About 6 months ago I wrote a post for Miami Urbanist, about the County Public Works and Waste Management Department’s recent resurfacing project on NW 2nd Avenue from NW 20th Street to NW 36th Street in Wynwood. It is 2012 and we do live in city, yet the County only managed to install 4 crosswalks along a 16-block stretch on NW 2nd Avenue. The crosswalks are located at NW 20th Street, NW 29th Street, NW 31st Street and NW 36th Street. Yesterday, I discovered the County added another crosswalk on NW 25th Street and they have also added bicycle sharrows on NW 2nd Avenue.
This is certainly a step in the right direction, but NW 2nd Avenue continues to by a disaster for pedestrians. Instead of 5 crosswalks, we should have 16 crosswalks. Seriously, we live in a urban environment, with pedestrian activity increasing in Wynwood exponentially on a daily basis, yet all the County can do is paint an additional crosswalk and add sharrows? The County Public Works and Waste Management Department just earned themselves and F- for NW 2nd Avenue. This project was poorly designed from the start and instead of planning this project properly from the beginning, the County is wasting our tax dollars every time they send another crew out to NW 2nd Avenue to make piecemeal improvements. Do it right one time and the first time.
Below are some picture with explanations of what should have been done.
Bike lanes rather than sharrows should have been installed on NW 2nd Avenue. Notice how wide the on-street parking is. The on-street parking width should be reduced along the width of the travel lanes to accomodate a bicycle lane. A properly designed “complete street” calms traffic. Narrower travel lanes, combined with bicycle lanes would calm traffic and discourage speeding. Speeding is a problem on this street as NW 2nd Avenue goes uninterrupted for 9 blocks from NW 20th to NW 29th Street.
The County is already using sharrows as an excuse that they are doing something for cyclists. Not so. Is this road safe enough for your child to ride a bicycle? That should be the County’s safety standard. At the very least, please paint the sharrow in the middle of the road, not towards the side.
Should we be ehliated that we have a new crosswalk on NW 25th Street? No. We’ll be happy once we have crosswalks at every intersection, travel lanes and on-street parking widths are reduced and a bike lane is added to NW 2nd Avenue.
These would be a great addition to Wynwood. They are effective and help calm traffic.
Please send CPWWS director Kathleen Woods-Richardson an email and let her know that NW 2nd Avenue is an abomination for pedestrians.
7 Responses to NW 2nd Avenue in Wynwood continues to be a pedestrian’s nightmare
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Wow, those parking lanes are enormous.
Someone needs to train the traffic engineers on proper sharrow placement. Sharrow markers should always be placed in the center of the lane where the cars drive. They should never be off to the side like that, encouraging people to believe that bicyclists should ride close to parked cars. That is the opposite of what sharrows are supposed to do.
I forgot to mention, bike lanes next to parked cars are always a bad idea. You can have a bike lane or parked cars but not both unless you have enough room to put a buffer between the bike lane and the parked cars so that bicyclists aren’t forced to ride in the hazardous door zone.
Right on, Billdsd.
Agreed. There is probably enough room here for a protected bike lane using the parked cars as a buffer.
No. There isn’t enough space for that. Even if there were, the buffer needs to be in the door zone. Riding in the door zone is dangerous on either side of the car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CudJvSbS2aY
[...] couple of months ago I wrote a follow-up post to my first article about NW 2nd Avenue for Transit Miami. In the past year County Public Works and Waste Management Department has added 4 [...]