/17/10

This column hits on a subject that comes from a reader's e-mail about getting around on a bicycle in the Annapolis area. I find this subject fascinating because it involves the simplest of traffic engineering tools and I get all giddy with professional goose bumps when I can fix something with some signs and a can of paint. Sadly, Annapolis should be a friendlier place than it is for getting around on a bicycle. This is not for lack of bicycle enthusiasts, bicycle coalitions, nor bicycle planners. It is the direct result of the disjointed way Annapolis addresses the four primary modes of urban mobility: pedestrians, cyclists, public transport and private motor vehicles (Pssst. No one's in charge).

Actually, people, bikes and buses mingle fairly well in the urban setting; only the private motor vehicle is in conflict with the other three modes. I'd like to pose an example of a real-life situation for bike riders approaching downtown Annapolis from the west and follow that with a possible remedy relating to bicycles on West Street. It just happens to be a solution that also could help traffic safety with no loss in traffic carrying ability.

Visualize riding a bike from the Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole to downtown Annapolis. Now, try it again without laughing out loud. Pretty hard to visualize isn't it?

Well, let's describe West Street in this neck of the woods. It's four lanes wide or approximately 48 feet curb to curb, left turns are permitted from the left running lane in either direction creating a constant weaving by motorists from lane to lane. Left turns onto West Street from a side street are both frustrating and dangerous. Even though West Street is lined on both sides with commercial strip development and accommodates pedestrians with bus stop shelters and, for the most part, sidewalks, it is dangerous and quite unpleasant for pedestrians.

Now, let's get out some traffic paint and signs and make a few creative changes to West Street east of Route 2, somewhere around Old Solomon's Island Road and easterly to North Homeland Avenue, opposite the Goodwill Store.

Instead of four travel lanes, let's sign and paint (except at traffic signal locations) one 12 foot wide travel lane in each direction with a continuous 12 foot wide center left turn lane. That's 36 feet and our curb to curb width is 48 feet. With the remaining 12 feet we can paint a line 6 feet out from the curb in either direction as a designated bike lane.

West Street becomes a safer place to make left turns to and from. The vehicular throughput in each direction is maintained since the carrying capacity of West Street is dictated by the capacity constraints at the traffic signals, which can only handle effectively one arterial lane of through traffic (a rough traffic engineering rule of thumb is: you need two through lanes at a traffic signal to handle the continuous throughput of one arterial lane of traffic). Voila! We now have bike lanes between the Annapolis Towne Centre and downtown Annapolis; well almost anyway. Some gaps and kinks still need to be addressed and they can be.

The point of this exercise is that, with a little creative traffic engineering and very little capital expenditure, bike lanes can be accommodated and things can be improved at multiple levels.

This is by no means the end-all solution for West Street, which should likely be widened and the offset intersection at Chinquapin Round Road realigned, but it could make things easier and safer for a whole lot of motorists, transit riders, bicyclists and pedestrians. Now where's my can of paint?