>From the time shortly after the contraflow lane was re-opened earlier this summer until very recently there was a very large sign facing construction vehicles entering the south Union/WID job site that said "No Parking or Unloading in Bike Lane" and it was mostly obeyed. I observed delivery vehicles many times crossing the contraflow lane to get into the job site but not blocking the lane otherwise. And I often saw the contractor's flagman often holding the dumptrucks in the WB auto travel lane in order to wave EB cyclists through.
I had a look at the site yesterday afternoon to see if the sign was still there. It was not. What was there were barricades and orange tape protecting the short sections of contraflow lane immediately outside the entrance to the job site where newly poured concrete was curing. So I suspect that the truck was delivering fill for the holes that are no longer there (though there should have been a sign at Randall closing that section of the bike path and pointing out the appropriate detour). This is not to say that there are not still problems with vehicles illegally parking in the contraflow lane - especially down at the eastern end of the contraflow lane. We came upon contractors using the contraflow lane to park their private vehicles over by Vilas Hall one day, and when they were asked to move their vehicles, the workers we spoke to claimed that they were going to tear the whole contraflow lane up. We, of course, knew that statement to be inaccurate since the majority of the contraflow lane they were parked on had just been reconstructed, and said as much. It is often difficult to convince some of the workers that they can't park wherever they want to, regardless of the terms of the construction contract. I'm still struggling to chain the culture in which contractors ask for (and get) construction staging areas that block, e.g. the sidewalk north of Linden Dr at the SoHE construction site, for no other apparent reason than to provide their workers with a place to park their private vehicles each day they are on the job site. Especially since what ends up happening is that students walk on the north side of the street, in the street, instead of crossing to the sidewalk on the south side of the street. And I can't say I blame them, since the volume of pedestrian traffic at class changes is greater than half the ped capacity of Linden Dr can carry. But it appears this one instance documented by John Martin was warranted, and the main problem was the lack of appropriate detour signs. Chuck Strawser Pedestrian & Bike Coordinator Commuter Solutions Transportation Services UW-Madison Room 124 WARF 610 Walnut St Madison WI 53726 608-263-2969 www.wisc.edu/trans On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 8:31 AM, John Martin <[email protected]> wrote: > Ran into this (figuratively) this morning in the University Ave contraflow > lane. He didn't move aside when I rang my bell. Some riders and their > manners... > http://www.regardingjohn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/photo-12-e128697 6524211.jpg _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
