News Roundup

$200M in Road Repairs to Include Bike Lanes

NEW ORLEANS — Crumbling New Orleans streets could offer cyclists much more room when repaired.

Details are sketchy so far but city and state officials say they plan to install bike lanes as part of the repaving work soon to begin on key city corridors.

The New Orleans area is in line for about $200 million to repave its streets under the federal Submerged Roads Program, said Mark Lambert, Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development spokesman. Road repairs provide the ideal opportunity to add bike lanes along certain city roads.

“It’s really jump-starting a lot of things that were maybe in sort of the policy-setting phase prior to Katrina,” City Public Works Director Robert Mendoza said of money now flowing into the city for recovery-related repairs. “Over the next couple years, you’re probably going to see us go ahead of what the original plans were.”

Bicycle-related infrastructure improvements have been in city development plans for some time.

In 2003, Metro Bicycle Coalition lobbied for bike-friendly measures in the city master transportation plan. The next year, MBC helped convince Mayor C. Ray Nagin to dedicate roughly $4 million of a $260-million capital improvements bond proposal to fund bike-related recommendations. Voters approved the measure but the Katrina-delayed sale of the bonds is expected to move forward this fall, said Liz Davey of MBC.

The citywide transportation master plan enacted in 2004 called for a network of bicycle paths stretching across the city, but those plans have sat untouched.

“What I always tell people is that New Orleans is a bikeable city but it’s not always bicycle friendly,” said Jennifer Ruley, an urban planning specialist with Steps to a Healthier New Orleans, a public health campaign funded by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’ve got relatively flat terrain. We have streets that are relatively low traffic flow. What we need to improve upon is the connectivity and visibility of bicycle facilities,” Ruley said.

Katrina provided an opportunity to put years of planning into motion.

Work on the first set of city streets already identified for repairs under the federal Submerged Roads Program is expected to begin by next year, Lambert said.

There are limitations on city road repairs funded through the federal program. For example, the city can’t add extra lanes, Mendoza said.

“Even if the program doesn’t allow us to put the bike lane in, we can stripe a street to accommodate the bike lane after the project is complete,” Mendoza said.

Adding bike lanes is important to improving the health and safety of residents and will improve the economy, he said.

Mendoza plans to stripe bike lanes on Magazine and Camp streets, which will be repaved. Both are wide enough to accommodate a 4-foot-wide bike path, he said.

Bike racks were installed on city buses in January 2005 though the storm knocked more than 200 Regional Transit Authority buses out of commission. Not all replacements have been refitted with the racks, said RTA spokeswoman Rosalind Blanco Cook.

Bike racks were also installed recently along Canal Street and more will be added throughout downtown, Mendoza said. In a few weeks, the city will hold a groundbreaking for a bike lane along Wisner Boulevard, one of several slated for construction, he said.

Randy Legeai, a competitive cyclist who works for Tulane University, said he has relied on his bike to commute between his Uptown home and downtown office for years.

“It’s much more convenient than driving a car in a lot of cases,” Legeai said. “It’s cheap, it’s environmentally friendly. It’s just a nicer lifestyle. It’s hard to hold your coffee in the morning in winter.”

If all goes according to plan, Legeai could soon have a lot more bicycling company.