Raise the Hammer

Recently during one of the warm weather weekend days I was surprised at an unusual 'surge' of cyclists on 1-way King urban expressway. I counted 7 nearby bikes in motion on King spread over an approximately 1-minute period using King for at least 2+ blocks. This does not happen normally but it was quite odd to see. None of the bikes were related to each other (independent). I was riding a bike at the time and was 1 of the 7, since I needed to ride ~2 blocks from Sherman to Proctor.

I would have not seen these bikes if I was driving (which I usually am if I'm on King or Main) because half of the bikes snuck a two-block King trip in the deathly quiet part between platoon between the green waves. I loitered a bit to keep observing the unusual momentary visibility of bikes.

It really shows there needs to be more north-south protected connectors as well, it's not always easy to reach points on Barton from points south of Main, and my spouse Alain often visit community events on either his owned bike (cheaper) or on a SoBi bike. We need more east-west options south of King too, such as a continuously connected Delaware-Stinson-Hunter cycleway all the way to Gage Park, SoBi GPS heatmaps show more use of this route than the Cumberland "signed" bike route.

A SoBi bikeshare station got installed only 1 block away recently, using one of the wintertime-relocated racks. Incidentally, Alain often finds it faster to use than the owned bike because instead of taking a bike out of storage/lockup. One only need to punch a 6-digit membership code to instantly unlock a SoBi and great for 1-way bike trips. SoBi is often cheaper than bus for a short trip that's slightly too far to walk (80 cents to ride bike 10 minutes to downtown, since the $4/hr pay-per-use is prorated)

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2016-04-29 11:33:13