Originally Posted by
JohnJ80
An elevated bikeway would be ridiculously cost prohibitive. I'm a big bike proponent, but I sure wouldn't want to pay for that.
It doesn't take much to make a roadway be quite bike friendly. Just putting wide shoulders in place and keeping the intersections under control (roundabouts are great) makes an immense difference.
Riding on a heavily used MUP is just plain dangerous if you have any speed much over walking speed. You also get the bonus danger of having the intersection issue mentioned numerous times above.
J.
I am a bicycle and pedestrian planner and I agree with you John. Sure if there was unlimited funds, then an elevated bikeway would be nice to have for some riders. The reality is that is a damned hard to get funds to even create a bicycle trail. In my area we have an old rail line that hasn't been used in over 30 years. For at least the last 20 years, there has been a trail planned along this line. We are still trying to acquire the funds to purchase the land to even build the trail.
It is significantly less expensive to create on-road bicycle facilities. Fortunately we finally have people at the Federal DOT that see bicycles as more than just recreation. That coupled with more and more states adopting Complete Streets legislation, we will begin to see more thought giving to designing and upgrading roads to take into account all road users.