Bike lane improvements
Concrete barriers are being added to the lanes on the Locust Street and North Avenue bridges.
New protected bike lanes on two Milwaukee east side bridges are getting more protection.
Concrete barriers have been placed at the approaches to the bike lanes on the Locust Street and North Avenue bridges.
But a local bikers group says more should be done to make the lanes safer.
Known as Jersey walls, the roughly 3foot-high barriers are on short portions of the bike lanes on both sides of the bridges over the Milwaukee River.
The city Department of Public Works added the barriers this week to make the bike lanes safer, said Ald. Nik Kovac, whose district includes the east side.
“We’re hoping that works,” Kovac said Thursday.
The bike lanes were added last summer.
The Department of Public Works repainted traffic lanes to create one lane in each direction on Locust Street, between North Humboldt Boulevard and North Oakland Avenue, and North Avenue, between North Bremen Street and North Cambridge Avenue.
Previously, those stretches of roads include two lanes in each direction on the bridges and their approaches. The reconfigured lanes lined up better with connected parts of Locust Street and North Avenue, which have one lane in each direction.
The bridge bike lanes first were protected by posts to keep cars from using them.
Those flexible posts were cost-effective and and could be quickly installed, said Brian DeNeve, the department’s marketing and communications officer.
But they couldn’t be bolted to the bridge deck. The department instead “used an adhesive which makes them easier to detach,” he said.
Most of those plastic posts were knocked down — presumably by drivers, Kovac said.
So, the city then installed orange plastic barrels.
Much of the first batch of barrels disappeared, Kovac said.
The second batch has shown more staying power, he said, but city officials decided the concrete barriers would be a good addition.
“The concrete barriers installed this week are more durable, harder to move, and will provide more reliable protection for people biking on these bridges,” DeNeve said in a statement.
The Jersey walls and orange barrels may lack in aesthetics compared to the initial series of “less conspicuous” white posts, Kovac said.
But keeping the bike lanes safe is a higher priority, he said.
And, so far, the bike lanes have reduced speeding and traffic accidents on the bridges, Kovac and DeNeve said.
The concrete barriers “are a step in the right direction,” said Caressa Givens, an advocacy coordinator at the Wisconsin Bike Fed.
But, she said, keeping the orange barrels isn’t a long-term solution because drivers can still hit them.
The flexible white posts might work better if the city bolts them to the street surfaces by drilling into the bridge decks, Givens said.
She said Milwaukee officials have been reluctant to do that, citing costs and possible damage to the bridges. But, Givens said, it’s a common practice in Toronto and other Canadian cities.
Milwaukee has been adding bike lanes.
Those include lanes on downtown’s Kilbourn Avenue that are protected from traffic by car parking lanes — although some drivers have continued to mistakenly park in the curb lanes now reserved for bikes.
The new bike lanes are part of a national movement known as Complete Streets.
Supporters say it makes life easier for bikers, walkers and mass transit riders — while boosting commercial development.
Milwaukee’s Complete Streets policy calls for Department of Public Works engineers to consider ways to make streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians when they are repaved or rebuilt.
Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.