Funny thing happened to me while I was cycling west on SW 8th Avenue on my way to a movie.
Really, everything was fine until I got to the 8th Ave. autoAmerican Demarcation Line (DL).
Said DL being NW 34th St.
I call it the DL because east of 34th, 8th Avenue is, by design, a traffic calmed corridor.
West of 34th it is a traffic funnel, seemingly designed to enable suburban commuters to get to work and back home again as quickly as possible.
East of 34th 8th has bike lanes. West of 34th? Nada.
This is presumably because, in order to have bike lanes, the existing traffic lanes would have to be narrowed or (gasp!) one of them eliminated (as was done east of the DL).
Either of which public safety improvement would terribly inconvenience impatient suburban commuters.
In the absence of bike lanes, and with four lanes of traffic barreling along at 40 mph (yeah, let’s pretend that everybody scrupulously observes the posted speed limit) I naturally opted to ride on the sidewalk.
At least until I came upon two trucks whose crew had decided to use the sidewalk as a parking lot.
The trucks were Texas registered vehicles that apparently were here to help install new fiber optic lines. Presumably they don’t have sidewalks in Texas.
The two trucks were separated by a side street that, one might think, would provide more appropriate parking than a sidewalk that is literallly the only safe refuge for pedestrians and cyclists on a car-centric corridor.
Oh, did I mention that one of the sidewalk-parked trucks had a sleeping worker at the wheel? It’s a tiresome job I suppose.
But I digress.
Finding two corporate-owned trucks occupying a public sidewalk pissed me off, no question.
But, really, those four-wheeled public nuisances were merely symbolic of a culture that, at almost every juncture, prioritizes people inside cars over people outside of them.
Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why this stretch of 8th Avenue has a DL in the first place.
From NW 22nd St to 34th, 8th Avenue consists of three traffic lanes (two headed east, one going west) with bike lanes and a 35 mph posted limit.
After 34th, 8th is four lanes of traffic and 40 mph all the way west to Newberry Road. No bike lanes allowed.
Gentlemen, rev your engines…
Oddly, east of the DL, 8th Avenue largely cuts through open, public lands, with little street-side activity until you get to Westside Park.
West of 34th, however, the four-lane traffic corridor cuts through a more congested area containing an elementary school, two houses of worship and many homes.
I dunno, but if it was me, I’d think the case for traffic calming the denser stretch of 8th west of the DL is just as compelling, if not more so, than east of it.
Of course, I’m not an elected official or a traffic engineer, so what do I know?
Hey, remember last January when the Gainesville City and Alachua County commissions jointly declared a “traffic violence crisis”? Haven’t heard much about that crisis lately, have we?
Apparently It’s been superseded by our gun violence crisis.
One crisis at a time, people.
FreeGNV 