Pratt Street Update
Gerald Neily December 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm Story Link
By GERALD NEILY
Here there will be only two lanes left for cars and trucks.
Pratt Street won’t be getting real bike lanes any time soon – the kind actually designed for bikes – but next week the City does intend to start marking the right lane only for buses, bikes and right turns. This is being done in preparation for the premiere of the City’s oft-delayed Charm City Circulator free bus system, which is now scheduled for January 11th according to today’s Sun.
The City will also designate a similar lane on Lombard Street for traffic going in the opposite direction (westbound) when the current resurfacing is completed. Unlike Pratt, there have been no “future” signs on Lombard.
It is interesting that until now, the City managed to avoid giving buses their own lane on Pratt and Lombard for all the years that mass transit was run exclusively by the Maryland Transit Administration. But now that the City government has gone into the mass transit biz, the lanes will happen. The MTA will be allowed to use them, however.
The relatively quick implementation means that the “quirks” (to state it mildly) that characterize Pratt and Lombard Streets in the Inner Harbor will remain. One of Pratt’s four lanes approaching Calvert Street is now a left turn only lane, enforced by a flag court beyond the intersection which ensures that thru traffic stays out of that lane. With the new designation of the right lane for buses and bikes only (there are no right turns from Pratt to Calvert), that will mean that all thru auto and truck traffic will be forced to squeeze into only two lanes out of four lanes. The rest of Pratt Street downtown currently has at least four thru lanes.
Lombard Street has generally narrower lanes than Pratt, and several loop-de-loop curves that make the effective lane widths even less. While negotiating this maze, buses often stray from their own lane. So this will add to the adventure.
Bike riders have widely varying skill levels, ranging from budding Lance Armstrongs all the way down to Benny Hills and even a few Evel Knievels. So the newly designated bus/bike/right turn lanes will actually work for some of them. Bike riding under congested conditions is a matter of improvisation, and there will be congestion. So it will be interesting to see how the cyclists adapt.
When there are no buses around, the bus lane will be great for bikes. But will bikes be content to sit behind stopped buses at the bus stops? Or will the bolder bikers attempt to pass the bus and get into the adjacent mixed traffic lane, as many do now? Another popular ploy for bikes is to ride along the lane line, straddling the space between the vehicles in the two adjacent lanes. Then of course, there is always the sidewalk.
Real bike-only lanes would greatly reduce these temptations, but the best solution would be to create an actual bikeway, such as is partially provided by the bike lanes inside the orange railing next to Pratt and Light Streets.
With the City’s new free bus line now scheduled to begin on Monday, January 11th, perhaps it is fitting that the subsequent Friday four days later is a City workers’ furlough day, for which employees will not be paid due to the City’s ongoing budget crunch. The parking tax fund which is financing the City’s foray into free bus service could have been used to honor the City payroll commitment instead.
The City plans to begin two more Charm City Circulator bus lines in the near future.
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