Getting from downtown to Dunbar Spring got a little bit easier recently
I have had a chance to use the new bike-access or bike-crossing thing that the city installed recently at that awful intersection at Church and Toole. It used to be that if you were trying to get from downtown to, say, BICAS, you had to either ride dangerously through tunnels or on 6th Street — possibly the worst street in Tucson for bicycling — or alternatively commit a handful of traffic violations to get around this barrier.
Now the barrier is opened up for cyclists and I think it’s great! Sometimes just this intersection alone was enough to keep me from going to BICAS.
And I love seeing those “Bicyclists Exempt” signs around town. A message to all that sometimes our traffic practices simply don’t work for bicyclists.
–Erik Ryberg
January 24th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
dang! that would have my made my life in tucson SO much easier.
January 25th, 2010 at 7:32 am
[...] you haven’t already, take a look at Tucson Bike Lawyer’s photo of the new bike crossing at the intersection of Church and [...]
January 28th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
The “Bicyclists Exempt” signs create some clunky double-negatives. As in, a main sign declaring “Buses and Right Turns Only” followed by smaller sign below saying, “Bicyclists Exempt.”
I suppose saying “Buses, Bicycles and Right Turns Only” would be too simple.
January 30th, 2010 at 8:38 am
I think they should move the yield sign on westbound Franklin (at the merge with Church) back to encompass the new bike crossing and/or paint a blue lane from ninth to the new bike crossing.
January 30th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
The intersection is actually Church and Franklin and 9th. Toole ends at Stone. I rode right by there yesterday and didn’t even notice it. Now that I know about it maybe I’ll find a use for it.
February 1st, 2010 at 7:13 am
When I first saw this article, I was skeptical. I thought that it would be a waste of money and wouldn’t help with my commute at all. But the first time I left the house I ended up at that intersection and used this. It was suprisingly useful. I have been cutting through the parking lot for years.
That intersection has pissed me off for years. It is needlessly complicated and not helpful for people in cars or bikes, or even pedestrians who want to come from Dunbar Spring to downtown (or vice versa).
February 1st, 2010 at 11:00 am
I think Jeff’s comment illustrates the
long-standing perspective that the BAC
constantly battles and how pervasive
that perspective’s effect is even on
cyclists.
The cost of the project was practically
nothing. The process took almost two
years. That little ‘pork chop’ should
have been constructed that way initially.
A lot of pissed-offness could have been
averted. And, OK, bikes weren’t as many
back then, but jumping that perspective
barrier seems harder than it should be.
This simple amenity did not require all
of the bluster of the RTA to be accomplished.