An interesting story. The bike lane is semi unintentional. When I first came to Madison, in 1966, U Ave was two way, but the next year it was made one-way Westbound with a contraflow BUS lane. Bikes were supposed to stay out of the lane;they got ticketed until a lawyer found that the city didn't have the power to do this.
The bus lane became very unpopular when a student stepped in front of a bus and lost her leg. But it remained in place until the city proposed to widen the street to include a two way bike lane on the north side of the street. This was blocked when people realized the widened street would take almost all the open space in the corridor, going almost up to the edge of Humanities and Barnard Hall. So the city went back to the drawing board and came up with a plan to accommodate bikes in the existing footprint, with a westbound bike lane on the north and a narrowed contraflow eastbound bike lane in place of the bus lane. And that's how we arrived where we are now. ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 11:09:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Bikies] History of the counter flow lane on University Avenue I received an inquiry from a youngish person who is now in Milwaukee about how the counterflow lane and westbound lane on University came to be. She is planning to advocate for protected bicycle lanes in Milwaukee. Anyone have background on that story? Al Matano _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
