smokeysurvival

There are spots where I live, where literally, the bike lane is just covered in gravel, soil from the woodlands next to them, and roadway debris. As well as the conditions of the lane being very sub-par. Potholes, rough sections, water pooling in the holes. Is there any way, other than leaving it up to the city to finally do something about it, to report these conditions and get them fixed?

Nightshade

Looks like a job for the "Adopt a mile" cleaning by citizen volunteers just like they do for highway litter.

no1mad 

Don't know about other municipalities, but mine has the "Mayor's Action Line". You call and leave a message and if enough people complain about the same thing, then that problem usually gets resolved or at least moved way up on the 'to do' list.

JanMM

Why isn't the bike lane next to the traffic lane where there would be less debris, water, etc? Poor design contributing to the problems.

smokeysurvival

I very well may call then because this has been an issue for over a year honestly. As well as the "adopt a mile". I've seen a few around but not over on this street.
@JanMM- I believe they designed it this way because this major road is known for excessive speeding. I believe the speed limit is 45 on this section and the drivers are just out of control. As well as some police corruption.

https://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf...re_speedi.html

https://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf...admits_to.html

Retro Grouch 

Resentments are bad so control what you can control yourself.

I suspect that your serenity will be better served by installing wider tires with lower air pressure than by agitating for a street sweeper.

MRT2

smokeysurvival

All three of my bikes have wide tires (gazelle 635x40c, diamondback has 26x1.75 and my trek has 26x2.2). It's not really for me as I don't bother using these lanes since they aren't suitable. I'd just rather see them fixed just because we don't have much cycle infrastructure in this borough. So I feel they should be taken care of, more people will use them, then people can possibly advocate for more.

hueyhoolihan

i reported a section of road once to the local authorities once. i'll never do it again, BTW.

they responded that it couldn't be bad in that they had just repaved it. little did they know that their budget chip-seal job had CREATED THE PROBLEM when the excess "chip" had accumulated outboard of the white line on either side of the well traveled lanes, making it virtually impossible to ride anywhere but in the auto lanes. geez (*head hung down and shaking slowly back and forth*").

smokeysurvival

I guess it's just about how much you're willing to tolerate. Obviously they were quite oblivious. If I can't use the proper bike lane, I have no issue using a regular traffic lane honestly. I generally just stick to side streets anyway to avoid any potential conflict in the first place. But most communities here have expressed disinterest to bike lanes or shared lanes in their areas. Same with the local gov.

fietsbob

Highway Public works department in our city or County does that ,

call them up and ask if they will be scheduling a spring sweeping in the near future.


They do that here, remove some of the pea gravel they laid down when the road was Icy ..



chains and studded tires do wear at the road surface and loosen stones that were part of the paving mix.

Machka 

Yes ... call your local city council's infrastructure department and report it. Email them the photos you've included here.

They might get out there and do something quickly ... or they might not. But at least you've put it into the proper hands.

Ring them again in a couple weeks if nothing is done. Email them with new photos.

GP

+1. I used to work for a city and we used a tracking system called publicstuff.com. The work orders would come to us, we'd enter status from a drop down menu, send an email or call the reporting person and cut/paste the email into the system. Once a month we'd get an email from the city manager reminding us to close out completed requests or give a staus update. If we were sent pictures, we'd have the GPS coordinates of the problem.

Machka 

I used to work for a rural council and they had a similar sort of tracking system too.

Jeff Wills

As GP said: report it. They may not realize it's a problem until someone says something. Even then, it can take several tries to get it to the right person who can actually do something about it. Be polite but be persistent.

For several years, one of the local bike routes had a drain at the bottom of a large divot, directly to the right of the bike lane. If you didn't know it was there, it was like riding into a giant pothole. We complained about it several times when I was on the city Bicycle Advisory Committee, but nothing was done. Finally, some riders came across a city survey crew near this spot and pointed out the problem to them. By the next week, painted stripes and plastic bollards highlighted the area.

Machka 

That's where sending in photos and very precise descriptions of the location of the problem can help.

In our council, we'd get vague calls about a "monster pothole" someone encountered on a road somewhere between here and there, and we'd send someone out to have a look, but there was a good chance that person wouldn't find the mystery pothole because he/she didn't really know what they were looking for. But if there were photos and a very precise description ... there was a much greater chance the matter would be dealt with.

metz1295

those roads are pretty rough. it's a good idea to call council and the road engineering department. who knows, you may find that they already have plans in place to fix those problem areas.

wahoonc

Looks like a typical American bike lane... paint is cheap, maintenance non-existent. Report it to the local authority and continue to take the lane. Unfortunately in the US they barely have the equipment and money to clean and repair the roads, much less bike lanes.

Aaron

Little Darwin

That looks like what we ride on around here on the roads. The only difference is here we don't have the bike lane signs... We have no bike lanes that I recall seeing. So our shoulders, if we choose to not be in among the cars, have all of those issues, plus we have conveniences like rumble strips in some sections.

Steve B.

New York City is wonderful at finding the money to hire architects to design and contractors to install, bike paths, then forever ignore the condition by refusing to pay to hire people in the parks dept. for upkeep. Thus I tend to ignore bike paths. Of course, in NYC a cop can and will give you a ticket if you don't use one when it's available. They LIVE to give cyclists tickets for poor reasons, but that's life in the big city.

wahoonc

One of the reasons I am vehemently against mandatory sidepath laws. The larger town to the south of me boasts 7 miles of bike lanes.... strangely they are all in residential areas that don't need bike lanes, and are usually blocked with parked cars, debris, etc.

I am all for properly built, maintained and useful bike paths, lanes and other infrastructure. Unfortunately most of it in the US ain't. I firmly believe that if they build it, they will come. Especially in the cities that need it the worst. However it is an uphill struggle for funding in this day and age.

Aaron

jsjcat

I work for a large suburban county which is almost totally developed. Our planning department is currently involved in added bike lanes to many roadways. This involves putting roads on "diets" or by creative striping. The "road diet", where possible, is taking a 4-lane road and making a three lane road out of it with bike lanes close to the shoulders. This is done by striping. So the bike lanes are in areas which were previously shoulders. Being a cyclist myself I would like all of the shoulders to be clean and smooth however we have trouble maintaining the pavement for vehicular traffic. We don't have enough sweepers to have a routine schedule. So you can complain to your heart's content but everything is driven by money or the lack of it.

smokeysurvival

All very good suggestions and examples. I appreciate all the replies. I did take the time to call 311 (they seem to be the people who handle things like this), and reported it by Internet with the photos to them, last Friday. I'm not surprised they haven't gotten to it yet as we had horrendous rain this weekend. Honestly it's gotten worse though from it. Did a 30 mile trip from one end of the island to the other today on the Gazelle and the rain was washed the gravel and those spikey sweet gum tree pods into piles at the bottom of any hills near the gutters or into potholes that already existed in the bike lane. Some were practically at least 5 inches deep. I have a ride coming up at the end of May that will take this road. Would it be legal to just sweep the gravel over myself if the city does nothing for it by then?

alaskanb3arcub

Equipment for sweeping the lane DOES exist, just not here...
(this was while he was in Mongolia)

Bicycle street sweeper | Ryan McFarland's blog

smokeysurvival

To think I was just going to bring a regular broom hah.

A regular street sweeper couldn't suck this all up?