I don't want to dilute Grant's important discussion of City of Madison snow removal for on-street bike routes, but I have a couple of related thoughts that are itching to get out. So I've forked the subject line.
I commute on the Rimrock Road bridge over the beltline. It has marked bike lanes and pedestrian sidewalk on only one side. In the winter I am more likely to be combining bus and walking, not bicycling. Rimrock/Beltline is a problematic intersection area with multiple governmental jurisdictions. It is in the Town of Madison. It is a Federal highway interchange, managed by the State. Rimrock is actually Dane County highway MM. There are many, many issues at the Rimrock/Beltline interchange that need to be addressed, not so sure snow removal would be my priority if I had to pick which of the problems could be fixed... But: I am guessing it is the County snow removal (perhaps Town?) which leaves the bike lanes piled full of snow. This is similar to what Grant is observing within the City. But not only is the bike lane impassible, but so too is the pedestrian sidewalk. The apartments, businesses and the school do a reasonably good job of clearing their Rimrock parallel sidewalks (kudos to them, I should contact each and thank them) but the snow plows operate at high speed and spray snow into not only the bike lane but the sidewalk as well. It then is a much larger job to remove heavy ice chunks from the sidewalk. As to the bridge and the interchange, I am not sure which jurisdiction removes snow from the bridge and beltline ramps (thinking it is State). That jurisdiction routinely fills the bridge sidewalk with snowplow spill mounded 3' high and often takes several days to clear. For those days there is no option but to bicycle or WALK in the road lanes. Although County MM is 35mph, traffic often is moving much faster and operating in "beltline mode", going very fast and not looking for pedestrians or bicycles. Even if I could figure out which jurisdiction to voice my concern to, I am confident these concerns will fall on deaf ears. The Beltline and County MM are for motor vehicles' exclusive use, after all (sarcasm). George ____________________________________________________________________________ ____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Grant Foster Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2013 7:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Bikies] Fwd: bike paths Hi all, After submitting a Report-a-problem through the city's website, I followed up with an email to Chris Kelley looking to learn more about what it will take to improve our on-street bike path maintenance. I received the response below from George Dreckmann (Streets). I've included it here (along with my response) to provide some context. My read is that there is no service-level expectation for on-street bike lane winter maintenance. I've sent George a follow-up email expressing my concerns with this and asking to receive clarification about the City's position on this issue. I included the City Council and Mayor's office as it seems that this may be an issue that goes beyond the Streets division. I'm confident that this is an issue that is important to all Madison-area winter cyclists and wanted to encourage any of you with concerns to reach out to the City Council as well. If the City truly intends to abandon these bike facilities during winter, I think they need to do so explicitly and even consider posting warnings so that unwitting road-users don't attempt to use them. It would also be helpful for MV operators to understand why cyclists are taking the lane on these roadways. Grant _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
