posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 7:30 AM
by
Jeremy RVARC
When is a Bike Lane not a Bike Lane?
When it's a paved shoulder.
VDOT will be having a series of public meetings to discuss its bike and pedestrian planning efforts. In the Roanoke Times
article that announced the meetings, Jeff Sturgeon said:
For instance, bike and pedestrian amenities are planned on U.S. 221 near Cotton Hill Road in Roanoke County. Bike lanes were added last summer when Hollins Road was widened.
I'd heard from a couple of other sources that there were bike lanes now on Hollins, so I drove over there to check them out. Unfortunately, there are no bike lanes. What there is is a paved shoulder - a wide swatch of 8 to 10 feet of striped pavement that runs only along the northbound lane of Hollins from the intersection of Plantation to Beaumont. Now, this is a great accommodation, but it's not a bike lane. First of all, it's not marked appropriately - a bike lane needs to graphic identifying it as such, rather than an emergency pull-off or parking lane. Second, while the width is great, its only on the northbound lane; southbound cyclists still need to drive in vehicle traffic. With the width of the paved shoulder, it seems VDOT could have split the difference and restriped the whole section of road to provide 4-foot bike lanes on both sides rather than an 8-foot paved shoulder on one side.
It's doubly a shame because after Hollins narrows past Beaumont, it becomes a much quieter, slower neighborhood street. Transitioning into that from safe bike lanes would have made all of Hollins from Plantation to Shadwell a rather bicycle friendly corridor.