71st street fascinates me because the lanes appear to be at least 15' wide. All you'd have to do is shrink these to 11' and you'd have oodles of room to create protected bike lanes along several miles of this street. I was just thinking about this the other day, when I noticed that you could almost fit two cars side by side in a single lane. (I'm exaggerating, but not much.)
That appears to be looking east at 71st and College Ave. If so, there are three eastbound lanes in about 38 feet of roadway. The three westbound lanes and the center turn lane are about the same width as the eastbound lanes: approximately 12 ft 8 in each.
That's an estimation from Google Earth measurements. But if the seven lanes were all 11 feet wide, then the overall paved roadway, from north curb to south curb, could be almost twelve feet narrower.
The overall ROW width for 71st Street at that location is about 115 feet. The sidewalks could be farther from the curbs. But they aren't. I'm not sure why the City allows our streets to be designed and constructed this way again and again, without regard to pedestrian and bicycle safety.
Using PonderInc's suggestion for 11-foot lanes, the overall roadway could have been 81 feet from curb to curb, instead of 93 feet (presuming seven lanes are needed at a location with an average of 30,000 vehicles per day). By eliminating the center turn lane, the roadway could have been six lanes wide (70 feet from curb to curb). And by keeping the center turn lane, but eliminating a traffic lane in each direction, the roadway could have been five lanes wide (59 feet from curb to curb).
Even as the roadway is now (seven lanes and about 93 feet curb to curb), the sidewalks could be about six feet farther from the curbs. That would have been a better design and more pedestrian friendly. It wouldn't have taken any more land, but there would be a strip of grass to maintain right next to a curb with cars whizzing by at 45 mph (for those abiding by the posted speed limit).
Probably the least expensive way to modify 71st to make it more pedestrian and bike friendly would be to re-stripe the curbside lanes as dedicated bike lanes and installing bollards/barriers and/or planting trees to help protect the bike lanes from the moving traffic lanes. Bus stops and shelters could be allowed at key locations.
... the sidewalks directly abut this superhighway. Ugh! Terrifying just to walk on these sidewalks with cars roaring by your shoulder!
That's the point Barbro [sic] Cox tried to make when she donned some heels and spiked along the edge of Riverside for her neighborhood's Garden Center/YouTube video.
