Work is set to begin Sunday on road maintenance for Cherokee Boulevard, where a plan to have cyclists and vehicles share a traffic lane has some advocates concerned.
The project, at a cost to the city of about $60,000, is an overhaul meant to slow traffic and protect pedestrians and cyclists. The city is taking advantage of the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s scheduled maintenance of Cherokee and Dayton boulevards, officials said. Between the project’s first revision in February and an April press release, it dropped a key safety feature: a dedicated, complete eastbound bike lane.
“I think that there’s a great opportunity for the cars and bicycles to learn how to operate together,” said Jerramy Wood, Chattanooga’s public works administrator. “It’s a relatively short segment of roadway that is actually multimodal, and then it turns back into the individual lanes.”
Now, the eastbound bike lane transitions into a shared vehicle and bike lane from Black Street to Manufacturers Road. The four-lane road will drop to two lanes, except for that short portion, which includes a shared, third multimodal lane, Wood said. A complete, buffered westbound bike lane will be constructed as originally planned.
Residents raise alarm over Cherokee Boulevard bike lane plan
When some residents first learned about the change, they became concerned. Benjamin Fleet, a North Chattanooga resident and bike commuter, said in a phone interview that no driver wants to share a lane with a bicyclist at those speeds.