PUBLIC HEARING!! Feb 18: Rehoboth Bike Plan

Rehoboth bike plan shifts into high gear

Public meeting set for Feb. 18

Cape Gazette, February 17

By Ryan Mavity

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Rehoboth Beach citizens are set to get a second look at a citywide master plan to improve walking and cycling in the city.

Consultant Delaware Green­ways will hold a public meeting at 10 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 18, in the city commissioners’ room to present recommendations for improving biking and walking throughout the city.

Key proposals in the plan are two new bridges across Silver Lake, one that would replace the Bayard Avenue bridge with a wider bridge to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the other a 150-foot bridge linking Stockley Street Extended and Sil­ver Lake Park.

In a public workshop in Novem­ber, citizens identified the lack of an east-west bike route other than Rehoboth Avenue as the No. 1 chal­lenge to be addressed by the plan.

To remedy that, the centerpiece of the plan is the concept of “bicy­cle boulevards,' low-speed, low­traffic streets that bicycles and cars will share. Bicycle boulevards, which have been implemented in cities such as Portland, Ore., use existing city streets to give cyclists easy access to various destinations without traveling on roads with heavy vehicle traffic. Bike boule­vards are typically designated by road signs or street markings.

In the case of Rehoboth Beach, the city’s streets and transporta­tion committee was looking for al­ternatives to keep the majority of bicyclists off Rehoboth and Bayard avenues. Project manager Jeff Greene of Delaware Greenways said these two streets were identi­fied as the most heavily traveled and least bike-friendly streets in the city.

Greene said if the plan is imple­mented, Rehoboth would be the first city on the East Coast to have bicycle boulevards.

He said the committee would look at ways to implement bicycle boulevards on a neighborhood-by­neighborhood basis. Among the streets Greene has designated in early drafts of the plan are King Charles Avenue, Lake Drive, Oak Avenue and Scarborough Avenue.

“They’re pretty much the glue that is going to hold our plan to­gether,” Greene said.

He said bike boulevards were fa­vored over more bicycle lanes be­cause there aren’t many streets in Rehoboth where bike lanes could be designated.

The plan calls for several streets to be reconfigured to accommo­date bicycles, including the bridge over the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal leading into town. The plan calls for narrowing the lane going into town and the two lanes going out of town to 12 feet each and putting in a 5-foot bike lane on each side.

Also recommended is a new connection between Country Club Estates and the Schoolvue area, now connected only by a narrow pedestrian bridge, which Greene called the Turtle Bridge.

He said right now, the only rem­edy for bicyclists is to walk their bikes across, but in the long term, the plan recommends building a new, more bike-friendly bridge. The existing bridge would stay, but a second, 150-foot bridge would be built between Stockley Street Ex­tended and Silver Lake Park, link­ing with the planned bike boule­vard on Stockley Street in Country Club Estates.

Greene said the city could buy a predesigned, package structure that could be assembled quickly at a low cost, although Greene could not provide cost estimates.

In November, citizens identified the Bayard Avenue bridge over Sil­ver Lake as a problem area for bi­cyclists and pedestrians. The bridge has 3-foot wide sidewalks on each side, but no designated bike lane. As a remedy, Greene proposed relocating the sidewalks to one side of the bridge, creating a 6-foot sidewalk on one side. Bicy­clists would have to walk their bikes across the bridge, but the wider sidewalk would comply with the Americans with Disabili­ties Act.

Ultimately, he said, a new bicy­cle- and pedestrian-friendly bridge would have to be built.

“There really isn’t another solu­tion. The bridge has got to go for it to be bicycle and pedestrian friendly,” Greene said.

Commissioner reaction

Commissioner Pat Coluzzi said the concepts in the plan, such as bi­cycle boulevards, are a way to make bicycling safer and easier for citizens and visitors.

“People want to be able to be ride their bikes safely,' Coluzzi said. 'There’s people who ride bi­cycles in town, and they don’t know where they can ride safely. And when you see kids riding on Rehoboth Avenue with their par­ents, I think it’s pretty scary.”

Commissioner Mark Hunker said the plan addresses some legit­imate safety concerns for bikers in the city. Mayor Sam Cooper didn’t seem as convinced.

“People come here to get away from a lot of this stuff, the regimen­tation of signage and all that. It’s a problem for three months,” he said. “I don’t think the bicycling is as horrible as some people are making it out in Rehoboth or that we need all these huge changes to make it better.”

Greene said the streets and transportation committee would set priorities for improvements at a future meeting, although city com­missioners will determine what parts of the plan are implemented.

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