I use that path frequently, and I have also talked to various people in the Village of Shorewood Hills (VSH) - both on the village board and their traffic committee. It's been a problem for years, and here's my take. Everyone in VSH thinks some combination of the following:
1. They think it's a two-way bike lane. Needless to say, Dipesh is quite right that it is both too narrow and a two-way, on-street bike lane is simply dangerous and against all traffic engineering principles. I've explained that to them, and I usually get a an apologetic nod or a shrug, depending on how tuned-in the person is to the needs of transportation bicycling. 2. "We know it's not right, but we have other things to worry about right now, and we'll fix it later." 3. "What's the problem? It keeps bicyclists out of the way of traffic. We have lots of kids using that route, and I don't want them mixing with cars." 4. It's on that side so that westbound bicyclists don't have to cross turning (one-way) traffic when they need to transition to the Roth Park path. 5. "We don't want to mess up the landscaping of the people that live along the road by making it right." 6. "We're going to install a path along the RR track anyway, so it's not worth fixing right now." (See #2.) 7. They don't really wants bicyclists going fast through that area, or going through VSH at all, so they make it a pain in the ass to deter us. Nice tactic to keep us from using their (property tax-paying) businesses as well. Maybe if we told the businesses that we consider it unsafe to get shop there we might get more traction. All they really need to do is re-stripe the lane on the other side of the street, but that would require actually working on their streets, which VSH doesn't like to do because a) it costs money and b) it bothers people. Sometimes I think they keep things slightly screwed up as a traffic calming measure. No, I'm not kidding. I've been in many meetings with them on campus issues. Robbie Webber Bike Walk Madison Steering Committee www.bikewalkmadison.org Join our group on Facebook! On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Dipesh Navsaria <[email protected]> wrote: > Maybe it's meant to be a two-way bike path there was well, but it seems too > narrow to accommodate that. >
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