[Electronic-lan] bicyclist injured in collision with auto on 9th

[Michael Almon]

You may not have seen this buried in the back pages of the LJW. Last 
Tuesday, 5 June, a 63 year old man bicycling legally on 9th St. collided 
with a motor vehicle that illegally failed to yield right of way at 
Indiana St.  He was taken to Stormont-Vail Hospital in critical 
condition.  The police collision report is attached (3 docs).  The 
motorist was cited with failure to yield - a stop sign violation.

The cyclist was traveling east and approaching Indiana St. in the right 
hand motor vehicle lane of 9th St. (there's no bicycle lane from 
Illinois St. to Indiana St. because - guess what? - motor vehicles are 
given primacy at the Mississippi intersection approaches).  What 
"protects" bicyclists in that two-block stretch? Sharrows - right.

The motorist was heading north on Indiana St. and had stopped at 9th 
St., waiting for a break in traffic.  Imagine it now - she was glancing 
back and forth watching autos passing in all four motor vehicle lanes, 
saw a break and gunned it across, not trying to, or not able to see a 
small two-wheeled vehicle on the opposite side of the street and a good 
way west of her, approaching probably at 20-25 mph.  Her automobile 
reaches the south side of 9th St. an instant before the cyclist reaches 
Indiana St., who collides with the side of her car.  Consider, if she 
had been one second slower, or he one second faster, he would have been 
_in front_ of her car and run down.

The 9th St. bicycle lanes are completely inadequate - too narrow, 
unprotected, littered with debris, and with sections missing from 
Kentucky into downtown, from Tennessee to Ohio, from Indiana to 
Illinois, and from Avalon up to Iowa and beyond.  9th St. is the 
location of the highest bicycle-motor vehicle collision rate in 
Lawrence.  These lanes were one of the first examples by the City in 
2009 to retrofit bicycle lane striping during a mill-and-overlay 
project.  Public Works had no intention to do them until the 
Sustainability Action Network forced the issue with petitions and 
testimony.  So they were implemented at the bare minimum, and 
piecemeal.  It's time to revisit their design with all the knowledge we 
have accumulated about safe bikeways in the past nine years, such as the 
NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide 
<https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/>.

Next Tuesday the City Commission will review the draft City Mgr's 
recommended 2019 budget_12June18 
<https://assets.lawrenceks.org/assets/agendas/cc/2018/06-12-18/fws_cm_recommended_budget_memo.html>.  
Please come and advocate for safe bikeways.  All that's included is a 
bicycle boulevard on 21st St. and the ill-advised bicycle boulevard on 
Lawrence Ave.  The downtown link of the Lawrence Loop is scheduled for 
2021.  The Bicycle Track along Naismith Dr. from 19th to 23rd is in the 
"unfunded" category.

Michael Almon
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/electronic-lan/attachments/20180609/ba7beeff/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: bicycle collision_9th & Indiana_accident report_5June18.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 238250 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/electronic-lan/attachments/20180609/ba7beeff/attachment-0003.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: bicycle collision_9th & Indiana_police narrative 1_5June18.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 47943 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/electronic-lan/attachments/20180609/ba7beeff/attachment-0004.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: bicycle collision_9th & Indiana_police narrative 2_5June18.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 49693 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/electronic-lan/attachments/20180609/ba7beeff/attachment-0005.pdf>