The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

I haven't seen any posts on this yet, but I drove down 3rd between Lewis and Utica this afternoon and see that it now has bike lanes painted on it.  It surprised me, in a good way...

Plenty wide enough, it still doesn't inspire confidence with distracted Tulsa drivers though.

I've been down 3rd dozens of times before the bike lanes were added with no issues. The bike lanes will even add to that. So while I still don't trust driver's, no one ever should. I dare say a bicycle in that set aside lane is probably safer than a motorcycle with traffic... motorcycles following the same golden rule:  assume every driver wants to kill you.

Will this eventually be extended all the way into downtown? 

I believe so.. and it should also eventually connect with the existing 4th (?) street bike lane going east. 

Hopefully!

This needs to happen. 4th between Yale and Memorial is the best road in town.

Does anybody know if these will be added to 6th Street as well? Would be awesome for access to Cirque, The Phoenix, Papa Ganouj, etc.

The Tulsa pedestrian and bicycle master plan calls for dual bike lanes on 6th from Houston through downtown to Delaware/TU. 

...and this is one problem associated with bike lanes, a mistaken dependency that insists some destinations are inaccessible without them.

Yeah, but,  I think that's been discussed on here before.   While I ride on Tulsa streets (bike lanes or not) all the time, and am comfortable with it, there are a lot of people that don't want to ride directly on city streets without bike lanes.  Adding them has virtually no negatives, and immediately increases bike traffic on those streets.

Yep, you totally don't need bike lanes on many streets, especially downtown, because the roads are so ridiculously oversized.

But

a) bike lanes are nice and make a statement that bikers are valued.  Pissed off drivers won't honk at you if you're in the bike lane
b) they narrow driving lanes causing drivers to slow down
c) bike lanes are absolutely needed on our arterial streets.  I would love to ride my bike down Peoria because its the fastest way to get from A to B most of the time, but when I do I feel like I'm one angry or drunk driver away from death.  We're a city where just about everything is located on arterial streets but it is unsafe to ride on arterial streets, especially in south Tulsa.  I've tried to ride down 71st several times because it was the most direct way to work and I could feel my life insurance premiums skyrocketing. 

And I would like to fly my 100 mph Cessna into Chicago O'Hare airport.   I have the ratings and I believe it would be legal but expensive.

71st St. is a highway, not a street.  So is, for that matter, Harvard, Yale, 41st Street, Riverside, etc.  A highway is a long, straight road with high speed limits, wide lanes, and designed to have little interruption to rapid traffic flow.  They are designed to signal to drivers that they can go "full speed ahead" and not worry about the consequences of 4,000 pounds of steel impacting anything important.

Bikes don't belong on highways. I believe a bike has the right to be on a non-divided highway, but please don't do it. 

Also, 21st Street between Pittsburgh and Louisville is the worst stretch of "bike route/share the road" I have ever seen. 

Thing is, I worked at 71st and Yale and lived downtown.  I wanted to bike to work to stave off fatness from all the Brady District beers. 

I spent a lot of time on Google Maps and doing practice bike rides and there is actually no way to get to 71st & Yale on side streets.  All of the residential roads down there loop around, curve, make cul de sacs, and don't connect to each other.  The ONLY way to get to 71st & Yale was on the arterial streets.  It's not like midtown where you can skip the traffic on 21st by riding on 19th. 

Just to illustrate “road diets” are not all they are cracked up to be and don’t necessarily equate to a safer environment:

Last week we were finishing up dinner at Smoke. on Cherry St. when there was a loud crash from out front.  I got up went to the front door and noticed a Mini-Cooper which had been parallel parked when we arrived was now angle parked and there was commotion in the middle of the street as people drained out of other establishments to investigate the noise.  There was a Subaru sedan flipped up on the driver’s side in the middle of the road.

It was pretty easy to figure out what had happened:  The driver of the Subaru hit the Cooper in the left rear and launched itself up onto it’s left side.  My daughter who was facing the window saw the car go up in the air.  One of the waitresses said parked cars getting hit on Cherry St. happens more than one would think.

Since the car flipped, it’s a safe bet this guy was ignoring the 25 MPH speed limit which this particular road diet was supposed to help enforce.  My initial thought was this guy had to be drunk as he sat dazed in his car after it was pushed upright by bystanders, though 10 minutes later he was standing by himself on the curb after the ambulance had left and there were multiple cops on the scene.  I’m assuming he must have passed a field sobriety test or he would have been in the back of a patrol car by that time.  My guess is going too fast and probably distracted by his phone or something else in his car if he wasn’t drunk.

Had someone been crossing the street at that time, this could have had a tragic outcome.

We can do all we think will make a road safer whether it’s artificially narrowing it with on street parking or painting bike lanes.  There is still always that one outlier, that one f#ckwit who simply doesn’t care about the well-being of others on the road.  Paint all the bike lanes you want, I personally believe they create a false sense of security.  Riders still need to be overly vigilant with their surroundings to keep from getting clobbered by cars turning right over the bike lane or cars pulling out from a stop sign.

JMO, Cherry St. from Utica to Peoria is much safer for sidewalk traffic with the barrier of parked cars but it has to be one of the more dangerous places to ride a bike now with angled parking on one side and parallel on the other.

YMMV.

/rant

You're right. It is damn hard to get to 71st and Yale on side streets. I'd probably take Riverside Trail to the Share the Road bike Route at 53rd, which leads to the Route on Pittsburgh, which gets you within 2 blocks of 71st and Yale.  Depending on where at 71st you need to be, it changes from there. In the alternative, you can go the long way and take Riverside Trail to the Creek Turnpike Trail and follow the Share the Road routes from there (~4 miles longer).

I've found 71st and Memorial to be basically impossible to get to without riding on a sidewalk not designed for bicycle traffic.  So I agree, huge gaps and massive inconveniences in many parts of South Tulsa.

Road diets do not make the roads "safe" for pedestrians of bikes, they make them "safer."  No one should ever think riding, walking, standing, playing, or sitting within feet of a 4000 pound vehicle is "safe." One moron can always kill you.

But you are correct - if Cherry Street was 4 lanes and there was no parked along the side instead - the idiot very likely would have sped into someone walking on the sidewalk, sitting at a restaurant, or through a plate glass window and into your lap at dinner.

Also agree, it is difficult to bike down Cherry Street with it being so busy.  Hard to even cross it.  Unfortunately, the design of both Cherry Street and Brookside leave both utilized as thoroughfares as well as entertainment areas. Look at Bourbon or Beale streets...  cars are subordinate to traffic.  Harder to do that in Tulsa.

There was a public meeting to kickoff plans for an improved streetscape on 15th between Peoria and Utica on November 21.  Did anyone make it or are there concept plans available online?  I agree anywhere where there is angled parking there shouldn't be bike lanes.  Maybe you just don't have them on 15th if they keep the angled parking or you do parallel both sides and add them.

EDIT: just saw DowntownDan's post about this on the other thread.

Would changing the head-in angled to back-in angled be better for bikes, in your opinion?  That's what the designers proposed doing at the public meeting.

The reason given for not switching the angled parking to parallel was that on-street parking spaces would be lost.  Per Google Maps, it's about 46 feet from curb to curb.  How about this compromise:  8 ft parallel parking along north curb + 10 ft westbound lane + 10 ft eastbound lane + 8 ft parallel parking + 4 ft buffer zone (to separate bikes from car doors swinging open + 6 ft dedicated two-way bike lane along south curb? 

To me, it seems better to have the curbside parking (either back-in angled or parallel) than a dedicated bike lane, but I walk and drive more often than I ride a bike along Cherry Street.

Back in angled on a two way street would be a safer proposition for cyclists as a driver could see a cyclist without craning their neck too hard as they pull out.  Cyclists still have to be bright enough to anticipate sudden pull outs from people preoccupied with their phone, dining companion, or chain saw.

That is why I have mentioned before - close Cherry street to car traffic.  From Peoria to at least Utica.  Make a Fremont Street (Las Vegas) type area out of it.  Covered.  That would be a great place for a really cool zip line installation!!

Pedestrian Mall.

That could be neat to do eventually if the area was filled in a little better. It would kill it now though. Tulsa's life blood is still the auto and doesn't look like that will change any time soon, even in the urban districts and downtown. I hope we can be the type of city that can support such a district soon. Even Ausin with their "6th Street", it is only closed off for just pedestrians on just evenings of weekends.

I couldn't care less about the casino's, but Fremont street covering is the kind of thing Tulsa should have.   And that would be a great place to have it!!  It would create it's own new ambience for the area.  Cherry Street has reached a critical mass that will continue with traffic being the most likely thing to damage it's prospects going forward - when people get too frustrated trying to drive through there, they will stop coming.  I get irritated every time we drive there and it has been several months since we went to the place...and I know I am not the only one - I have talked to others who feel and react the same.

Parking might be a little bit of an issue, since we never think ahead on this type of thing, but there can't be more than about 200 +/- of those angled parking spaces on 15th between Peoria and Utica, with stupid amounts/types of traffic, losing that little bit of road ain't no big deal.  And the cover could start out small - just from Peoria to St. Louis or Trenton.  

14th street can handle all the eastbound traffic and 13th Place the westbound with little trouble.  

There are 14 full blocks there that could slowly transform to a combination of walking/walkable, trolley/small rail, retail, residential, arts community, Bohemian type re-gentrified area.  Close off ALL the streets in those blocks to auto traffic.  Slowly, as properties can be acquired, remove a band of some of the houses/buildings - creating a periphery on the outside edge for parking/truck traffic, etc. - maybe 100 feet +/-, along north side (14th st) and south side (16th st).   Could end up with something special and different from what other cities do - our own 'thing' that doesn't just try to copy every other city in the country that has already done their own thing.

Cherry Street morphs into Cherry District.   Cherryville??

More... 14th street and Utica has a big open field that could be used for traffic to the area if there was a decent trolley system.  Where a big house was on Utica that American Theater Company used to rent as a kind of 'headquarters' - that was the pinnacle of the use for that property for the last 40 years!!  It has been totally wasted ever since they moved out.

There are other pockets of parking throughout those blocks.  Don't mess with the schools or any of the residential that exists - just get new properties as opportunities arise.

I'm still fantasizing about putting a hotel there.

Lets start small - make it easier and even encourage areas to close streets for events.  Cherry Street closes for the farmers market - lets close it for St. Patrick's day, new years, etc.  Same with Brady Street for a couple of blocks on First Friday.  Same with Brookside for days where crowds should be expected - no more than a few blocks closed. 11th Street in front of TU before and immediately after football games (they used to do that, but stopped ~5 years ago).

I'm not sure what the hindrance is or could be under the current system?
https://www.cityoftulsa.org/our-city/special-events.aspx

I like the idea of having a big covered area like Fremont Street. I don't like casinos but that street has an interesting festive vibe and there's quite a lot of new interesting local places that have opened there. It would be ambitious to do something like that in Tulsa but could be neat if done well.

I wish they could do something like that in the big empty grass lot south of Inner Circle across from Cain's and maybe in the warehouse west of Inner Circle. Would be neat to create a big indoor/outdoor mini-mall where vendors can setup a food truck or a little shop similar to Grand Central Market in LA or like the OKC Farmers Public Market http://okcfarmersmarket.com/ (http://okcfarmersmarket.com/) which has shops and hosts different shoping/flea-market events along with Farmers Markets. Maybe Cherry St would be the ideal place for that.

I don't think getting through Cherry St is difficult by car though. It is 25mph speed limit (so always slower than other streets) and I've never been stuck or delayed in traffic there. I think parking is some of the easiest of any urban district I've ever been to. I have recently been by car to urban districts/downtown in LA, Dallas, Taos, Santa Fe, ABQ, NYC, SF, San Antonio, Austin, Philly, Miami, Memphis, New Orleans and Vegas where parking ranged from tough to nearly impossible. Brookside, Cherry St and downtown Tulsa are so easy in comparison.

From what I've read and heard, Cherry St used to be a lot more unique than it is now. Used to be full of cottages turned to shops and almost all local places. Good it has reemerged with lots of local places and more density but definitely not a bunch of quaint cottages anymore.

BHAG's for government!!

Big Hairy Audacious Goals!

We need this one!  I bet it would cost a lot less than some of the other things we do around town.  And be a lot more of a contribution to the effort.   Like water in the river....


Collins and Porras. 

TU closed off 11th for OU games, but typically hasn't done that much. Would be nice if they did more, but not enough tailgating to warrant that considering they have the "new U" and all of the surrounding streets along with 8th st closed off for tailgating.

The Central Market in OKC is already interesting and has lots of potential to be great. There's a food truck yard now (Delmar Gardens) along with several local produce markets and local vendors in the main Central Market building. I think this was a historic market area that survived the 70s-00s fairly well and reemerged recently. This would be a perfect place to make into a covered outdoor festival area and is a model worth keeping an eye out and perhaps replicating in Tulsa.

Check out the street views around there:

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x87b210d7b9700813:0x781ccb37033a5853!2m19!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m13!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!3m1!7e115!4s/maps/place/delmar%2Bgardens%2Bokc/@35.4633257,-97.533701,3a,75y,355.8h,90t/data%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*211sKWedpySybj73qw07DgAvmQ*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x0:0x781ccb37033a5853!5sdelmar+gardens+okc+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e2!2sKWedpySybj73qw07DgAvmQ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEjZnQ-_bQAhUGfiYKHUfTDhMQpx8IcTAK (https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x87b210d7b9700813:0x781ccb37033a5853!2m19!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m13!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!3m1!7e115!4s/maps/place/delmar%2Bgardens%2Bokc/@35.4633257,-97.533701,3a,75y,355.8h,90t/data%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*211sKWedpySybj73qw07DgAvmQ*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x0:0x781ccb37033a5853!5sdelmar+gardens+okc+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e2!2sKWedpySybj73qw07DgAvmQ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEjZnQ-_bQAhUGfiYKHUfTDhMQpx8IcTAK)

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.4635427,-97.5326384,3a,44.2y,220.46h,88.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srIfsWXuuSZtZkwklKTogVQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 (https://www.google.com/maps/@35.4635427,-97.5326384,3a,44.2y,220.46h,88.41t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srIfsWXuuSZtZkwklKTogVQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

I've long thought the vacant building at 1st & Elgin would be a great "market hall" concept.  If only the owners would sell or redevelop it..

If you're talking about that red warehouse looking thing, apparently the owner has no interest in selling.  Just sitting on it. 

Yep that's the one.  Such a shame hopefully it can be redeveloped sooner than later.

Back to bike lanes I've always thought Cincinnati and Detroit would be perfect for a single protected bike lane going each way (north on Detroit and south on Cincinnati).  Those are such wide streets already.  Figuring out a way to connect that to the Midland Valley trail would be awesome, maybe adding a protected lane to the Cincinnati bridge?  That would give you the easiest bike access from downtown to the Gathering Place..

Most cyclists I know are comfortable riding in traffic on Cincinnati or Detroit. Personally, I feel safer taking a lane there than I would riding on the right or left margin of the street. The right shoulder on the Cincy bridge functions well as a bike lane now. No mods needed there, JMO.

Peoria is what needs bike lanes.  Or a cycle / walk track on one side.  Anything to make it so you can safely use Tulsa's main streets if you're not in a car.

This was brought up earlier in this thread, re-educating Tulsa drivers and enforcing laws to protect pedestrians and cyclist is more important than bike lanes. Bike lanes and sidewalks work, but until the drivers respect and follow the laws it won't make a difference.

A marked lane with paint would be sufficient.  You could even avoid taking away a parallel parking lane if you put it between the parking lane and the traffic lane.  Something like this:
(http://peopleforbikes.org/page/-/uploads/GLP/Aprapahoe%20rendering.jpg)

It's most likely my severe OCD rather than logic which doesn't like a bike lane to the right.  I don't feel as visible up against the curb to either a car turning right in front of me from the lane to the left of me or from someone pulling out of a parking lot or perpendicular street intersection as a bike will visually tend to blend in with trees or parallel parked cars.  A bike in a car lane actually does tend to stand out better to me when I'm in my car anyhow.

I agree with you Conan in that example.  But if the bike lane is clearly marked/protected with priority signals on the lights for bikes then motorists are more likely to watch out.  

Cincinnati is 6 lanes wide: two lanes for parallel parking and 4 traffic lanes.  If you take the right lane and turn it into a bike way you then move the parallel parking adjacent to it.  So you only go from 4 traffic lanes to 3.  Plastic dividers would be fine at first but eventually the barrier between the parking and bike lane could be enhanced with concrete planters and trees.
(http://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/gallery/cycletrack_3dgallery/onewaycycletrack_street.jpg)

Drivers will always drive like the street is designed.  Law enforcement is not the right tool to change poor driving behavior.  You need to change the way the drivers experience the street to change the way they drive.  For downtown, this means breaking up the highway-like street design. 

The only enforcement actions I have heard of in the metro area are DUI, red light, school zone, and AGAINST cyclists by Sand Springs PD (last year, after cyclists complained of several motorists running them off the road, throwing objects at them from cars and generally trying to murder them - the PD ticketed cyclists who do a rolling stop instead of a full stop at a stop sign on a group ride).  I've never heard of an enforcement against a motorvehicle for violating pedestrian or cyclist right-of-way unless it ends in catastrophe. I hope it does happen.

In any event, enforcement is no replacement for good design.

(I've had very few problems in Tulsa myself, so enforcement might be inefficient use of time for law enforcement.  I am certain enforcement could be beneficial, but harder to focus LEO efforts efficiently)

And Cincinnati is just a long drag race track with traffic lights to be ignored.

The reason I mentioned it is most western states seem to enforce pedestrian encroachment laws like not yielding to pedestrians while they are in the crosswalk, crowding cyclists on the road, cutting across a bike lane between a through lane and a turn lane at an intersection. By the same token they enforce the laws that apply to pedestrians and cyclist as well, the will arrest cyclist for Biking Under/While Intoxicated.