Progress leads to a divide on Linwood

Sounds like a great concept. But I understand why the neighbors are upset from being kept in the dark.

It's really odd hearing that the city is being secretly progressive behind people's backs. It's usually the other way around.

I'm curious to see how the city planned the two-way bike lanes and parking lanes. The example diagram above seems a little confusing (parking lane is in the middle of the street) but then the cars are kept away from bikes that way...

This should slow the traffic down, finally.

You can see this setup on Broadway south of 34th Street in NYC.

This seems smart to encourage bikes to use Linwood rather than parallel portions of Main and Delaware. Good decision for safety and convenience both of bike users who can use Linwood and car users on Main and Delaware who will have fewer bikes nearby. I don't see any down side, since there's essentially never enough car traffic on Linwood to use 2 lanes anyway.

(btw - so much use of the word progressive for this looks very different than how it's often used for stuff like higher taxes, employment quotas, opposing chain businesses, banning soft drinks over 16 oz while cheering the selling of microbrew growlers, etc, etc. … just one of those words with many different meanings.)

Wow! And here I was thinking 2012 was turning out to be a pretty lame year for bicycle infrastructure compared to last year (bike lanes on Porter, South Park, etc., sharrows on Richmond and Connecticut).

I am always a little unsure about two-way bicycle lanes on one-way streets (they certainly make intersections more complicated for everyone), but if this happens, this will be Buffalo's first physically separated bicycle lane. I have a feeling that once people get to experience how much more comfortable and relaxed it feels to ride in a protected lane like this than in a shared traffic lane, they will be clamoring for many more of these all over the city.

Great! This is long overdue and much needed. Folks on Linwood need to simmer down. This is progress, and they can't stand in the way of progress because their feelings are hurt that they weren't consulted. Get over it.

This design is in use in Minneapolis. I wasn't impressed with it, or the confusion it can create. Not very many people there are thrilled with it either:

http://journalmpls.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/bike-lane-backlash/

I would have kept it secret too..i'd imagine the majority of Linwood owner occupied are not bicycle riders. D.O.A. I live in the area and was praying for 2 way..Mains too busy and the traffic/time restrictions on Elmwood are pointless!

I would hope its a little more compact and slows traffic down, I was kind of excited seeing 2 ways lights at Bryant and W. Delevan going up..any news on that if its still one way?

Seems like riding between the trees and the sidewalks and the parked cars would create a lot of blind spots while biking, no?

It is not about feelings being hurt.....I need answers from the city on legitimate concerns. I'm curious about those people who say that this in NYC. Is it in a residential neighborhood with houses like Linwood is? I just don't know that. As for my concerns, can you shed any light on them? Sorry about the formatting

1. Snow -
- How will people see where to park if there is snow on the ground. We have all seen what happens when a parking lot gets covered in snow. Cars are all over the place

- Snow removal
- What happens to cars parked in the street when both the street and the bike lane are being plowed?
- Back to parking - if cars are not completely in the snow covered street lines for parking and are partly in either the parking or bike lane, will plows be able to plow?

2. Traffic Stoppage
- Garbage day - Blocks will not be usable on garbage day as the garbage truck will block the one driving lane
- Apartments - We have a large number of tenants on the street. When turnover over occurs, moving trucks could block traffic
- Same issue applies for delivery trucks is no parking spots available

3. Residents on West(Delaware Ave) side of street
- Left hand turns into driveways could be really difficult if car parked in front of house on street.
- Pulling out of driveways to make left hand turn becomes more difficult if cars parked on street, especially anyone with a large vehicle.

4. Safety
- just weary of bicycle/pedestrian safety with the increased interaction of the two because of the requirement of people(kids) getting out of cars having to cross bicycle lanes in order to get to the sidewalk.

- Emergency vehicle access

Thanks

THese are the best kind of bike lanes. They have started doing thes ein Chicago.

Linwood must be two ways!!

I long have thought Linwood should be two way vehicular traffic, but I have to say I am very enthused by this plan. Much better than two way traffic, imo. I am also a bicyclist. Linwood is the perfect street for this approach. Whatever's point about Delaware and Main being far more dangerous for bicyclists is well taken.

It's funny (and good) that the east and west borders of the Delaware District have long been defined by Linwood and Richmond (technically the councilmatic district stretches to the west side of Main, but I don't know anyone who includes Main or Oxford or Harvard in their definitions of Delaware District), and now these two streets both feature bike lanes (and we have so few).

I appreciate ND's concerns, but I honestly don't believe the inconveniences will be onerous.

-The garbage truck will be a pain, but my bet is that they adopt very early pickups to avoid traffic. The association could certainly encourage this.

-As for emergency vehicles and moving trucks, etc., drivers will naturally feel very reluctant to block the singular lane. Currently, no one feels any compunction at all about blocking traffic in one lane of Linwood because there's always an easy way around the obstructive vehicle. That mentality will change completely when there's only one lane.

Most of the apartment buildings I can think of on Linwood are built at intersections. Moving trucks for those will likely commandeer a lane on the side street instead of blocking the singular lane of traffic on Linwood. I lived on Johnson Park for a decade. It's one way, with one lane of parking and only one lane of traffic. It features a large high school (Hutch Tech) with many students who drive and park on the street (and office workers) and it features a number of apartment buildings. Even so, getting blocked by emergency vehicles, moving trucks or anyone else is seldom an issue. When it happens, it's generally a matter of a minute.

-making a turn into the driveway will be tighter. But the overwhelming majority of homes on Linwood are built on large enough lots that there should be sufficient room to restrict cars from parking too close to driveways. And in similar circumstances on Johnson Park, I never found it onerous to get in and out of my driveway (save for when someone parks directly across it, but they can be towed).

-as for snow visibility, there ought to be easy enough solutions. Plant small orange traffic flags on thin fiberglass rods four feet high periodically at the border of the parking/bicycle lane. Everybody will be able to follow the line of flags and know where the parking ends and bike lane begins, even in two feet of snow.

Good job, city traffic planners!

WHOA - This is awesome!! Nice job, Buffalo!!

While it sucks that the neighborhood was kept in the dark in communication, I think we need to be realistic here. Had they told people what they were planning to do, there would have been a lot of opposition and it would never have happened. They only way to get things done sometimes it to shove it down peoples' throats and then watch them love it later.

Linwood is one of the most unique and until 5 or so years ago, one of the most disappointing streets in Buffalo...The houses are architecurally amazing and different...So big that for many they were to big to take care of by themselves, hence the multi use commercial, residential....
But as in many small pockets of Buffalo that had been forgotten, Linwood has found a place for itself, and its amazing to see the transformations/renovations....With this roadway concept and some upkeep this roadway will be one of the top streets to drive down and view incredible architecture.....
I hope residents get over it and the city apologizes for the miscommunication, because in the end its a win for this area....now keep working on Main street

I am SO excited to read this. I am a regular commuting cyclist and live a few blocks east of Linwood by the Cemetery. I often lament that there are no safe southbound bike routes and have frequently wished that there were a two-way bike path on Linwood. Well, now there will be! It's great to see infrastructure like this showing up in Buffalo.

ND raised some very good concerns, which is why neighbors should be included in the discussion up front.

To the people that think it was good that the city kept them in the dark, I know you wouldn't have the same reaction if the result was tearing down an old building.

Although I really do like this project and look forward to biking down linwood - I have another honest question: Why spend so much money on traffic signals dedicated to cyclists, when 99% of cyclists are going to ignore those traffic signals anyway? Right?

Although the lack of communication with the neighborhood is troubling, it is wonderful to see that the city is actually taking Complete Streets into account when reconstructing roads.

Hopefully communication with the city will improve in the future. I experienced similar frustration when my street was given about 30 minutes notice before our sidewalks were replaced. I'm all for replacing sidewalks, but if my wife wasn't still home that morning, our cars would have been trapped for a couple days waiting for them to harden. They also re-cemented areas that the city had agreed to leave open to plant trees.

I would love to see similar bike and traffic calming efforts take place in Allentown, especially on Wadsworth and Hudson Street.

I am a resident of Linwood Ave, and would like to reinforce the concerns raised by my neighbors.

Yes, we are upset about the lack of planning, about not being included until the city was beginning to install new lights, and about the enormous rush that is being imposed upon us to accept this poorly considered idea.

I am an avid cyclist, and used to commute solely by bicycle, daily, through the winter.

Bike lanes are wonderful, when they are included sensibly.

But... the City's proposal is a terrible idea. It's a lousy fit for our residential street with its hundreds of driveways. We already have parking problems, this will make it a zoo as the 50mph commuters try to blast by garbage trucks and school kids.

We're also a historic preservation district, and the plan would turn our street into one big parking lot, with hundreds of signs and paint and turn signals buttons.

We really need to ask "why here..?" We don't have a lot of cyclists now. We're not a bicycle corridor. And we don't connect different parts of the city. It's just a bad fit.

See this thoughtful checklist for more issues a bike lane proposal should address. You can see this proposal fails on almost every point.

But this would be an excellent idea as part of a redeveloped Main Street Corridor!

As a leader of the Linwood Preservation District and Friends, and a resident who lives on Linwood with my young family, and someone who already looks out for two-way bicycle traffic on our street on a daily basis, I am very much relieved and happy that the City of Buffalo is looking out for the safety of our cyclists, myself, my family and neighbors by implementing this traffic-calming initiative. Perhaps it might be my job to be more even handed about these things given my position in the organization (secretary), but when I must consider the safety of my two year old daughter, and the safety of other small children who are moving into the neighborhood in larger and larger numbers, I must confess that is difficult to do.

I also have to apologize from my own point of view for not having been in a position to offer my neighbors more time to digest and give their own feedback about this project. I was just as surprised (and delighted, frankly) it was happening as many of the rest of us. We are, all of us - neighbors who live on Linwood and neighbors who do not - in this together.

I am hopeful that the citizens of Buffalo who care about the importance of this initiative, the City's progress, and their neighbors, will make their support of this traffic calming initiative known at next week's meeting. When I know the exact date and time I will post it here.

It is, in my humble opinion, a very, very good step in the direction of safety and traffic calming for everyone (one area where I obviously bend in terms of preservation) and would be a fantastic combination of the historic beauty of our street and thoughtful engineering/planning for our City. Now if only the City would have considered putting cobblestone down on the driving and parking surface - that would have been amazing!!

I'm from a suburb of Portland, Oregon - a city I grew up enjoying on a regular basis. It is a place that many of you probably know is forward thinking and thoughtful in its design and accommodation of alternative forms of transportation. It makes me happy to see Buffalo having the courage to do these sorts of things for its citizens and discovering its own healthy, vital, vibrant self again. I am hopeful that the communication we receive from the City next week will put some people's fears of this admittedly big change to rest so that we can go on enjoying this wonderful street, each other, and this fantastic city in a way that is safer, calmer and better for all of us.

This should be done on Hertel, too.

I couldn't agree more with PreserveBuffalo.;as he/she has eloquently presented the advantages for this historic street; which, by the way should be emulated definitely on Hertel. This plan humanizes and calms this very important section of Buffalo History and once finished will be appreciated for years to come.

GO Bike Buffalo posted this on Facebook about bike lanes and sharrows on Elmwood (3 blocks of bike lanes on the wider section and sharrows on the rest):

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From the City's Department of Public Works on Elmwood Avenue: "We are paving sections (Elmwood) between Delavan and Ferry and between Bryant and Summer. The section between Ferry and Bryant was paved within the last few years and is in good condition.

We are striping sharrows between Delavan and Anderson
We are striping bike lanes between Anderson and Bryant – This is the wider section with enough room for dedicated lanes.
We are striping sharrows between Bryant and Summer

Additional markings will be applied to the other sections of Elmwood as the phased repaving continues."

Predictions: 1. This will not calm traffic or improve safety. You will have one lane speeding instead of two. If you want to calm traffic - have a cop hand out speeding tickets. When is the last time that happened anywhere in the city? The biggest joke is that Linwood actually has a sign that warns drivers that the speed is Radar Enforced.

2. Assuming that we have a typical winter, the parking and street plowing will be such a disaster that the traffic lines will be repainted back to the original two-lanes as soon as the snow melts.

I am a Linwood resident, and I think the city's plan is an excellent idea, for all the reasons expressed here by others. I would add that I think a lot of the petty crime on Linwood is encouraged by the absence of foot and bicycle traffic. Law abiding and civic minded cyclists will be just the fix.

The vast majority of the opposition seems to be based on concerns about garbage collection and snow removal. Those issues are easily addressed by coordinating alternate side parking rules. Although there may be issues about safety during the adjustment period,they are more than outweighed by current safety issues.

Great cities innovate. Fellow Linwoodians, lets embrace change.

the neighbors should shut up and be glad that their street is being repaved at all. and with a bike lane?!?! a bunch of whiners if you ask me. Since when does the city have to ask permission to repave and restripe a street?

I am so glad that they are reducing it to one lane. People treat Linwood like some sort of mini-highway and hopefully this forces more traffic onto Main St.

People don't own the street just because they live on it. We all pay for the infrastructure and the people that live on the street should have no more say than the rest of the taxpayers of the city.

Since it was brought up that other places are doing this, I have been looking at those other places. I can't seem to find where this idea was implemented on a residential(homes with driveways) street in this configuration. All of the instances that i have seen are either a completely different type of street or configuration As a resident who also has young children, wants 2 way traffic to calm the speed of the street, and rides his bike to work.....this configuration makes no sense.

Since Oregon was mentioned, the link below is a case study for implementing contra flow bike lanes and the criteria that should be looked at for placing them

http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/bikesafe/case_studies/casestudy.cfm?CS_NUM=209

I found this section interesting

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There are, of course, safety concerns associated with contraflow bike lanes. Motorists and pedestrians do not expect bicyclists to be traveling in the opposite direction of traffic on one-way streets. However, contraflow bike lanes have been used successfully in some cities in the United States (Boulder, CO; Eugene, OR; Portland, OR; Madison, WI).

Building on evaluation criteria developed for Eugene, OR, the city of Cambridge looks at the following conditions when evaluating a potential contraflow lane location:
Safety is improved because of reduced conflicts;

The fourth bullet point

- There are no or few intersecting driveways, alleys or streets on the side of the proposed contraflow lane;

While this may be a good plan -- I really don't know, as I haven't had the chance to think about whether this is a better option for all concerned than returning 2-way traffic to Linwood which many residents wanted -- it's outrageous that neither the neighborhood nor (apparently) the district councilmember were aware of this.

But what's even more frustrating about all the articles we've seen this year about bike lanes being added or not added during street projects, is that in each case NO ONE in the community AT ALL seems to have been aware of these things before the projects were already well underway. I'm part of a bicycle/pedestrian advocacy group that meets monthly and (I thought) works with the City on projects. Yet in each of these cases this year, my first awareness of the particular bike lane issue was when the article appeared on Buffalo Rising -- including, in every case, photos of the project already under construction.

Frankly, I don't see how we can make any progress on these issues in the city without communication rising to even the basic level that folks who are stakeholders by virtue of the location of the project or by virtue of their area of engagement are at least aware, beforehand, of projects and aspects of projects that are in the works.

Seriously.

Its funny to me how some people over-analyze changes like these with all the worse case scenarios in their head. I'm sure there will be some "adjustment period" but if you don't think the average driver/cyclist can figure this out then we have much bigger problems. If it doesn't work out then restriping isn't a big deal and you'll still have a freshly paved street left.

As for the lack of communication from the city, I'd equate this instance to your parents buying you a new car and having the audacity to not tell you a head of time.

With the city's history of stellar development decisions, why shouldn't we question this one? I thinks it is in everybody's best interest to have open discussion's about this topic, especially when there are case studies that list criteria that should be considered for the proposed layout and those criteria don't fit our street.

Thank you for the dialogue

BTW, I agree with Dashwood (above) that this would be a good approach to consider for Wadsworth. Last week I heard a very good articulation from a resident there of the idea of making Wadsworth one-way.

Here is a case studies for interested parties: www.altaplanning.com/App_Content/files/pres_stud_docs/Cycle%20Track%20lessons%20learned.pdf

Also, it's good to remember that every municipality in the nation (world?) is dealing with the issue of how to make our civilization more bike friendly (after many, many years of being so car dependent). This will not happen effortlessly.

Regarding concerns about being in traffic behind garbage trucks or snow plows -

I'm not getting why that's an issue.

There's quite a few streets on which there's only one lane in a given direction. Yeah, it's inconvenient when behind something like a garbage truck - but it's rare, not a big deal.

Is there something I'm overlooking about why that would be a bigger problem on Linwood than anywhere else it happens?

I'm a Linwood resident and appreciate the city's efforts to make itself more bicycle-friendly. I can't say whether I support or oppose the plan for Linwood because it hasn't been shared with us. Perhaps the city has no obligation to tell us its plan, but one would hope that they'd share it with us nonetheless. We have insights into traffic patterns and hazards of which the city may not be aware. We are the eyes and ears of Linwood. This is an inclusive, progressive neighborhood that includes folks from many backgrounds and walks of life. The culture here is open-minded. I don't think my neighbors are scared of change or just being naysayers. I think they raise legitimate concerns that should be heard and considered in deciding whether to implement this plan, modify it slightly or modify it significantly. Most of Linwood is in the preservation district. Although we legally own our homes, we still MUST seek city approval to make even small changes or improvements to the exteriors of homes - even if it's to replace a couple of rotted clapboards, or to fix a set of broken stairs. In light of this unique and sometimes burdensome requirement, I think the city owes us the courtesy of sharing the plan with us and hearing our concerns and insights. I think many of us are excited and indeed grateful about the possibility of improving our street. We just want to do it right. We want to help.

I'm a Linwood resident and appreciate the city's efforts to make itself more bicycle-friendly. I can't say whether I support or oppose the plan for Linwood because it hasn't been shared with us. Perhaps the city has no obligation to tell us its plan, but one would hope that they'd share it with us nonetheless. We have insights into traffic patterns and hazards of which the city may not be aware. We are the eyes and ears of Linwood. This is an inclusive, progressive neighborhood that includes folks from many backgrounds and walks of life. The culture here is open-minded. I don't think my neighbors are scared of change or just being naysayers. I think they raise legitimate concerns that should be heard and considered in deciding whether to implement this plan, modify it slightly or modify it significantly. Most of Linwood is in the preservation district. Although we legally own our homes, we still MUST seek city approval to make even small changes or improvements to the exteriors of homes - even if it's to replace a couple of rotted clapboards, or to fix a set of broken stairs. In light of this unique and sometimes burdensome requirement, I think the city owes us the courtesy of sharing the plan with us and hearing our concerns and insights. I think many of us are excited and indeed grateful about the possibility of improving our street. We just want to do it right. We want to help.