The community meeting that I attended was Bloomington’s Traffic commission on Wednesday March 22nd. The overarching subject matter (after assuring the minutes from the previous meeting and denoting there is no further outstanding business) was a reviewal of the overall effectiveness of the implementation of the 7th street protected bike lane. Overall the attendance for the meeting seemed pretty low. The camera (I was part of the Zoom audience) was never panned around the room to show the potential audience size, but I do not believe it was to large because there was only one person who opted to comment in the public comments section. Other than that, the council members themselves and roughly 20 people were on Zoom attending the meeting as well. The meeting took place in City Hall, but as mentioned previously there was Zoom capabilities and phone in capabilities to attend the meeting virtually.
After dealing with what I assume is routine activities at the beginning of a meeting, we went right into one Commissioner giving a 2 year post review of the 7th street protected bike lane and the effects it has had. We were walked through a PowerPoint presentation where we were given hard statistical information on things such as bike trips, car trips, average speeds, and crashes along the 7th street section with the bike lane. Although I was not given a copy of this directly to download or something of the sorts, I see in my packet handout that the meetings of the previous meeting were present. This means if I really wanted my own copy I could simply view the next meetings packet. One very interesting thing I learned is that the bike lane actually won number 5 of best new bike lanes in the US 2022. Essentially the information given was all changes in routine traffic that has occurred on 7th street since the implementation of the new lane. Overall, it increased bike trips by 26% (259% in the peak hours of 7-9am and 4-6pm), increased average speed of cars, and increased crashes on the street itself. I thought it was extremely interesting that Bloomington was utilizing sensors of the sort to actually track this data. Overall, I sort of considered Bloomington a “dumber” city that doesn’t use a lot of technology, so it was a nice change of pace to see sensors being utilized. . As a senior myself, I have gotten to see the entire lifecycle of 7th street with perfect timings. My first year, no protected bike lanes with stops at every intersection. Sophomore and Junior year I have seen the beginnings of the bike lane with many issues noticed, and now in my Senior year I am learning the bike lane has issues that are necessary to solve. I have seen countless cars somehow end up in the bike lane, I have seen people stop unnecessarily, and overall general confusion. I am glad the city is looking into this.
I do not have the exact statistics, but I believe that crashes overall were at about a 300% increase compared to before the implementation, with a specific intersection being the main culprit. There was a lot of talk about how it always seems that drivers are confused on this road, and the intended alleviation of traffic was actually having the opposite effect where traffic was sometimes more of a problem than before. They were also thorough in understanding that it takes time for these changes to be learned, so they had this meeting when they had 2 years of data to consider. Even after the adoption period, crashes were still up. What followed the presentation was a motion to re-add the stop sign at this most problematic intersection where a majority of the new crashes was occurring. This motion was given by the man who presented all of this information, which was then allowed for public comment, and then vote by the traffic commission.
The decision to add the stop sign back to the most problematic intersection passed unanimously. This was kind of a no brainer given the statistics presented painting a very clear picture. There was further discussions about what else could be done to improve the overall experience of both the bikers, cars, and pedestrians. There was some audience pushback to the stop sign change as it was considered a bit unfair to non car users as they are now mandated to stop when only cars were really having an issue. There was another idea floated of potentially lowering the speed limit – or actually enforcing the speed limit more. As a matter of fact, the average speed of cars was 2 mph over that of the speed limit of the street itself. One commission member was extremely upset at this fact and was sort of asking the police representative to take further action. The police representative in turn actually proposed a motion to add not just the one stop sign, but all of the ones that were removed with the original addition of the bike lane. The simple matter of fact is that more stop signs will indeed slow down cars. This vote; however, failed with a score of 2 in favor and 6 opposed. I was quite surprised, but I assumed the council members wanted to see the new potential change take effect before they take more invasive action. Personally, I still believe people are still getting used to the changes. Personally, I have a bit of a unique viewpoint on this topic. Not many students stay in Bloomington over the Summer, but this past one I did. I walked on 7th street 6/7 days a week, and probably at least 30 times saw a car driving in the bike lane itself. Additionally I was witness to even more confusion than is regular. My personal theory is that these drivers are most likely students/parents here for new student orientation or campus tours. I personally wonder if these drivers skewed statistics at all, because it was genuinely baffling to watch this Summer.
The meeting was short for time after the votes about the stop signs with only about 5 minutes remaining in the allotted time. The head commissioner then encouraged this discussion be continued at upcoming meetings and then asked if anyone had a motion to adjourn. I found it very interesting that even the motion to adjourn needed to be seconded as well. I understand the needing for seconding a motion, but the for adjourning I did not see the merit.
Although it was promising that Bloomington was using sensors to capture this information, I really would have liked to see more technological methodologies employed. For example something such as a dynamic traffic light at these problem intersections should be something to be considered. Perhaps we could even have something such as blinking yellow lights when traffic was low or something of the sorts. I don’t necessarily have any specific recommendations, but I feel options that are more technologically involved should be given more consideration. It seems that all of the solutions proposed were relatively simplistic and more of a revert than overall change.
Traffic_Commission-20220323-Packet
Leave a Reply