Reclaiming the Streets for Pedestrians: The Indianapolis Cultural Trail
by Sean Fisher, Cincinnati, Ohio on 06.12.07
The city of Indianapolis, Indiana is embarking on a project to run a bicycle/walking/jogging path through the city center in an effort to encourage more human-powered movement through the city. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail will allow pedestrians to have their own right-of-way through the city center with access to many of the city's arts, retail, sporting, and cultural institutions. Plans for the trail include transforming whole lanes of existing traffic in some places into wide, open spaces for bikes and people. In other words, this is nothing like the narrow after-though of a bike lane many of us have in North America. We expect this could have a Portland streetcar effect, spurring economic and neighborhood revitalization in the blocks surrounding the project. Construction will be completed in phases over the next three years, with the first phase estimated to be finished later this year. ::Indianapolis Cultural Trail
Looks nice, and good they are trying to think non-car, but aren't those cycle paths a little narrow for opposing flows? And the final picture shows shared use with peds with very little room.
Bikes belong in the streets, not on sidewalks or sidepaths. I'm all for streetscape designs that create more space for slow moving traffic like pedestrians, but please don't encourge designers to go against good engineering (see the AASHTO guidelines regarding sidepaths for cyclists) and try to mix fast vehicles like bicycles into slow traffic like pedestrians. Please? For everyone's sake?
Though if you want to encourage desegragation across the board, like Hans Monderman, that's supposedly safe and effective.