Keep St. Helens Avenue Safe
· Posted Tuesday May 15, 2007 by jamie
Tonight’s the night. The City Council will be considering whether or not to make St. Helens Avenue one-way southbound between Market and Ninth. (A vote may not happen until next week, but most of the discussion will be occurring tonight.)
I’ve written about it here (and here), but in a nutshell this proposal is wrong in a couple of simple ways:
- Bicyclists will lose a non-steep route out of downtown, which will discourage people from biking to work or other downtown destinations given the difficulty of biking back home. Hopefully we can at least get a northbound bike lane, as is being floated.
- Cars will travel faster if the road is one-way, making the road more dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders, people backing out of parking spaces, etc., not to mention making the drivers less likely to notice the businesses they are driving by.
This block of St. Helens is ideal for measures to ensure that traffic volumes will be low. Making it one-way will have the opposite effect, and we all will suffer.
Let’s make sure the council knows that this is the wrong decision. If you haven’t contacted your council members, do so! And if at all possible, go to the City Council meeting tonight at 5pm in the Municipal Building (right there along St. Helens) to make sure your voice, and our voices as citizens, are heard.
Note: The above image was created using a neat piece of software called MacOSaiX, which is available as freeware (Mac OS X only) and creates mosaic images using a variety of images sources including Flickr, Google, and images on your hard drive. The original image is courtesy of Mike Lane Studios, with mosaic images culled from Flickr using the keyword “bicycle” (I’m not sure how to explain the penguin photos). The original work is licensed under the GNU Free Document License, and since this photo is a derivative of that photo, it inherits said license.
post to:
del.icio.us
·
digg
·
google
·
hugg
·
technorati
commenting closed for this article
Comments:
Previous: TNT on St. Helens One-Way Plan
Next: Ride to Work Tomorrow!
I just chimed in w/ the Council. Thanks for leading the charge on this!
— michael g. May 15, 10:44 AM #Just as an update, the council approved the first reading of the proposition with the understanding that the final reading would occur only with more understanding of the possibility of how a bike lane can fit in, and also how it might affect traffic patterns and safety at the 5-way intersection at the bottom of the block. The traffic department is (understandably) eager to get this approved so that they can start seeking bids for the work. It was mentioned that 2-way was still favored (though likely impossible), so essentially the decision is for how to do one-way. I think there are still some major concerns, but the council has definitely heard many of them and it is excellent to know they are taking them into consideration.
— jamie May 16, 09:22 AM #Thanks for the update — I work too late/commute too far to make it to most evening meetings. A bike lane, if that’s what happens, could be a good first step toward good downtown bike routes in general.
— michael g. May 16, 12:41 PM #