Planned discussion on Houston’s bicycling progress veers into debate over 11th Street project
A discussion scheduled to salute Houston’s efforts to expand bike access on Thursday turned into a debate over the merits of a two-mile stretch of 11th Street.
The city’s plan to reduce 11th to one lane in each direction from Shepherd to Studewood – cheered by cyclists – faced late opposition as construction approached. Residents concerned about the traffic impacts of removing a car lane and the benefits of adding protected bike lanes took advantage of a scheduled discussion on the progress of the city’s bike lane to reiterate their concerns to the city council’s transportation, technology and infrastructure committee.
Critic Ann Derryberry, who lives near 11th, said many residents have sounded the alarm over concerns that the addition of bike lanes will force residents to sit longer in heavy traffic, reroute cars to neighboring residential streets, to complicate deliveries for area businesses and to lead to little safety benefit for cyclists.
“You say it’s a protected lane, but it will mostly be painted because of all the driveways and alleys,” Derryberry told council members and their staff, noting the need to paint green warnings where cars and turns will cross the track.
Rather than reducing and slowing traffic, critics of the plan said the city should commit to improving cycling and safety elsewhere, and perhaps adding a signal at 11th and Nicholson, where the roads intersect. Heights Hike and Bike Trail.
Cyclists and safety advocates say to distract from 11th would be to ignore that the street is the problem and that the speed along it makes traveling by car, bike or on foot dangerous.
“Houston has put cars first for decades,” said Kevin Strickland, a Heights resident active with various cycling and neighborhood groups. “We are entitled to safe streets that we don’t get.”
City planners, citing an average speed of well over 40mph – 10mph over the limit – opted to reduce the street to one lane after three years of discussions with community groups and studies. The single lane and a central median with dedicated turn lanes in some places, planners say, will keep traffic speeds lower and provide room to add protected bike lanes along 11th. Unlike runners and cyclists on the four-lane thoroughfare now crossing, supporters said, the narrowing of the road will also allow for safer crossings and space for Nicholson to safely wait for the passage of the oncoming traffic.
To address some of the concerns, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday he wanted to “take a closer look” at the project, summoning stakeholders and city staff for a review. Turner did not indicate any changes to the upcoming project, nor that the delay would offset construction plans slated to begin later this year.
Other city officials, however, said many concerns are expected to lead to changes in the project. At-Large Councilor Mike Knox pressed some supporters on the concept of forcing drivers to slow down by putting cyclists on the street.
“It seems to me that we’re using living bodies as a traffic control device to slow down drivers,” Knox said.
The street will have concrete curbs separating automobiles and cyclists, with the curbs acting as a calming effect and giving space to cyclists. David Fields, Houston’s chief transportation planner, said that makes the project less about using cyclists as shields and more about protecting them.
“The cycling infrastructure is what makes it safer for people to use,” Fields told council members.
Although only a small stretch compared to the city’s plans for more than 1,400 miles of safe bike paths under the Houston Bike Plan approved in 2017, the 11th Street project is telling. of the challenge of adding safer routes for cyclists, said Joe Cutrufo, executive director of advocacy group BikeHouston.
Big plans often get praise and support, but when it comes to specific projects, people balk at changes, he said. If the city gives in, it “embolds people in other neighborhoods” and fewer and fewer projects get done.
The plan for 11th, say supporters, addresses Turner’s preference for a ‘paradigm shift’ in area transportation while following the preferred route set out in the Houston Bike Plan, slowing down a dangerous street in the frame of the city’s Vision Zero plan to reduce road deaths and meet car use reduction goals under Houston’s climate action plan.
If Turner listened to the critics and radically canceled or redesigned the project on the 11th, “he would be turning his back on so many of his stated priorities,” Cutrufo said.