Got back from a meeting with transportation officials Nick & Steve with the city of Columbus about improving visibility for cyclists on the bridge north of Nationwide and the hill south of it. Hoping to get some signage up, since large “bike route” stencils on the road itself would have to go through a dozen bureaucracies, but could be done if you want to wait a decade. The signage would advise drivers that cyclists use this road (standard “share the road” signs), and surprisingly several cyclists were using the road while we were discussing it. I suggested signage advising traffic not to pass approaching the incline, since you can’t see traffic coming over the hill very well on the two-way stretch of Front. Hopefully we’ll get something. I suggested grooved speed humps on the inclines which would slow cars but not bikes or EM vehicles, but that’s an ODOT controlled road, so there’s no way. In the vast majority of cases only residential streets can have those installed, despite this road being a bike route.

If you know of any roads that could use improvements and know what you’d like to see, I’d suggest contacting Nick: NJPopa@columbus.gov or just call 645-3111 for the transportation division.

FYI, we’re not going to see sharrows until sometime in 2010 and any traffic calming measure requires several studies before implemented, which after a bit of thought makes no sense really. Just follow a formula like roads that are X ft wide + X number of lanes which are X ft wide + length of road without a stop = traffic going at an average of X MPH. Do we have some upside-down roads or loop-de-loops that I don’t know about which would throw that equation off?

I was also struck by just how many roads ODOT has control over. Virtually all streets Downtown along with several other streets. That means Downtown will never become a cyclist and pedestrian-friendly place. Ever. Period. Unless, of course, city officials were to *gasp* oppose the all-mighty ODOT. Based on their actions however, that’s not at all likely. The only hope would be grassroots.

Even streets that are residential, like King Ave. as I was told, function as arterials (they connect to the highways, you see) so my desire for traffic calming on King likely won’t be considered until a permanent speed limit is finalized. ODOT wants all of King to be 35, because drivers should be able to at least run over a couple of cyclists on their rush to 315. The city is trying to appease their bloodlust by compromising at 30 while residents want to maintain the current limit of 25.

So this means it is ODOT who dictates urban development on their streets, not city planners, and if they want to lower property values on a street like King and make streets attractive only to car oriented development, they can if they want. After all, an ODOT rep explained that the reason they’re tearing down Carabar and ET Paul is because there would be traffic. I guess it makes sense. Let’s spend lots of money so that drivers don’t have any traffic (hah!), even though it is well-known that drivers choose to put up with insane amounts of traffic at no additional cost.

To summarize; the most cyclists will get on bike routes is a bigger, more visible sign, which is better than nothing, and on any of ODOT’s roads you can forget about 25MPH speed limits, traffic calming,  basically anything that would provide a safe environment for cyclists and pedestrians, since the city lets them have the final say in designing this city. And we wonder why east and west coasters aren’t flocking to Columbus.