What to do with Central Parkway bikeway surfaces again

Cincinnati's first protected bike lanes on Central Parkway were controversial when first proposed.  Now, after 18 months, the city is being lobbied to both kill them and expand them.

Neighborhood councils are chiming in, in various levels of support, after a citizen suggested doing away with the halfway completed project. The city's Transportation and Engineering department is working to complete a report related to the concerns about the configuration being confusing and dangerous.

"Let's face it," Robert Schwartz wrote to members of Council in late December, "that project just turned out to be embarrassingly awful."

"Yet another attack" on the bikeway, Vice Mayor David Mann, chair of Council's Neighborhoods Committee, said during the committee's Monday meeting when he introduced letters from the neighborhoods of Over-the-Rhine and Clifton.

Central Parkway bike path passes. This time it is real

"Central Parkway is a perfect street for a protected bike lane because it links so many neighborhoods with a high percentage of people who ride bikes," a letter from Over-the-Rhine Community Council President Ryan Messer reads.

The city should finish the project, which entails extending the path to Ludlow Avenue, a gateway to the neighborhoods of Clifton and Northside, Messer wrote.

The bikeway plan – estimated to cost around $500,000 – was approved by five of the nine members of Council in April 2014. The first section was completed in July 2014. There is currently no funding for the second phase to Ludlow.

The section completed on Central Parkway works like this: there is a bike lane on the outside lane, separated from automobile traffic by white poles. The middle lane acts as a parking lane and there is a continuous lane of traffic on the inside lane.

The completed section runs from the northern edge of Downtown to Marshall Avenue in University Heights, down the hill from the University of Cincinnati.

Clifton is being more tepid about the requested changes, saying it "does not necessary connote acceptance of the current traffic issues raised," according to a letter from Clifton Town Meeting President Eric Urbas.

Urbas urged the city to address and resolve the problems, asking that any changes maintain "a safe, protective bicycling infrastructure route on Central Parkway and not negatively impact the efficient travel of cyclists."

Schwartz's letter was submitted by Councilman Christopher Smitherman, who requested a report addressing the letter's laundry list of concerns. The report is due Feb. 16 from the city's Transporation and Engineering department.

In his letter, Schwartz noted numerous ways in which the configuration is confusing and more dangerous than the road without the protected lane.

"None of this really protects any biker and is an ordeal to a motorist," wrote Schwartz, who said no one seems to use the bike lanes anyway.

On the contrary, Vice Mayor Mann said he commutes every day on Central Parkway and often sees cyclists using the bike lanes.

"I've used it, too," Mann said of the bike lanes.

Given the death last week of Michael Prater, Mann said removal of the only protected lanes in the city "seems weird to me."

His committee held the letters for later discussion.

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