Recent Bicycling Notes
Apr. 8th, 2010 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterOn Tuesday, I had my first real chance to ride along the Western Canal, which runs through central Tempe. Tempe just finished redeveloping it as a bikeway, and it's a beautiful path, for the most part. There's just one jog at Baseline that's almost impossible to navigate when traffic is heavy, and difficult to manage otherwise. Other than that, the pavement is clean and flat, and there are nice, lighted poles at intersections or canal crossings that help to guide riders along the canal. All it needs are some wayfinding signs and it will be utterly splendid.
In contrast, I rode along the Grand Canal last night and then this morning. When I reached the intersection of Van Buren and 40th Street, there were five police cars with lights a-flashing. I was trying to hustle my way through the intersection, so I didn't pause for long, but I was there long enough to observe a bicycle lying on its side in the middle of the intersection, and a stopped black pickup truck. I hope the accident wasn't too severe, but I'm not overly optimistic.
I am thinking of doing a photo essay comparing the two canals. The Grand Canal is a major connecting route between Tempe and Phoenix; I ride along stretches of it any time I go to downtown Phoenix. It's paved, for the most part, with asphalt. It's also strewn with glass, and pitch-black at night. Instead of having guard posts to keep vehicles out (which are no great hindrance to bicycles), it has gates. Although it's usually possible to skirt around the gates on a bicycle, the gate-skirting sections are mostly unpaved. One gate-skirting section in particular has recently become badly eroded, making for precarious conditions, and there's another section where a big chunk of pavement is missing, making us night-time riders fear that we're going to end up in the canal one of these nights when we aren't paying careful attention.
Wherever the canal meets up with major road-crossings, it abruptly ends, with nary a piece of infrastructure in place to help pedestrians and bicyclists cross the five to six lanes of traffic roaring along at 45-55 mph. I've taken to crossing the canals halfway and pausing in the center turn lane, but this is not a safe or satisfying thing to do. And the intersection at 40th Street and Van Buren is especially bad, because the canal basically cuts diagonally across the intersection and the maneuvers required for a bicyclist are not immediately intuitive. Ahh, if only Phoenix got its act together, it would be the perfect place for a bicycle-specific crossing and signal.
Recently, Bicycling Magazine published a list of America's Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities. Amusingly, they lumped Phoenix and Tempe together. Because of the way local politics work in this area, though, it's not fair to lump the cities together, for Tempe has stepped up its game way beyond Phoenix in improving the quality of its bicycling infrastructure. Although Phoenix has a lot of bike lanes, it also has a long way to go in improving some of its most useful canalways.
In contrast, I rode along the Grand Canal last night and then this morning. When I reached the intersection of Van Buren and 40th Street, there were five police cars with lights a-flashing. I was trying to hustle my way through the intersection, so I didn't pause for long, but I was there long enough to observe a bicycle lying on its side in the middle of the intersection, and a stopped black pickup truck. I hope the accident wasn't too severe, but I'm not overly optimistic.
I am thinking of doing a photo essay comparing the two canals. The Grand Canal is a major connecting route between Tempe and Phoenix; I ride along stretches of it any time I go to downtown Phoenix. It's paved, for the most part, with asphalt. It's also strewn with glass, and pitch-black at night. Instead of having guard posts to keep vehicles out (which are no great hindrance to bicycles), it has gates. Although it's usually possible to skirt around the gates on a bicycle, the gate-skirting sections are mostly unpaved. One gate-skirting section in particular has recently become badly eroded, making for precarious conditions, and there's another section where a big chunk of pavement is missing, making us night-time riders fear that we're going to end up in the canal one of these nights when we aren't paying careful attention.
Wherever the canal meets up with major road-crossings, it abruptly ends, with nary a piece of infrastructure in place to help pedestrians and bicyclists cross the five to six lanes of traffic roaring along at 45-55 mph. I've taken to crossing the canals halfway and pausing in the center turn lane, but this is not a safe or satisfying thing to do. And the intersection at 40th Street and Van Buren is especially bad, because the canal basically cuts diagonally across the intersection and the maneuvers required for a bicyclist are not immediately intuitive. Ahh, if only Phoenix got its act together, it would be the perfect place for a bicycle-specific crossing and signal.
Recently, Bicycling Magazine published a list of America's Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities. Amusingly, they lumped Phoenix and Tempe together. Because of the way local politics work in this area, though, it's not fair to lump the cities together, for Tempe has stepped up its game way beyond Phoenix in improving the quality of its bicycling infrastructure. Although Phoenix has a lot of bike lanes, it also has a long way to go in improving some of its most useful canalways.
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Date: 2010-04-08 06:20 pm (UTC)The Grand Canal, however, I do not take. I rode it once and crossed it out of my mental map of bike routes.
DM
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Date: 2010-04-08 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-08 08:53 pm (UTC)The other day, I followed Evergreen Road, which heads due south, then veers southwest, following the path of the canal, running right next to a bike path. Once it makes the "veer", the quality of the road drops a great deal, and I had no idea if I was on a road or some form of bike path, especially since I saw a cyclist (actually on the bike path following the canal) headed my way.
I got off of the road onto Apache as quickly as I could, but according to Google maps, the thing is an actual road. I just see so much potential for trouble there.