Success The town council voted to move forward on option 1 or option 2

[John Rees]

Update:  Thanks to your signatures, and a lot of hard work by the town's transportation planners, the town council voted to proceed with the sidepath , either option 1 or 2.  Yay!  There is more work to be done, and we will keep you updated.  There is some further evaluation by the towns arborist to insure as many trees and as much vegetation can be left during (and after) the construction of the sidepath.

Now that we have gotten that, we'd like to direct your attention to another exciting cyclist development in town, and one that we NEED YOUR HELP to promote.

Downtown Chapel Hill needs our help. As you are likely all aware, NCDOT owns and maintains Franklin Street and will be restriping West Franklin Street (east of Columbia) this summer. NCDOT has offered to change Franklin Street from its current configuration as a four-lane car sewer to a three lane road, and with the extra space the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership (yes, the business community!) has been advocating for bike lanes on the road. It’s an amazing opportunity to build a world-class bicycle facility, but the project needs our support.

Most immediately, the Town has posted details of an upcoming information session on the proposal on its Facebook page. There are quite a few negative comments (as well as some positive comments) . Please take a look and add your thoughts as well.

Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158189907767262&id=29918532261

Some information you can mention:

 - The plan has been studied and evaluated by transportation engineers, and it shows that on West Franklin where the restricting is proposed there is plenty of capacity and that traffic won’t be negatively impacted.

 - One current problem with Franklin Street is that loading trucks often block a lane of traffic, so obviously there’s a concern if there’s no “extra” lane to block. The plan adds loading zones to Franklin Street to address that concern and make traveling along Franklin safer and more predictable not only for bicycles but also for cars.

 - Some folks have mentioned the bike lanes on Rosemary, but they are out of the way and thus don’t serve destinations people want to go to. Another problem with the Rosemary bike lanes is that the road is so narrow there’s no room for parking or loading. If there are bike lanes on Franklin, that’s certainly better for bicyclists, and it opens up the possibility of reallocating space on Rosemary to make it more convenient for drivers an delivery trucks.

If you could post something, it’d be greatly appreciated. There was  information session last Wednesday at Town Hall, and Council discussed it thereafter at its meeting.

Want more information, and are interested in providing more comments? Take a look at the town web page:

https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/Components/News/News/16190/4048

Some rough details on what it might look like:

https://www.townofchapelhill.org/home/showdocument?id=45366

This is an extraordinary opportunity, and one that does not come by often.  We are looking at holding some 'bike in' events downtown, to show the local businesses that people on bikes will come to them by bike if the town makes it easier (and safer) .  Interested?  Please reach out to us. We are looking for advice on how to promote this to both the town as well as local business leaders