So I Went to a Meeting

It all started back in 2014 when the local bicycle advocacy organization pushed a plan that would turn Lakeshore Drive into a 2-way bike path plus a 2-way narrow-lane roadway. For fitness and competitive cyclists, who have called Lakeshore Drive home for over fifty years because it has been the only unobstructed five miles of road in the city on which to train, it looked like a major disaster. We rallied the troops and, thanks mainly to a lack of funding I think, things settled down. Then, in 2021, two things happened without any input from us that made parts of Lakeshore Drive more dangerous and less useful for us, while also revealing a shocking lack of understanding about how cyclists like us ride. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East (SLFPAE), which really should not have any authority at all over Lakeshore Drive, but does by claiming they need it for flood control transportation, together with, I have to assume, the Regional Planning Commission, put up a big sign showing how they were going to re-make Lakeshore Drive from Canal Blvd. around to Lake Marina Drive. That was the first we heard of it, and by then the contracts has been signed and the work was ready to start in about two weeks. Fait Accompli. I contacted them about it and was told that it was all about pedestrian safety around the restaurants and the curve because of speeding cars. About the same time, the City, which strangely has control of the Elysian Fields traffic circle because it is on the city side of the levee, with some participation from SLFPAE, installed the crazy bike path that hugs the gutter there, reducing the 2 lanes down to one, and putting in a million random flex posts and road striping pretty much where the bike lane should have been if you were intent on putting one there in the first place. That bike lane puts whatever naïve cyclists who use it in a situation where traffic turning out of the circle have to cross the bike lane. It was better, and safer, when cyclists continuing through on Lakeshore Drive could just take the right lane to prevent cars exiting the circle from cutting across their paths. 

So since then we have eliminated any actual training west of Canal, and now have to merge into the left lane at the traffic circle while avoiding the flex posts, aka "death spikes," because there is no way a group of 25 riders going 27 mph could possibly survive the debris-laden bike lane, not to mention the survival of any casual riders or young children who might have been lured into it. Since then, I'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop, since the West End work was called "Phase 1."

Fast-forward to April 17, just 7 days ago, when I was scanning posts on "formally Twitter" that I loosely monitor for work. There, I found a post by City Councilman J.P. Morrell, that consisted of a screenshot of a Public Meeting notice regarding "Phase 2." Fearing the worst, I contacted the SLFPAE to see what the plan was, but was politely told they didn't have anything to share with me until the meeting. So fearing the worst even more, I posted it to the NOBC FB group and elsewhere. Bike Easy didn't know about it (for the record, nobody there now was around back in 2014), the NOBC didn't know about it, pretty much nobody I knew knew about it. It had apparently been announced in the newspaper (remember those?) and their social media page.  Why would anyone expect something about bike lanes on Lakeshore Drive to be on that Facebook page? Anyway, the meeting was yesterday evening at 6:00 pm, at Lakefront Airport. It took me 45 minutes to get there, since it was basically rush hour, and the Seabrook bridge has been closed for over a month, and various other roads I tried were also torn up for road work. Although clearly they didn't want actual input into their plans from actual cyclists, either through ignorance or design, I felt obligated to attend to at least explain what was going to happen when it came to things like group rides, or just individual riders going more than 10 mph. A few of the other people who I often ride with were also there.

The motivation for all of this proposed work appears to be entirely focused on reducing the speed of cars on Lakeshore Drive. The bike lane seems like more of an afterthought to justify eliminating two of the existing traffic lanes. This will, of course, be nice for casual cyclists looking at the scenery, enjoying the 20 mph winds, and navigating around the inevitable runners, baby carriages, dog-walkers, young children, and others who will be attracted to the bike lane, at least the 1.2 miles of it that will result from Phase 2. Riders like us, however, are being basically, perhaps even literally, thrown under the bus in the name of vehicle and pedestrian safety. It's not quite as bad as it sounds, at least for now. 

The main focus of Phase 2 is a continuation of the 2-way bike lane and narrow traffic lanes from Canal, where it currently ends, east to the Orleans Canal, which is essentially Marconi. That is a distance of about 2,000 feet. Past that to the east, it will be back to the normal two lanes in each direction, until you get to Elysian Fields where you hit the existing clusterfrack of ill-advised debris-ridden bike lanes in the gutter and flex post obstacle course where we are forced to merge into the left lane while simultaneously negotiating the traffic circle. 

The other part of Phase 2 involves some as-yet undetermined road striping or flex posts or something between Elysian Fields and Franklin that may have us remaining in the left lane, depending on what they actually do. So from the entrance to the traffic circle where the two lanes go down to one, that's a distance of just under a mile (like 4,000 feet). Part of the goal there is to do something about the lack of visibility for cars coming down the levee from Franklin and turning onto Lakeshore Drive. That might result in some kind of push-out at the intersection. Frankly, the problem there is not so much a lack of visibility. As we all know, it is a problem of not stopping at the stop sign. Beyond that, there is no plan from there to the Armory loop. So all of this will, obviously, make it a little more dangerous for us, and given the piecemeal sections of bike lanes I seriously doubt the number of cyclists using Lakeshore Drive will increase very much. We will be switching from right lane to left lane multiple times over the remaining 8-mile out-and-back. As we all know, the way that some of the bike lanes are laid out in this city defies logic, unless you assume that the designers don't actually ride bikes, in which case it makes perfect sense.

North end of Norman Francis.

So at the meeting I took the opportunity to, as diplomatically as I possibly could, explain to Stacy, the Public Information Officer, Ryan the Engineering Manager, and the two East Bank Levee police officers in attendance why it was unsafe for us, and others, to be riding in the bike lane at 20-30 mph, usually with a group, and that we would therefore be forced to ride in the remaining roadway lane, and that we would undoubtedly be blocking traffic when we do so. I also  took the opportunity to point out that putting in what is a crosswalk as the way for cyclists to cross over from the right lane of the roadway into the 2-way bike lane that basically heads into oncoming traffic was kind of stupid and that no actual cyclist was ever going to do it that way. Apparently they don't think we are capable of moving from the right lane into the left lane to make a left turn like we do everywhere else. This is typical of some of the other stuff coming out of the NORPC, like what they just did where Norman Francis meets Moss, and where Fontainebleau meets Broad, and the unbelievable thing they did on the northbound side of the Broad Street Overpass, not to mention the flex posts that are in the way at the overpass exit onto Poydras, or the corner of Toussaint and Wisner. 

Surprisingly, all of this did not seem to be a cause for concern to the administrators in attendance, I guess for a few reasons. For one, the speed limit in the areas with bike lanes will be lowered to 25 mph. For another, our presence in the traffic lane will turn us into de facto human traffic calming devices. Granted, it will no doubt incur the wrath of motorists stuck behind us who may or may not, intentionally or otherwise, murder us, to which the authorities will then be able to say, "well, we did provide them with a nice little bike lane, so it's their fault." We, as a group, also suggested lowering the speed limit for all of Lakeshore Drive rather than having it go back and forth from 35 to 25 mph, although I should point out that it would mean that we ourselves might sometimes be speeding. 

How this will all play out remains to be seen. I did not hear or see anything about a timeline, but as we know from prior experience at West End, this kind of stuff can be done pretty quickly and I expect that those wheels are already turning.

There were, of course, some motorists in attendance (I'd say there were probably about 25 people on hand for this meeting) who were leery about the single-lane sections and speed limit and various other motorist problems unrelated to the subject of the meeting. Interestingly, there were people there from Blue Crab restaurant who were not too happy about some of the apparently ad hoc road closures the police occasionally set up around West End when things get really busy there. There were also a couple of people from Bike Easy, the Ghost Bike guy, and one or two casual cyclists.

So to summarize:

• There will probably be another 3,000 feet or so of single-lane roadway from West End, increasing the total length to around 1.2 miles.
• There will be a 25 mph speed limit, at least in the sections where there is a bike lane.
• The police are expecting to receive in-car radar to help with the speeding problem.
• The purpose of all of this appears to be to reduce vehicle speeds since apparently they can't otherwise enforce the speed limit and are tired of picking up the pieces and sending people to the hospital and getting sued.
• The competitive and fitness cyclists like us are basically collateral damage.
• I don't actually think this will cause us too much of a problem for our early-morning rides.
• We should be worried about where this is going in the future.