Good morning Delegate Loupassi, leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?151+sum+HB1402 Please allow me to introduce myself as the president of the 500+ member Tidewater Bicycle Association and member of the Norfolk Bike Plan Technical Committee. I see you have sponsored a bill designed to eliminate the road maintenance funding issue cities are encountering when they convert motor vehicle travel lanes to bike lanes. As you know, the current calculation significantly reduces the funding a city receives from the state for road maintenance when a motor travel lane is eliminated to create a bike lane. I am thankful for the bill you sponsored, however I have concerns with the two-way bicycle travel lanes language. I am requesting that you remove the two-way language from bill. Please allow me to explain a specific situation in my community. Llewellyn Ave in the Norfolk neighborhood of Ghent is a 4 lane divide road section with a nice park in the middle and decorative trees and sidewalks lining both sides of the street. i have attached a picture so you can see how beautiful the road section is. This section of the street is primarily residential and passes two schools. The traffic volume on this road has been studied and is very low. Two motor vehicle travel lanes can easily handle the motor vehicle traffic volume. The city of Norfolk, bicycle groups, walking groups and the local civic leagues would all like to convert the far right and far left travel lanes into separated single direction bike lanes for the benefit of our communities. These bike travel lanes will still require maintenance funds to keep them painted, cleaned and repaved as necessary. Making this change will obviously increase the safety of our citizens by separating bicycles and motor vehicles. What is not as obvious is the change will also make walking across the road section much safer for the many pedestrians and students who cross this road each day. This change is a win for everyone in our community but cannot be accomplish currently due to the road maintenance funds issue. Another option for this road section is to cut down the trees in the center park area and make a two way bike lane there. This is not an option we want to primarily consider as it will reduce the natural beauty of the area by reducing green space and trees and this solution will not make pedestrian crossings safer. We have many roads in Norfolk where we would like to eliminate a travel lane and replace them with separated bike lanes and we believe these transportation decisions are best made at the local level. There are other roads where we may eliminate one travel lane to make two bike lanes because it makes sense to do so but would prefer to make these decisions on a case by case basis and again, locally. I have attached a picture of a separated bike lane because our Norfolk Bike Plan with images will not be ready until later this year. This picture is not exactly what we want to do but you should get the general idea of how a separated bike lane can best meet our transportation and mobility needs on Llewellyn Ave and other places in Norfolk. Please contact me if you would like to talk about this or other bicycling issues. Thank you again for serving our state and the bicycling and walking community. Travis Davidson President Tidewater Bicycle Association
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 06:28:56 +0000
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