Recent bike path "improvements"

[billharnois.livejournal.com]

Is anyone else annoyed at the recent attempt to improve the bike path/Rite Aid situation? I was really excited that they were going to finally resolve the issue of bikers/walkers spilling into the Rite Aid parking lot. It was weird the way the bike path would just lead people into the parking lot, and most people would have no idea where to find the continued path on the other side of Davis.

I feel like they really had an opportunity to solve this problem. But instead they solved nothing. They made a new mini-path that curves around the parking lot. But is like a foot too thin, and not really wide enough for bikes or a line divider. If they just planned a little better, and made it about a foot wider, they could have had one continuous community path all the way to Davis.

Most people aren't even using the new mini-path. I'm just frustrated that they spent a ton of money on a situation where they could have really improved the flow of the bike path into Davis, and instead they really solved nothing.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty much OK with this strategy of handling the Rite Aid lot, although I'm irritated they widened the sidewalk so much rather than just striping a bike lane down the busway. Seems too narrow to share comfortably now as a cyclist, but the wide sidewalk (for all that it has striping, which I expect will be roundly ignored) seems like a terrible place to bike -- way too much conflict.

[ron_newman]

The sticking point here is that the MBTA doesn't officially want people biking in the busway at all. The narrow little new fire lanes on each side can act as de facto bike lanes in each direction, but can't be marked that way.