In a cycling-friendly town like Fort Collins, one would think we'd be leaders in bike lane design, right? Well, that hasn't always been the way.
But in wake of Portland, Oregon, recently becoming the first city to implement a new policy that mandates city planners, designers and engineers include only protected bike lanes in their designs, the city of Fort Collins is taking steps to follow suit, said FC Bikes program manager Tessa Greegor. Although the city has plenty of buffered bike lanes — with a median space of 3 feet between the bike and travel lanes — protected bike lanes usually have a "vertical element" to it and are not just separated by the street, she said.
The only protected bike lanes in the city are on Laurel Street, from Howes to Remington streets. They were completed in June and were mostly funded from a $10,677 grant.
The city is currently pushing for protected lanes, where necessary, in three upcoming projects: the Pitkin corridor, Lincoln Avenue and West Elizabeth corridor. These are just a few of the plans to move toward "innovative bicycle infrastructure designs, like protected bike lanes," as the default, Greegor said.
Chris Johnson, executive director of Bike Fort Collins, said he doesn't think protected bike lanes alone add to the safety of cyclists. Rather, they provide "a perception of safety," which he said is important to get more cyclists on the road.
"They certainly make people more comfortable," Johnson said.
Research seems to back up Johnson's claims. According to a Portland State University study, bike ridership increased between 21 and 171 percent in five U.S. cities that recently implemented protected bike lanes, and 10 percent of those users were drawn from other modes of transportation.
Boulder cycling advocates recently received a setback when overwhelming negative backlash forced the city to scale back its protected bike lanes on the busy Folsom Street in October. The city had initially removed vehicle lanes to widen the bicycle lanes, but then the public criticized the city for not taking the delays and economic impacts into account prior to rolling out the project. Out of the four blocks on Folsom that featured protected lanes, two remain. This cost Boulder close to $170,000.
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