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Eric Vey
Guest
A few months ago I moved to a small city of 25,000 people. A few days after I arrived and was still
moving in, a new street project was begun on a busy 2 lane street. The city began taking up the
asphalt surface and replaced it with brick. The neighbors said it was an attempt to change a street
that had become a minor artery into a lesser used road for local traffic.
Bricking streets in this city has become a major effort. Looking over the city commission minutes
from the last few months, it appears that everyone in town wants brick streets to slow down traffic.
Indeed, when I saw all the bricked streets, many of them in disrepair, I purchased a MTB rather than
a street bike. The brick streets don't bother me too much.
But I was not happy when I saw what took shape as work continued over the last few months. The
street was dramatically narrowed as well as bricked. A sidewalk was added, so that there are now
sidewalks on both sides of the street, but the new sidewalk is almost 6' wide. This looked odd to
me, so I asked one of the workers why the sidewalk was so wide.
He said that the wider sidewalk was to give room to the bicycles since the street had been narrowed.
It is not illegal to ride on the sidewalks in Florida.
I am not too concerned about this particular stretch, since I have found side streets to get around
it, but I am concerned that the traffic engineer may be on the wrong track and already they are
talking about bricking a section where there is no way to get around it. I am also concerned that
the city got a federal grant to brick this street and I wonder if the state and fed engineers think
this wide sidewalk business is a good idea or if they even looked at the plans at all.
I am new here and don't know anyone. There is an advocacy club for the area, but not in the city. I
will join it this month. I am new to this whole idea of traffic planning for bicycles, but there is
a lot of info on the web and I haven't seen any of it advocating wide sidewalks for bicycles.
Am I off base to ask the city traffic engineer where he got this idea knowing that he will probably
take offense to the question?
moving in, a new street project was begun on a busy 2 lane street. The city began taking up the
asphalt surface and replaced it with brick. The neighbors said it was an attempt to change a street
that had become a minor artery into a lesser used road for local traffic.
Bricking streets in this city has become a major effort. Looking over the city commission minutes
from the last few months, it appears that everyone in town wants brick streets to slow down traffic.
Indeed, when I saw all the bricked streets, many of them in disrepair, I purchased a MTB rather than
a street bike. The brick streets don't bother me too much.
But I was not happy when I saw what took shape as work continued over the last few months. The
street was dramatically narrowed as well as bricked. A sidewalk was added, so that there are now
sidewalks on both sides of the street, but the new sidewalk is almost 6' wide. This looked odd to
me, so I asked one of the workers why the sidewalk was so wide.
He said that the wider sidewalk was to give room to the bicycles since the street had been narrowed.
It is not illegal to ride on the sidewalks in Florida.
I am not too concerned about this particular stretch, since I have found side streets to get around
it, but I am concerned that the traffic engineer may be on the wrong track and already they are
talking about bricking a section where there is no way to get around it. I am also concerned that
the city got a federal grant to brick this street and I wonder if the state and fed engineers think
this wide sidewalk business is a good idea or if they even looked at the plans at all.
I am new here and don't know anyone. There is an advocacy club for the area, but not in the city. I
will join it this month. I am new to this whole idea of traffic planning for bicycles, but there is
a lot of info on the web and I haven't seen any of it advocating wide sidewalks for bicycles.
Am I off base to ask the city traffic engineer where he got this idea knowing that he will probably
take offense to the question?