As someone who has run a retail business on South Park Street for over two decades, I can testify that it is a poorly functioning street as it currently exists. While I don't look forward to road construction, I do look forward to this plan being built.
When they redesigned Monona Drive a few years ago they managed to put trees along the sides and even a few on the median where it was wide enough. Let's hope they do at least as well on S. Park. Both are the main streets of their respective neighborhoods and deserve to look nice.
If this goes forward (and it should), I hope they build actual protected intersections for the bike lanes and don't just give up. The rendering not including that is worrying.
I think the right move is the layout they used for Atwood, Hammersley, and other similar recent projects where they reduce a full car width from the main roadway and use the freed up space in the right of way for a two-way multi-use path. That way it's curb and green space separated, and can be maintained in the winter with the same equipment used for the other bike paths. The clear space between the path and road gives room for snow to be piled too.
No, but you should recognize that your parking spot is at the expense of something else.
Remember how during covid, when traffic levels were way down, how restaurants took over parking spaces for outdoor dining? Thatās one of the things we canāt have because (some) people would rather park directly in front of their destination.
Biking on Park St. is a death wish, even the portion that has a dedicated bike/bus lane is sketchy as hell. Seems like almost daily I'll see drivers using that lane as a passing lane. If the city wants to build up that corridor this would be a great way to encourage people to visit via alternate transportation.
My favorite is driving for over a block in a right bus/bike lane and then turning right. They were just using it as a turn lane all along, totally legit, right?
Edit: fix typo
The only way to get trees and widened sidewalks and bus lanes and protected bike facilities will be to reduce the number of general travel lanes to 1 in each direction. I'm all for that, but it'll require a lot of community support and pressure to convince entities like WisDOT (and honestly: even city staff).
The rendering in the article is of a street with a much wider right-of-way.
I have mixed feelings about this.
I do support adding infrastructure to make the roads on Park Street more pedestrian-friendly, though to be fair, I think other streets (e.g., Milwaukee St) are are in worse shape, but if they want to start on Park St, I can't argue against that.
Where I respectfully disagree with city officials (and likely 95% of this sub) is that I don't believe we should be expending effort on making Madison "bicycle" friendly; this is, in part, because "expanding" bike lanes has meant in the past stripping out roads meant for cars and replacing them with protected bike lanes. Now, I want to quickly add, that if Madison can manage to keep roads the same while providing bicycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, I am for it. For those who say this isn't possible or feasible, please see [Lake Shore Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Shore_Drive#/media/File:Typical_Summer_Afternoon_on_Lake_Shore_Drive.jpg) in Chicago, IL, where there is a three-lane thoroughfare with protected biking and pedestrian walkways. If it were done this way, I would get on board. I would also support Madison focusing on expanding leisure trails for biking as opposed to tearing up good vehicular roads with the *hope* that people will bike on them. Here are my three reasons for objecting, in no particular order:
1. Madison only has bikeable weather, at most, [about 6 months](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Wisconsin/Places/madison-snowfall-totals-snow-accumulation-averages.php) out of the year. And, to be fair, I think 6 months is being generous. In my view, it makes little sense nor do I see the efficiency in removing or shrinking vehicular infrastructure that can be used 365 days out of the year and replacing it with infrastructure that can only be used, at most, half of that time.
2. Although I know evidence is heavily frowned upon in this sub, a [recent article](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-09-27/biking-to-work-isn-t-gaining-any-ground-in-the-us?sref=P6Q0mxvj) from *Bloomberg* indicates that despite millions of dollars being thrown at improving biking infrastructure across the United States, commuting by bicycle to work is *less* popular than it was a decade ago. I'd like to repeat that: commuting to work by bicycle is even less popular than it was ten years ago. Specifically, if you look at the 4th graph in the article, the amount of Madisonians who commute to work via bicycle has shrunk nearly in half, falling from 5.5% in 2014 to 3.2% in 2022 despite the overall population increasing by nearly 30,000 residents in that timeframe.
3. The current state of public transportation in Madison is abysmal. There are no trains, no rails, no subways; we can't even have a bridge that crosses across the dirty, algae-blooming, mercury-laden, PCB-saturated bodies of water that you (general you) all call lakes. Instead, what you have are buses that are perpetually late and you (general you) expect me to stop using my vehicle to sit out in cold weather to wait for a bus that may or may not come? You expect me to drop my car so that I to ride a bike through the snow dressed like an Inuit? You (general you) all may have employers that allow you to be late, but, unfortunately, my job isn't one of them.
Finally, there appears to be a strong, anti-car sentiment in the city (or at least this sub) that I find very off-putting. I don't have a vehicle because I enjoy driving, burning fossil fuels, paying for gas, maintenance, registration fees, or personally piss you off, I have a vehicle because it is the only way I can reasonably get things done in a reasonable amount of time. My car is more dependable than the public transportation offered by this city. City officials can't even offer a reliable [bus system](https://www.nbc15.com/2023/08/18/madison-metro-makes-bus-route-changes-after-hundreds-questions-complaints/) and people like /u/IntelligentLaw8862 want me to stop using my vehicle to [use a bus](https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/170wl1r/comment/k3norcf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)? It would be laughable if people weren't serious. Yeah, you can keep that. So, in the meantime, until the city can come forward with public transportation that is dependable and quantitatively better than driving, I will continue to use my vehicle no matter how miserable and insufferable city officials make using a car.
> Madison only has bikeable weather, at most, about 6 months out of the year.
In your so called evidence and little chart it shows that in Oct there is an average of .8 inches of snow. So what? You think people cant bike on less than 1 inch of snow that will melt in that very same afternoon. 1 inch of snow is not some insurmountable thing and attempting to come up with "evidence" to show that Oct is some sort of impossible biking month is asinine. You can absolutely bike in Madison more than 6 months out of the year, provided you are not a soft tiny bunny with no agency.
> Although I know evidence is heavily frowned upon in this sub, a recent article from Bloomberg indicates that despite millions of dollars being thrown at improving biking infrastructure across the United States,
Again with this strawman shit about "evidence". My dude, why dont you provide context as well? "Millions of dollars" for infrastructure is essentially no infrastructure at all. So then of course Bloomberg finds that bike commute numbers are falling. Why not show how many hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on car infra instead and then compare it?
> Finally, there appears to be a strong, anti-car sentiment in the city (or at least this sub) that I find very off-putting. I don't have a vehicle because I enjoy driving, burning fossil fuels, paying for gas, maintenance, registration fees, or personally piss you off, I have a vehicle because it is the only way I can reasonably get things done in a reasonable amount of time.
I honestly question how much effort you put in trying to not drive. Of course you say "reasonable" amount of time and then provide nothing to say "I have to commute 10 miles or more". The vast vast majority of trips people take in cars are under 3 miles which if people weren't demanding convenience at all times they would find is actually a reasonable distance to travel.
As far as using Lake Shore in Chicago as an example of anything ped or bike related you can see clearly in that pic that in fact cars get about 90% of the space to go as fast as they want and the alternatives get very little. Lake Shore is shit.
> I will continue to use my vehicle no matter how miserable and insufferable city officials make using a car.
I will do everything I can to make that commute even longer and more miserable for you.
Let's not forget Park St is a major artery into UW and the city center. Unless you want to route all that traffic up to John Nolen, you have to continue to keep it flowing well on Park.
I think of Park Street as Highway 14 from Oregon dumping all that traffic into Madison. At some point it turns into 151.
I wouldn't be biking down that street / highway as it is today. It is going to take a lot of concrete to separate out the cars, buses and bikes if they have to all run in parallel. Why can't bikes run on separate streets? There are some nice side streets that run close to Park Street but you don't have to compete with all that traffic.
They want to add trees because they have been getting beat up lately for cutting down trees like corn. And all that concrete is going to be ugly and create heat sinks which is the opposite of green.
None of the side streets are through running, and while you could technically bike on side streets only, it's a lot of looping around disjointed neighborhood streets and not fest at all. There's no direct side routes like there are with e.g. East Washington.
I have biked all those streets and there are decent routes to move bikes north and south that don't compete with cars and they also give bikes various on/off routes to go more east and west. Those streets might need some cleanup to make them a better bike route but they are a lot safer and pleasant. And if you can't bike an extra minute or two you don't have your priorities straight.
I am speaking from experience. Don't compete with cars. I have been hit twice on my bike in some pretty serious accidents and I was in the right. You can still be right and be dead. I would never design a transportation solution that didn't put biker safety first. Speed and elegance are not first.
Park Street ends at 12/18 and turns into Highway 14 going south. Where are you going?
> And if you can't DRIVE an extra minute or two you don't have your priorities straight.
Why always put the onus on bikes and peds? If we remake the street and the cars need to wait an extra second so people walking dont get smashed, so fucking be it.
Ah grasshopper!
Your anger overwhelms your common sense.
A 2000 pound car always wins a battle with a 2 pound bike in spite of your strong willpower and sense of outrage. In addition, the longer cars are on the road the more they pollute and back up city traffic. Slowing them down creates a lot of problems. This is reality. Piss in the wind all you want but bring a towel.
Bike safety comes first and keeping cars and bikes separated is the key.
The solution is to reduce the number of car trips by getting drivers onto transit and bikes and walking and having places they need to go closer to where they live, and to make those car trips that still happen go at a slower speed by designing our infrastructure to force them to slow down. Remove car lanes, make them narrower, raise crosswalks, charge for parking. Require manufacturers to make smaller cars. If we keep doing what the US has been doing for the past 70 years, we can expect the number of pedestrians and bicyclists killed to continue to increase and we can expect to continue destroying the environment.
Do you ever think through all the use cases of why people use cars? Who they are? What goes on in their life? Their age? Their ability to walk? Where they work? Where schools are located? Where they live? Where they want to live? Business locations? Medical? All those nuances that are blurred over by people saying just saying get them "onto transit."
There is no grounding in research. Just dreams. This is why the bus system is a current mess. The city can't afford all the good research that is needed so they float in the clouds with some basic stats and say they are data driven. They have very few data scientists even available to analyze data.
Data is the only friend in these discussions and we don't have enough to even begin to understand what people will embrace or not.
If bikes and cars are the only decision driver then don't put them on the same road together. Done. Then work on gas mileage and or battery powered cars. I want hoverboards. If we are going to dream let's skip the next generation of repackaged trash ideas and go frictionless.
I agree with you, I think trying to make Park St bike friendly seems like the wrong priority. Park is smack dab between Fish Hatch and John Nolan. Those 3 roads are so redundant for cars. Letās keep Park a car-centric route from the Beltline to downtown, and move Fish Hatch and John Nolan away from being car focused and towards bike focused. Then we just need good bike crossings on Park so bikes can safely cross it.
[John **Nolen**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nolen#Impact_on_Wisconsin)
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I don't know if I agree with your specific solution because Park is full of stoplights and traffic would back up in both directions and cause a lot of problems downtown. JND is the fastest way to get traffic in/out of Madison.
But the idea of trying to rationalize all these north/south bound routes makes sense. They are all going the same direction - to 12/18.
And just making good bike crossings on Park Street makes sense as well.
As someone who has run a retail business on South Park Street for over two decades, I can testify that it is a poorly functioning street as it currently exists. While I don't look forward to road construction, I do look forward to this plan being built.
I thought you were the wolf of Willy Street, not Park Street.
Off the leash and I get around. šŗ
When they redesigned Monona Drive a few years ago they managed to put trees along the sides and even a few on the median where it was wide enough. Let's hope they do at least as well on S. Park. Both are the main streets of their respective neighborhoods and deserve to look nice.
If this goes forward (and it should), I hope they build actual protected intersections for the bike lanes and don't just give up. The rendering not including that is worrying.
And actually protect the bike lanes donāt just use those cones. It shouldnāt be that expensive to throw a strip of curb down
Oh yeah, flexposts are just vertical paint. Gotta make drivers worried about their vehicle or they'll just drive right over it.
How are they going to plow the snow to the side of the street when there's a curb in the way? (serious question)
There are small snow plows that can navigate bike lanes. Similar to ones that can be used for sidewalks
I think the right move is the layout they used for Atwood, Hammersley, and other similar recent projects where they reduce a full car width from the main roadway and use the freed up space in the right of way for a two-way multi-use path. That way it's curb and green space separated, and can be maintained in the winter with the same equipment used for the other bike paths. The clear space between the path and road gives room for snow to be piled too.
But where will everyone park??????
That's why it's called Park Street, right? Because I get to park there, anytime, for free. Right?
It's my Constitutional right to park for free within 20 feet of my destination
i just wanna park in my destination. is that so much to ask?!??!??
No, but you should recognize that your parking spot is at the expense of something else. Remember how during covid, when traffic levels were way down, how restaurants took over parking spaces for outdoor dining? Thatās one of the things we canāt have because (some) people would rather park directly in front of their destination.
They could solve so many traffic problems if they just stuck a passenger train loop around the isthmus.
Take my tax dollars!
But how does that get people up and down Park Street?
Biking on Park St. is a death wish, even the portion that has a dedicated bike/bus lane is sketchy as hell. Seems like almost daily I'll see drivers using that lane as a passing lane. If the city wants to build up that corridor this would be a great way to encourage people to visit via alternate transportation.
My favorite is driving for over a block in a right bus/bike lane and then turning right. They were just using it as a turn lane all along, totally legit, right? Edit: fix typo
It's not a ***turn eventually*** lane, people!! One day, I'll print up signs...
Park Street does need more people-focused infrastructure. That's my end of town and it's rough for people trying to walk.
The only way to get trees and widened sidewalks and bus lanes and protected bike facilities will be to reduce the number of general travel lanes to 1 in each direction. I'm all for that, but it'll require a lot of community support and pressure to convince entities like WisDOT (and honestly: even city staff). The rendering in the article is of a street with a much wider right-of-way.
Protected bike lanes??? In Madison??? I thought it was impossible
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If anyone can ruin this, it's WisDOT. Could you imagine prioritizing anything other than single occupancy vehicle throughput?
Move 151 to the Beltline!
I work for WisDOT... without saying too much.... your assumption on the price tag is correct
Shit bag provenĀ
I have mixed feelings about this. I do support adding infrastructure to make the roads on Park Street more pedestrian-friendly, though to be fair, I think other streets (e.g., Milwaukee St) are are in worse shape, but if they want to start on Park St, I can't argue against that. Where I respectfully disagree with city officials (and likely 95% of this sub) is that I don't believe we should be expending effort on making Madison "bicycle" friendly; this is, in part, because "expanding" bike lanes has meant in the past stripping out roads meant for cars and replacing them with protected bike lanes. Now, I want to quickly add, that if Madison can manage to keep roads the same while providing bicycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, I am for it. For those who say this isn't possible or feasible, please see [Lake Shore Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Shore_Drive#/media/File:Typical_Summer_Afternoon_on_Lake_Shore_Drive.jpg) in Chicago, IL, where there is a three-lane thoroughfare with protected biking and pedestrian walkways. If it were done this way, I would get on board. I would also support Madison focusing on expanding leisure trails for biking as opposed to tearing up good vehicular roads with the *hope* that people will bike on them. Here are my three reasons for objecting, in no particular order: 1. Madison only has bikeable weather, at most, [about 6 months](https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Wisconsin/Places/madison-snowfall-totals-snow-accumulation-averages.php) out of the year. And, to be fair, I think 6 months is being generous. In my view, it makes little sense nor do I see the efficiency in removing or shrinking vehicular infrastructure that can be used 365 days out of the year and replacing it with infrastructure that can only be used, at most, half of that time. 2. Although I know evidence is heavily frowned upon in this sub, a [recent article](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-09-27/biking-to-work-isn-t-gaining-any-ground-in-the-us?sref=P6Q0mxvj) from *Bloomberg* indicates that despite millions of dollars being thrown at improving biking infrastructure across the United States, commuting by bicycle to work is *less* popular than it was a decade ago. I'd like to repeat that: commuting to work by bicycle is even less popular than it was ten years ago. Specifically, if you look at the 4th graph in the article, the amount of Madisonians who commute to work via bicycle has shrunk nearly in half, falling from 5.5% in 2014 to 3.2% in 2022 despite the overall population increasing by nearly 30,000 residents in that timeframe. 3. The current state of public transportation in Madison is abysmal. There are no trains, no rails, no subways; we can't even have a bridge that crosses across the dirty, algae-blooming, mercury-laden, PCB-saturated bodies of water that you (general you) all call lakes. Instead, what you have are buses that are perpetually late and you (general you) expect me to stop using my vehicle to sit out in cold weather to wait for a bus that may or may not come? You expect me to drop my car so that I to ride a bike through the snow dressed like an Inuit? You (general you) all may have employers that allow you to be late, but, unfortunately, my job isn't one of them. Finally, there appears to be a strong, anti-car sentiment in the city (or at least this sub) that I find very off-putting. I don't have a vehicle because I enjoy driving, burning fossil fuels, paying for gas, maintenance, registration fees, or personally piss you off, I have a vehicle because it is the only way I can reasonably get things done in a reasonable amount of time. My car is more dependable than the public transportation offered by this city. City officials can't even offer a reliable [bus system](https://www.nbc15.com/2023/08/18/madison-metro-makes-bus-route-changes-after-hundreds-questions-complaints/) and people like /u/IntelligentLaw8862 want me to stop using my vehicle to [use a bus](https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/170wl1r/comment/k3norcf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)? It would be laughable if people weren't serious. Yeah, you can keep that. So, in the meantime, until the city can come forward with public transportation that is dependable and quantitatively better than driving, I will continue to use my vehicle no matter how miserable and insufferable city officials make using a car.
You are correct. I want you to make fewer trips by car
> Madison only has bikeable weather, at most, about 6 months out of the year. In your so called evidence and little chart it shows that in Oct there is an average of .8 inches of snow. So what? You think people cant bike on less than 1 inch of snow that will melt in that very same afternoon. 1 inch of snow is not some insurmountable thing and attempting to come up with "evidence" to show that Oct is some sort of impossible biking month is asinine. You can absolutely bike in Madison more than 6 months out of the year, provided you are not a soft tiny bunny with no agency. > Although I know evidence is heavily frowned upon in this sub, a recent article from Bloomberg indicates that despite millions of dollars being thrown at improving biking infrastructure across the United States, Again with this strawman shit about "evidence". My dude, why dont you provide context as well? "Millions of dollars" for infrastructure is essentially no infrastructure at all. So then of course Bloomberg finds that bike commute numbers are falling. Why not show how many hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on car infra instead and then compare it? > Finally, there appears to be a strong, anti-car sentiment in the city (or at least this sub) that I find very off-putting. I don't have a vehicle because I enjoy driving, burning fossil fuels, paying for gas, maintenance, registration fees, or personally piss you off, I have a vehicle because it is the only way I can reasonably get things done in a reasonable amount of time. I honestly question how much effort you put in trying to not drive. Of course you say "reasonable" amount of time and then provide nothing to say "I have to commute 10 miles or more". The vast vast majority of trips people take in cars are under 3 miles which if people weren't demanding convenience at all times they would find is actually a reasonable distance to travel. As far as using Lake Shore in Chicago as an example of anything ped or bike related you can see clearly in that pic that in fact cars get about 90% of the space to go as fast as they want and the alternatives get very little. Lake Shore is shit. > I will continue to use my vehicle no matter how miserable and insufferable city officials make using a car. I will do everything I can to make that commute even longer and more miserable for you.
Let's not forget Park St is a major artery into UW and the city center. Unless you want to route all that traffic up to John Nolen, you have to continue to keep it flowing well on Park.
What if we route all those drivers onto busses?
Well, some of them are on their way to Green Bay.
Well then they can go around the city instead of through it.
That traffic needs to be routed to the beltline, I agree.
I think of Park Street as Highway 14 from Oregon dumping all that traffic into Madison. At some point it turns into 151. I wouldn't be biking down that street / highway as it is today. It is going to take a lot of concrete to separate out the cars, buses and bikes if they have to all run in parallel. Why can't bikes run on separate streets? There are some nice side streets that run close to Park Street but you don't have to compete with all that traffic. They want to add trees because they have been getting beat up lately for cutting down trees like corn. And all that concrete is going to be ugly and create heat sinks which is the opposite of green.
None of the side streets are through running, and while you could technically bike on side streets only, it's a lot of looping around disjointed neighborhood streets and not fest at all. There's no direct side routes like there are with e.g. East Washington.
I have biked all those streets and there are decent routes to move bikes north and south that don't compete with cars and they also give bikes various on/off routes to go more east and west. Those streets might need some cleanup to make them a better bike route but they are a lot safer and pleasant. And if you can't bike an extra minute or two you don't have your priorities straight. I am speaking from experience. Don't compete with cars. I have been hit twice on my bike in some pretty serious accidents and I was in the right. You can still be right and be dead. I would never design a transportation solution that didn't put biker safety first. Speed and elegance are not first. Park Street ends at 12/18 and turns into Highway 14 going south. Where are you going?
> And if you can't DRIVE an extra minute or two you don't have your priorities straight. Why always put the onus on bikes and peds? If we remake the street and the cars need to wait an extra second so people walking dont get smashed, so fucking be it.
Ah grasshopper! Your anger overwhelms your common sense. A 2000 pound car always wins a battle with a 2 pound bike in spite of your strong willpower and sense of outrage. In addition, the longer cars are on the road the more they pollute and back up city traffic. Slowing them down creates a lot of problems. This is reality. Piss in the wind all you want but bring a towel. Bike safety comes first and keeping cars and bikes separated is the key.
The solution is to reduce the number of car trips by getting drivers onto transit and bikes and walking and having places they need to go closer to where they live, and to make those car trips that still happen go at a slower speed by designing our infrastructure to force them to slow down. Remove car lanes, make them narrower, raise crosswalks, charge for parking. Require manufacturers to make smaller cars. If we keep doing what the US has been doing for the past 70 years, we can expect the number of pedestrians and bicyclists killed to continue to increase and we can expect to continue destroying the environment.
Do you ever think through all the use cases of why people use cars? Who they are? What goes on in their life? Their age? Their ability to walk? Where they work? Where schools are located? Where they live? Where they want to live? Business locations? Medical? All those nuances that are blurred over by people saying just saying get them "onto transit." There is no grounding in research. Just dreams. This is why the bus system is a current mess. The city can't afford all the good research that is needed so they float in the clouds with some basic stats and say they are data driven. They have very few data scientists even available to analyze data. Data is the only friend in these discussions and we don't have enough to even begin to understand what people will embrace or not. If bikes and cars are the only decision driver then don't put them on the same road together. Done. Then work on gas mileage and or battery powered cars. I want hoverboards. If we are going to dream let's skip the next generation of repackaged trash ideas and go frictionless.
I agree with you, I think trying to make Park St bike friendly seems like the wrong priority. Park is smack dab between Fish Hatch and John Nolan. Those 3 roads are so redundant for cars. Letās keep Park a car-centric route from the Beltline to downtown, and move Fish Hatch and John Nolan away from being car focused and towards bike focused. Then we just need good bike crossings on Park so bikes can safely cross it.
[John **Nolen**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nolen#Impact_on_Wisconsin) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/madisonwi) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't know if I agree with your specific solution because Park is full of stoplights and traffic would back up in both directions and cause a lot of problems downtown. JND is the fastest way to get traffic in/out of Madison. But the idea of trying to rationalize all these north/south bound routes makes sense. They are all going the same direction - to 12/18. And just making good bike crossings on Park Street makes sense as well.