A week ago, Pamela Lane of Durham was riding her bicycle on the sidewalk near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Hillsborough Street when a car ended her life. Her death and the deaths of other American cyclists should not merely create a news bulletin, but be a tangible lesson on the importance of designing roads to be safe for all users.
According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Orange County is home to the third most car-bicycle collisions per capita of any municipality in the state.
To address this issue, a coalition of Chapel Hill residents, cycling advocates, a consulting firm and various branches of government created the Chapel Hill Bike Plan, a comprehensive investigation of existing infrastructure and attitude problems that includes steps for implementation and design approach. The plan was approved by the town council in June.
Its goals include improving safety for cyclists, fostering a positive cycling culture in the town, creating a network of cycling facilities that coordinate with greenways and increase bike use.
The plan’s strength lies in its commitment to action. Included are vital funding and resource strategies, including the recommendation to pursue state and federal funding sources for plan projects. However, the current North Carolina Department of Transportation budget is hugely skewed toward automobiles and largely leaves bikes and other transportation forms, such as rail and public transit, to be marginalized. Of the $4.3 billion budget, less than 10 percent was spent on transportation other than cars.
North Carolina and the town risk seeming out of touch with the times if they cannot fund these projects. According to the League of American Cyclists, bike miles traveled have more than doubled between 2001 and 2009 in the U.S. As community advocates have shown, a serious contingent of the town’s cyclists want better infrastructure.
Future planning should be sure to actually put cyclists in a safer place on the road, rather than merely making them feel like they’re protected. For example, while the shared lane markings for cyclists on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard are a sign that the town is aware that cyclists’ exist, it is not physically slowing the cars zipping by at 35 mph, nor is it physically separating two modes that cannot, as has been proven by the 79 crashes in town between 2008 and 2012, always safely share a road.
