This is Central City Mobility Project update #15.

I have been following the progress of the Central City Mobility Project which has now mostly completed separated bikeways on 21st Street, half of 19th Street (H to Q), most of P Street, and now going to Q Street. One of the features of the design is ‘turn wedges’ which I have written about before: where the bike lane ends – update, where the bike lane ends, Central City Mobility update. I have spent a lot of time observing driver and bicyclist behavior at the intersections which have these turn wedges installed. The wedges are marked only by white paint, though city diagrams show them having some sort of physical barrier installed in them.

Drivers are using the turn wedges, and the buffer areas of the separated bikeway, to make very high speed, very wide turns at these corners, cutting the corner where a bicyclist might be riding. The prior configuration of a regular intersection did not allow such wide and high speed turns. I have seen a number of close calls between motor vehicles and bicyclists, and walkers, for that matter, since these high speed turns cross the crosswalk as well as the bikeway. These turn wedge corners are also encouraging drivers to run red lights, even more so than the usual red light running. I saw three drivers run the red on a single signal cycle, and a driver on the cross street had to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. I’ve seen a large number of near-misses for motor vehicles.

It is not clear whether these turn wedges are complete or not. Will the city actually install something here that prevents or at least discourages these high speed dangerous turns? I don’t know. What I do know is that in the meanwhile, these turn wedges are a clear and present danger to bicyclists.

I spent time this afternoon watching left turns from P Street westbound to 15th Street southbound. Drivers were using the buffer area and the bikeway to form two lines of left turning traffic, where there should be only one. The block of P Street was completely devoid of parked cars, so drivers were queuing into two lines way back near 16th Street. Since the intersection is in no way marked for a double left turn lane, there were motor vehicle conflicts on every signal cycle.

Sorry to be the doom-sayer, but I have to recommend that bicyclists simply not ride on these streets until the projects are truly complete, with as full a protection for bicyclist as can be achieved with these less than international best practice designs.

The city’s attitude seems to be that since the bikeways will eventually be safer, we just have to put up with the unsafe situation in the meanwhile. I completely disagree. This may be criminal behavior on the part of the city, to remove moderately safe bike lanes and replace them with unsafe bikeways. If bicyclists (or walkers or drivers) die before the project is complete, is this just a ‘whoopsie’? Professional engineers designed this project, signed off on this project, and should be inspecting the project as it goes along. Why do we then have these unsafe situations? Is is intentional? Is it indifference to bicyclists and walkers? Is it professional incompetence?

It is imperative that all construction projects accommodate walkers and bicyclists, who are even more vulnerable at these projects than normally. The attitude of ‘it will be safer later’ is completely unacceptable.

The construction company for this project is McGuire and Hester. Though many people might blame these problems on the construction company, I don’t. It is the city’s responsibility to design safe projects, during and after construction, and it is the city’s responsibility to inspect projects to see if they are complying with the design, and to fix things if not. But I strongly suspect that the construction company is doing exactly what the city told it to do.