Quote from Opus the Poet on Oct 19^th, 2009, 6:13pm:
With these constraints, it's most likely DOA. Maybe they need to be reminded that cyclists have the right to travel on public roads and Motor Vehicles don't since they are a 'vehicle operated for hire'.

Stand up and tell them that saying "bikes can't interfere with cars" is tantamount to making bicycles illegal.  
 
Also, please contact GDB and FWBA.  They've got people who can help.  And who knows, if Garland is truthfully considering implementing a plan then maybe they'll listen.

Most Texas cities have the same problems as Garland. Any housing additions built in the last 40 years have streets that don't connect to anything, leaving only the high speed streets that actually go anywhere. My own commute to work gets easier after I reach the really old part of Fort Worth, because most of the side streets there go through.
 
Any solution that has bicycles sharing high speed lanes with autos isn't a good one. Perhaps, designating bike routes, and having the main streets on those routes have a 30 mph speed limit is the best cheap way to go. But, plenty of drivers don't hesitate to drive 30 or 40 mph over the speed limit, so speed limits alone won't get the job done, without adding truly stepped up enforcement along these routes, or speed bumps, traffic circles, or something else to slow traffic down.
 
I've always thought that one of the easiest solutions would be to just construct short bike paths between disconnected neighborhood streets that would allow bicyles to go places without ever having to get on high speed through streets.

If nothing else, stress that HAVING DECENT and CONTINUOUS SIDEWALKS are at least the minimum acceptable situation...  especially in those hilly areas of town that have NO sidewalk in sections, like the southernmost part of Rowlett Road and the easternmost part of Miller Road at Lake Ray Hubbard -- both sections that meet up with the City of Dallas line at the water's edge, with Rowlett just past it.  Or even along the 190 service road...
 
Having greenbelt paths like Richardson does is a start, but somehow encouraging bicycles in general to ride on streets at ~10 mph is not too practical, even when there are three lanes to use.
 
It's a conundrum...

Yeah, I somewhat mis-stated the objectives. They want to get more bikes without reducing the number of cars, and they don't have any budget to do that. The goals are to increase bike use without reducing the growth of car use, but the growth of car use is budgeted
 
First problem is the superblocks and the "40"MPH streets that are actually 50-60 because there aren't enough cops to write the number of tickets needed to make them actually do 40 MPH.
 
As Paul pointed out most streets in Garland lack sidewalks, and many that do have sidewalks don't have curb cuts. This eliminates sidewalk riding which endangers pedestrians, but it also eliminates sidewalk riding period. I have seen a few people riding on the sidewalks but they are riding BSOs with dual suspension to hop the curbs. I don't know what they do when the sidewalks stop, but I assume that they're the same people I see riding the wrong way on the street.
 
So, how do you do it? Like I posted earlier, the only way I can see to do it is reduce the speed limits to a level that bikes can live with cars, the cars will still be going by at one every 2 seconds regardless of the speed limit if they're using a legal amount of separation, and the occupants can actually see the stores on the sides of the streets way back behind those huge parking lots and maybe stop and shop in one of them. There has been lots of study done on the relationship between speed limits and retail, with retail going up as speeds come down.
 
I have been looking at other methods of calming traffic, but the deal-breaker with all of them is they require modifications to the infrastructure, and we come right back to "no budget". And to be perfectly honest the preferred method of traffic calming in TX is installing 4-way stops at every corner in the area you want calmed. Stop signs are death to cycling on those routes.

Even in the Netherlands there is a lot of controversy regarding the separation and thus a big push towards the use of traffic calming instead. Note that traffic calming was started there... Also take a look at the type and use of bicycles there. They are far more pedestrian in use.

Oh yeah, traffic calming, make the f'in cars useless, I'm all for it.  I have a lot of anger at cars at the moment.
 
However, until the true costs of driving and fossil fuel usage are actually felt by the public I don't expect much to change.
 
Take Care,
Nelson.