Douglas Design District Streetscape Improvement Plan: Some comments

Image found here.

Yesterday, while bumping around the Wichita blogosphere looking for stuff that might be of interest for readers of this blog, I ran across the Douglas Design District's streetscape improvement plan, which was submitted last month. The plan amounts to a re-imagining of three miles of Douglas from Washington east to Glendale (one block east of Oliver), and much of it will look very familiar to those who know that stretch of Douglas that runs from the river to Seneca (the plan even comes with a "Lessons Learned from the Delano District" appendix): a reduced speed limit (from 35 to 30 mph); two-lane traffic each way with landscaped medians from Washington to I-135 and, east to Glendale, one lane of traffic each way with a dedicated left-turn lane; curb bulb-outs that create space for buses to pull over at stops; wide, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks. But the Design District's plan differs in a truly important way: It is a full embracing of the Complete Streets concept, with dedicated bike and bus/parking lanes on both sides of the street.

If and when it's built, Douglas will serve as an effective demonstration of the most counter-intuitive argument in favor of the complete street concept: that reducing the number of lanes dedicated to cars and adding dedicated bike and bus lanes actually increases a street's traffic-bearing capacity and efficiency. The Design District report states again and again that, based on their modeling, eliminating two car lanes and adding the bike and bus lanes will not appreciably slow traffic flow, and the reading I've done elsewhere regarding other cities' experiences confirms this. As genuinely nice as it is to have Mt. Vernon as a smaller-scale Complete Street from the river to Broadway, that stretch (almost exclusively residential) just doesn't have enough traffic to demonstrate the truth of that argument. Given Douglas' literal and figurative centrality in Wichita, the evidence will be if not unavoidable, then at least more evident to more people.

No: I will rarely if ever ride my bike on that stretch of Douglas. But the point of infrastructure is not to benefit the few but the many. Complete Streets don't benefit only cyclists and pedestrians at the expense of motorists; they're designed to make streets safer and more efficient for everyone who uses them. The even greater good, meanwhile, will be that other neighborhoods will see this and begin dreaming dreams for their own major thoroughfares. And you know the rest.

The daily commute: Things observed and thought II

The gateway over the new Midtown Bike Path; click on image to enlarge. Via Coasters Bicycle Club).

Thanks to Copenhagen Cycle Chic's and Streetblogs' and Carbon Trace's linking to the "Front Porch Chic" posts, this humble blog had over 300 unique visitors over the past two days (an average day here is between 20-30). (By the way: you should be visiting those good people on a regular basis, and not just because they linked to my posts.) But with this post, rest assured, I will return this blog's visitor counts back to their accustomed bottom-feeding depths as I talk about stuff that may be of interest only to people in this mid-sized city in Kansas.

As before, what follows is actually a hodge-podge of items in some way associated with getting around town via bicycle, some of which are from before last weekend. Take "The Daily Commute" to indicate more a state of mind than a rigorous recounting of the day's ride.

**Among the items for consideration on today's City Council agenda (WARNING: 429-page .pdf file!!) is a motion to increase funding for design work for the long-discussed bike path linking the north end of the Canal path to the west end of the K-96 path. Apparently, the extra money ($25,000) is needed because the city has asked the designers to make it more shovel-ready so as to qualify it for non-ARRA (you know "ARRA" better as "Stimulus Fund") money (the project wasn't approved for ARRA funds). The recommendation is to approve the funds. It's not clear from the agenda what sorts of schedules this project is on--a fairly tight one, it's safe to assume. I will try to find out more at the WAMPO meetings this Thursday (I think June 11th, by the way, should be dubbed WAMPOpalooza).

I do not have to tell you how much this project would facilitate bike-commuting from the northeast side of town to the urban core. It of course does not reduce the necessity of an east-west route (or two) through the city's middle latitudes, and it obviously does not at all address the complete absence of bike paths of any sort west of Sedgwick County Park. But for those who live near the K-96 path and work in the downtown area or even as south as far as McConnell/Boeing, this linkage suddenly makes both paths much more viable as commuting options than they had been. But here's the deal: though the city's political climate is, I feel, slowly shifting in "our" favor, if the federal money weren't there, it wouldn't get built. According to this story in Sunday's Eagle, the city has a $7 million shortfall in operating funds, a total of $17.5 million in projects on its wishlist for federally-funded environmental and energy-saving projects, but only $3.5 million in federal money. This situation is of course being played out in cities everywhere these days; indeed, we can be thankful that this money, little though it is, is explicitly designated for these kinds of projects.

Still: the fact that this request for more money for design work is on today's agenda suggests that building the path has some priority and that, if the financial stars align properly. work will begin on this project soon.

**Speaking of bike paths long in the works, on Friday I rode down to Garvey Park, which, as you know, is the southern terminus of the Arkansas River path, in part because I had not ridden all the way down there in a while and in part to see if by any chance work had begun on the path to link that path with the south end of the Gypsum Creek Path (short answer: No, at that end, at least). Depending on the weather tomorrow (there's a chance for storms in the afternoon), I may ride out to Plainview Park after my class to see what I can see from there. [UPDATE: Nope--no work there, either.]

Gentle suggestion to the Parks and Recreation Department: The content on the home page for bicycles has not changed in the year that I have been looking at it on a fairly regular basis. I for one would welcome posted announcements of projects, openings of paths, etc., individual maps of the new paths and updates to the old ones showing the new extensions . . . and an updated city map of paths that indicates the newly-completed paths and the new bike lanes on Mt. Vernon: some small gestures to indicate that cycling occupies more than oh-by-the-way status in the city.

**And speaking of newly-completed bike paths, on Friday I had a closer look at the just-opened Midtown path (a map of which I would link to if one were online--see above), and on Monday after class I rode that part of the just-completed extension of the Canal path that runs from the west side of I-135 at Wassal up to Pawnee. The Midtown path, in case you don't know, is a converted railroad right-of-way: it runs from Central right next to the county jail on its west side (perhaps there should be signage along the path warning against picking up hitchhikers?) due north to 9th, where it hitches to the north-northwest up to Prospect Park and Otis Park, continuing on to 15th. I don't know if there are plans to extend the path still further along the right-of-way, but that land appears to available for at least a couple more blocks to the north--ideally, all the way up to 21st Street via the right-of-way or, alternately, from 15th up Market to the future NOMAR International Market (and even if that didn't come to pass, it would appear to be a simple matter to designate a bike lane for a half-mile along 15th over to McAdams Park. Knowing a little about the aspirations the people of the Delano District have to convert their own stretch of abandoned railroad right-of-way, I was interested in looking at the immediate environs around the Midtown path to see if, here and there, there might be occurring a reorientation of the neighborhood in the direction of the path. Well, silly me: the path only opened in April. So, you know the answer to that. That said, though, the potential for that sort of thing happening seems large to me, especially in the area immediately around Otis Park and just to the north. Just a little vision, some money and, of course, clear claim on the property rights up to the actual path . . . but what I saw up there made me feel frustrated that the Delano District's path isn't yet built--around that route, there's even more space for a combination of established businesses and new, mixed-use development to appear and, potentially, become the District's true focal point as a community.

Now to the new southern extension of the Canal path. As I've said before, once I cross Pawnee at the pedestrian-controlled crosswalk, I head straight into the neighborhood: down Minneapolis to Glen Oaks, then left to Minnesota and then south on Minnesota to where it T-intersects Wassal. The official path, though, runs on the south side of Pawnee to the intersection with Southeast Drive, then follows that street south to Wassal. On my return trip Monday, I decided to check out the that path. I must be frank in my assessment: though there are probably legal reasons why it takes the route it does (since the city already owns the land it's on, there were no purchases to have to deal with?), it still makes no real sense. Two examples: on the stretch along Southeast, there's both a bike-lane and a bike path on the same side:an amazing redundancy in a city that is just now adding on-street bike lanes. Meanwhile, that part that runs along Pawnee from Southeast to the ped crossing crosses a couple of very tricky entrances to the large strip mall on that corner. This is a very clear instance when it's obviously safer for a cyclist to be in the street rather than on the sidewalk. As for the route I take, Minneapolis is a wide street with some on-street parking but little traffic, and Glen Oaks and Minnesota are a little narrower but otherwise the same. I much prefer it to the official path.

**As I mentioned last week, I stopped by Tom Sawyer Bicycle Shop, at the corner of Broadway and Mt. Vernon, and I spoke with one of the staff (whose name I didn't get) about the new bike lanes and about the state of cycling in the city. He said he hadn't seen any increase in people riding, or in the store either for that matter. He also seemed fairly pessimistic about the likelihood of more Wichitans' becoming serious riders any time soon. I suggested that perhaps things are changing, but he said that it would take $4/gallon gas to see real change. Granted, Tom Sawyer isn't exactly located in Wichita's cycling epicenter (such as that is); the chief reason I feel as I do about the ground shifting in cycling's favor is that I see so many more people bike-commuting here in the Riverside and Delano neighborhoods than I had seen last year--something that south Wichitans would not necessarily have witnessed. Also, I sense the conviction among the (admittedly few) people I've met in city government that cycling and alternate transportation need to matter more here than they have historically.

But finally, there's a bit of (positive) fatalism at work in me as well: our economy is changing, in some ways gradually and in some not so, as we speak and whether we like it or not, away from its dependence on oil. The Obama Administration has clearly prioritized projects for mass transit, rail, and alternate transportation such as bicycling in its funding. The twin pressures of more people choosing to bike (a bottom-up pressure) and meeting federal requirements in order to obtain funding for infrastructure (top-down) will lead Wichita to add that infrastructure. There are signs that the city is becoming more forward-leaning on these issues. We just need some people to encourage them to keep leaning forward.

The daily commute: Things observed and thought

A sign like this one now appears at the intersection of Mt. Vernon and Market. More about this welcome development below. Image found here.

First in an occasional series . . .

Unless otherwise noted, what follows is a description of my route from downtown to McConnell: From Keeper Plaza, south along the Arkansas River path to the Harry Street bridge; south for a block to Exchange; south to Mt. Vernon; east along Mt. Vernon to Minneapolis; south on Minneapolis to Minnesota, then over to the Canal Route path; south to Pawnee, crossing at the new bike/ped crossing at Pawnee and Minneapolis; south on Minneapolis to Glen Oaks; east to Minnesota; south on Minnesota to Wassal; cross I-135 via the pedestrian bridge; pick up the new extension of the Gypsum Creek path at Wassal; east on that path to George Washington; then south along GW to McConnell.

**During the summer, at least, both "daily" and "commute" are misnomers: I teach only on Monday and Wednesday mornings, but I will otherwise be out and about on my bike. Just so you know. So, what follows are Things Observed during yesterday's ride.

**I lost count, but yesterday I saw a good half-dozen cyclists along my route; all but two of them appeared to me to be bike-as-transportation types (i.e., panniers, handlebar pouches, etc.). As I've already noted in several posts this spring, my purely anecdotal survey of things is that substantially more people are using bikes to get around the city than was the case at this time last year. This is happening, you'll note, not because all that much has changed in terms of infrastructure but because of external pressures beyond the city's control but to which it eventually will have to respond in the form of accommodating these people's choices--just as, beginning around a century ago, cities, states and the nation gradually responded to mass ownership of automobiles. Far better, in my view, to respond proactively now, while the expense of responding is still relatively modest . . . but if you're reading this, you likely need no persuading as to the truth of this. Still: it's important for those of us who already recognize this to acknowledge--and tell others--that the ground in Wichita is shifting, household by household, in favor of choices that will contribute to making our city a more livable, healthier, safer place.

**The re-paving and re-striping of Mt. Vernon proceeds apace. Work is finished now from Greenway to Broadway, with dedicated bike lanes on both sides of Mt. Vernon up to Market (one block west of Broadway); there, to accommodate a dedicated left-turn lane, the bike lane disappears and in its place appears a "Share the Road" sign. Meanwhile, re-paving (but not re-striping) is done on Mt. Vernon from Broadway to Topeka; in the very near future, then, re-striping and (I assume) new signage will soon appear. I can't tell how much usage the lanes are getting; some gravel has already accumulated in them, and I didn't spot any tire marks through it. Still, that stretch of Mt. Vernon--that running west from Broadway to the river--is the stretch less travelled. As the bike lanes are extended eastward (that is still the plan, right, City of Wichita?), the Mt. Vernon route will become more useful to east-west commuters and, I hope, see more use . . . which, one can hope, will encourage the city to fast-track some of WAMPO's proposals for re-striping other streets to incorporate bike lanes.

As it happens, Tom Sawyer Bicycle Shop is located at the corner of Broadway and Mt. Vernon; on Monday afternoon I plan to stop by on the way home and chat with them to get a sense of how much the new lanes are getting used.

**Back in March, I'd noted signs that the extension of the Gypsum Creek path would have some additional landscaping. That's since become the case: there are substantial plantings of trees in various places, including evergreens in a couple of stretches intended to serve as screens between the path and residential properties. Also, where the path crosses Hillside and intersects with George Washington, there are now water fountains and stands for those waiting to catch buses. Right now, a large pile of dirt being used for landscaping (in the form of terracing) on the east side of Roosevelt is covering the path, but that work should be finished soon.

**On the first day of class, I'd told my students about this blog and said a few words about cycling as being about more than recreation or exercise; among other things, I'd mentioned that depending on how you tally such things, that about 80% of all car trips in this country are of distances less than 2 miles and that most anyone could walk or ride a bike that distance "to pick up a can of pop at the Quik Trip." Well: on Wednesday, one of my students asked if I'd biked to the base and I said I had. He volunteered that he'd taken his bike for a spin on Tuesday--he was going to visit a relative who lives four blocks from him and was about to jump in his car to go there when, he said, he got to thinking about what I'd said about all those short car trips and decided to ride his bike there instead.

Who knows if my student's decision will result in some larger commitment to cycling? The important thing to me, though, is that he considered it and acted on it--he now sees cycling as a possible alternative when, before, the idea hadn't entered his mind. He is one person. But so am I, and so are you who reads this. It took my seeing working-class and street people on bikes to begin giving serious consideration to cycling as transportation. All it takes is enough people seeing enough others cycling on the streets to and from work, school and shopping to encourage them at least to think about cycling as legitimate transportation, period--even if they don't see it as an option for themselves.

**A (very) long-term goal: to get a city ordinance passed forbidding steady wind speeds greater than 20 mph . . .

Saturday Readers' Ride: Some good news

Route: Map My Ride. I wasn't able to save my route on Veloroutes, alas. Weather: cool-ish, but the rain held off.

First of all: There's some storm sewer construction that is entirely blocking the Gypsum Creek path on the south side of Pawnee; thus, our ride on Sunday will be shorter than I'd anticipated. But this isn't the good news.

This morning, no one met me at Linwood Park, so I set out on my own. It was a good ride, though my tiredness at the end was a reminder of just how long it'd been since I last rode for any real distance. But this isn't the good news, either.

It is this: Mt. Vernon from Greenway almost to Broadway now has brand-new dedicated bike lanes on the street. As in, solid lines on the pavement on both sides of the street, bike logos in the lanes, No Parking signs, and even signs telling bikers to ride with the flow of the traffic. They are spiffy, let me tell you, as are the new sidewalks (the old ones had been difficult in places even to walk on). Also, there are some marked bike lanes just north of Pawnee on Minneapolis and Swan, intended to help ease passage from the Canal path over to the new sidewalk crossing at Pawnee and Minneapolis. These are only on one side, though, and this morning they were filled with standing water from last night's rain, so they didn't elicit quite the same glee from me as I passed that way. Ah, well.

As I've mentioned before, Mt. Vernon is in the process of having storm sewers installed; the stretch with the bike lanes is the completed part of that work, and the preliminary re-paving of the two blocks or so up to Broadway has been done. The sidewalks still have yet to be done. Meanwhile, on the east side of Broadway the construction in the street has begun. So, it indeed appears that the work there is following the recommendation listed in WAMPO's Priority Missing Links list (see #13).

Anyway. A sincere thank-you to the City of Wichita for providing these lanes. I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of them.
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I left a little early this morning to get a look at the new Midtown Bike Path, which as you know was just opened. It's very very nice, though it makes some odd hooks here and there as it approaches some streets. But on the whole it is very functional. And, it's already been put to some pretty intense use: one straightaway has numerous very long skid marks from bike tires.

Then it was off to Linwood Park, where I waited for others to arrive; I finally left around 9:20. The ride down to Pawnee and then through the quiet neighborhood to the pedestrian bridge that crosses I-135 at Wassall was very pleasant. It's a minor complaint to note that the bridge is the weak link in the connections between the Gypsum Creek's western terminus and the Canal path's southern one--crossing over by walking the bike just took a couple of minutes. Since I last rode the new stretch, the city has seeded and covered the dirt along the the path. I met no other riders and, strangely, I didn't see any dogs out; but I did meet something I hadn't counted on: small swarms of insects flying just about head-high. A couple flew into my eye at different times, making steering a bit tricky. A pair of goggles might not be a bad idea to wear along that way.

After riding to George Washington, down to Oliver, then along the turnpike up to the construction at Pawnee, I turned back and, when I reached the Geo. Washington-Oliver intersection, I noted the time: I was curious to see how long it would take to get from, more or less, McConnell to my place. The short answer: about an hour--about the same time it takes to go the way I had been going. Following the paths adds about a mile to the trip--from 10 to 11 miles--but that's more than compensated for by being a safer route that cuts out a net four traffic lights and the hard-for-me climb of the overpass over I-135. Bike-to-Work Week should be a good time to try it out under actual commute conditions.

I'm looking forward to meeting some of you tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 on the south side of Kellogg at Armour.