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Norwalk DPW defends bike lanes, plans bike routes

February 3, 2015
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Nancy Guenther Chapman
A bicycle marking on Strawberry Hill Avenue, in front
A bicycle marking on Strawberry Hill Avenue, in front of the home of David Park, a vocal opponent of bike lanes.

NORWALK, Conn. – Ideas that Strawberry Hill Avenue is now more dangerous with bike lanes painted on it were rebutted last week by Department of Public Works Director Hal Alvord and Principal Engineer Dick Linnartz said.

While Planning Commission Vice Chairwoman Frances Dimeglio, a Strawberry Hill Avenue resident, said the road is “not as safe as it should be,” Alvord said it’s safer than it used to be.

“It actually has slowed down traffic on Strawberry Hill Avenue. The police tell us that,” Alvord said.

The northern part of Strawberry Hill Avenue was striped with bike lanes in 2013 during the Moccia administration. The southern part was done last summer under Mayor Harry Rilling and his Bike/Walk Task Force. That part includes parking lanes on one side.

“I think you have gone overboard on Strawberry Hill,” Dimeglio said, complaining that the signs are “five feet apart.”

Linnartz said the signs and the distance between bicycle markings on the road are mandated by the regulations.

“We can’t do something that doesn’t meet safety standards,” Linnartz said. “Otherwise you are not going to do it. So unfortunately bicycle lanes and the criteria change every day, but right now you have to have markings, you have to have signage, and that road is done in accordance with that requirements. We would be negligent, me personally negligent, if we didn’t follow those standards.”

Signs are 250 feet apart and there is one marking per block, he said.

Dimeglio said the car lanes are too narrow. It’s harder to pull out of the driveway, she said.

Linnartz said most lanes in Norwalk are 12 feet wide; Strawberry Hill now has 11-foot wide lanes, he said.

“I can tell you at rush hour from the traffic light at Norden Place and going down Strawberry Hill has become another East Avenue,” Dimeglio said. “As you are looking at bike lanes, the amount I think, personally, too much money was spent on signage for the bicycle lanes.”

Linnartz and Alvord said DPW is in agreement about that; it is now planning to do “bike routes,” which would involve putting up signs, not painting the pavement.

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Comments

10 responses to “Norwalk DPW defends bike lanes, plans bike routes”

  1. John Hamlin

    Of course only in Norwalk would something as basic as bike lanes be so controversial. It’s fine to be cautious of change. But the 1950s are never coming back and we need to compete in the 21st century. Norwalk competes with other municipalities to attract young professionals and home buyers. And they want a modern city that’s liveable.

  2. Mike Mushak

    DPW is right. Traffic speeds have been reduced, safety increased, and more and more cyclists are using the bike lanes as the system expands in Norwalk, just as the experts predicted and our millions of dollars of professional studies have recommended.

    Almost every city large and all in America now has bike lanes, and Norwalk is catching up. It is surprising to hear Planning Commissioner Fran DiMeglio be so unaware apparently of the $90k 2012 Pedestrian and Bikeway Plan that her own P and Z Department that she is part of commissioned, and the Planning Commission she serves on should be helping to implement. We hire national experts for a reason, and that is to give us smart advice that we should follow.

    There is also the $500k 2012 Transportation Management Plan, and the $200k 2011 Connectivity Study that also recommend bike lanes all over the city. I hope Planning Commissioners have been made aware of these studies by the P and Z staff, and if not, they should. They should have all received copies as soon as those studies were finished, and the studies should have automatically been made part of our Master Plan as soon as they were approved by the Common Council.

    Strawberry Hill is a “Safe Routes to School” project, and although a few mistakes were made on the north portion based on a lack of state guidelines and our engineers’ inexperience at the time with the subtleties of bike lane design (which has improved dramatically since then), those mistakes will be fixed, which is mainly the transition from bike lanes through intersections where they just end suddenly in travel lanes now without gradually tapering over to the curb.

    It is parochial to think Norwalk will never be a bike-friendly city when all of the studies, experts, and demographic evidence are there saying the opposite. Ms. DiMeglio is smart and conscientious, but her comments on bike lanes are unfortunate, and she needs to definitely learn more about the recommendations in our own studies and what other cities are doing across the country. I will be reaching out to her to help.

    In fact, all of our Planning and Zoning commissioners would benefit from knowing what professional planning trends are out there, and they could start by reading the millions of dollars of studies that taxpayers have paid for and are sitting on the shelves of the P and Z office.

  3. Kathleen Montgomery

    I use Strawberry Hill Ave at least twice a day and it is much safer post bike lanes. Having never heard the term “traffic calming”, I wondered if there was something special emanating from bike lane paint. Whatever, it works.

    Much safer at school dismissal (3 schools) as well.

  4. Local Ed

    Love the idea of putting more bike lanes in my suggestions:

    West Rocks Road, down France Street all the way to the green.
    Scribner and Highland Ave
    Main St from Route 123 to West Ave

  5. Ryan

    Whatever happened to riding bikes on sidewalks?

  6. Nancy Rosett

    Per the Connecticut Department of Transportation (as well as many others in the field):

    “Except for children, riding on sidewalks is less safe than riding on the road. Sidewalk riding puts the bicyclist where they are not expected by motor vehicle
    operators.”

    And: “Bicyclists have a right to ride on public roadways (except for the few locations where bicycle use is prohibited.)”

  7. Kathleen Montgomery

    Better yet, what happened to the sidewalks?

  8. jlightfield

    The bike lanes in Strawberry Hill are great for traffic calming but I’d rather see investment in sidewalks, bith repair and new installed so that we address the needs of our aging demographic and ensure that our urban core demographics can pursue healthy activities like daily walks which can promote health and more importantly better health outcomes.

  9. Wineshine

    As someone who travels on Strawberry Hill Road daily, I agree that speeding has somewhat abated. There also seems to be less tailgating, and I dare say, more civility. Whereby bike lanes don’t seem to make sense on some of our streets, (Fitch Street lanes are wildly overdone and create a hazard) those on Strawberry Hill have achieved an unintended benefit. I don’t believe there are more cyclists on the road, rather, it seems that the same ones now just have lines painted under their routes.

    What we need more than signs and warnings is for drivers to use whatever percentage of active brain cells they possess. Every day, we see idiots in action. Passing on the right on a two-lane street, refusal to use turn signals, ignorance of right-of-way rules, cutting through parking lots to avoid red lights, and the all time winner, getting stuck at a red light because one does not proceed into an intersection to make a left turn with oncoming traffic, are all wrong decisions that drivers make. If everyone obeys the Rules of the Road, life gets a little easier for everyone.

  10. sofaman

    @John Hamlin: couldn’t have said it any better. There are MANY benefits of building out a true city-wide network of paths.

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