The city of Columbus is pursuing several new bike and pedestrian safety initiatives, including an audit of existing bike lanes that could result in some of them being upgraded into protected lanes.
Although networks of protected lanes have sprung up in cities across the country, Columbus currently has only one bike lane that is physically protected from car traffic; the two-way Summit Street cycle-track in the University District.
Justin Goodwin, the city’s Transportation Planning Manager, said that the audit is focused on assessing all of the existing one-way, painted bike lanes throughout the city.
The goal is “to determine where we may have available space and minimal conflicts to provide physical separation,” he said. “The Department of Public Service is also exploring options to pilot different materials and methods for physical separation, and to develop maintenance approaches for snow and debris removal in narrower physically protected spaces.”
That’s an evolution in thinking for the city, which has resisted calls from advocates to build more protected lanes – something that many studies over the years have shown to have a huge impact, both in terms of safety and encouraging more people to ride – citing the difficulty of plowing and sweeping one-way protected lanes.
“Right now we are targeting spring of 2023 for initial installation, with the number of locations to be determined,” said Goodwin, adding that “it will likely take us the next couple of months to work through the list, assess conditions, prioritize locations and determine what method of physical separation is most feasible for a near-term pilot.”
City officials also confirmed that several transportation-related planning efforts are moving forward:
- A Request for Proposals (RFP) will be released later this year for a consultant to produce a new city-wide Bikeways Plan, which would serve as a replacement for the 2008 Bicentennial Bikeways Plan. The plan will identify a priority bicycle network and be focused primarily on implementation, according to the city.
- Also planned for release in the next few months is an RFP for a Downtown Multimodal Transportation Study, which will examine the feasibility of potential bike, transit and pedestrian upgrades. Proposals from the new Downtown Strategic Plan will be included in the scope of the work, including dedicated transit lanes on Third Street and two-way protected bike lanes on both Broad Street and Fourth Street. The plan will also look at the potential for pilot programs – also known as tactical urbanism projects – in which new lane configurations are tested out using temporary barriers before being installed permanently.
- The city’s Vision Zero safety initiative is reaching the end of the two-year timeline laid out in the initial planning document released in March of 2021 (called Vision Zero Columbus Action Plan 1.0). A new document will be produced with goals for the next several years, and the city is looking for residents interested in helping to shape it – email [email protected] to get involved.
- One of the big recommendations of the first Vision Zero document was to lower the speed limit downtown to 25 miles per hour. A study of traffic signal timing is currently underway, and the city is on track to establish the new, lower limits on all downtown streets by March, according to Vision Zero officials.
Transit advocates have greeted the news that the various planning processes are moving forward with cautious optimism.
“I would say that we’re very encouraged by the fact that the city is still moving forward with plans for bike improvements and transforming bike and transit access downtown, despite delaying LinkUS,” said Josh Lapp, Transit Columbus Board Chair, noting that the city has produced plenty of plans over the years for better bike lanes and safer roads, with few concrete results to show for them.
“We would love to see tactical deployments of bike infrastructure to make quick impacts downtown and beyond…Columbus is sorely lacking in protected bike infrastructure and we would also like to see other initiatives to encourage biking, like an e-bike rebate program,” added Lapp. “Overall things are moving in a good direction but we need to see action quickly, given how unsafe our streets are and how little infrastructure is dedicated to anything but the car.”