Last Updated on December 14, 2023, 11:27 AM | Published: December 14, 2023
OKLAHOMA CITY — Last month saw construction begin on what will be Oklahoma City’s first-ever parking-protected bike lane, providing significantly improved safety for cyclists by placing the bike lane between a line of on-street parking spaces and the curb.
This new parking-protected lane will span the length of Lottie Ave. from NE 13th Street to NE 23rd Street on the city’s Eastside, the first phase of a larger bike lane construction project planned to run from NE 4th Street to Madison Street and North Kelley Ave.
This pilot project is budgeted at $800,000 through the voter-approved Better Streets Safer City grant and ACOG’s Air Quality Small Grant Program.
“By switching the positions of the parking lane and the bike lane, we’re providing some protection that’s more than what we’ve had just with our delineators and space-striping,” said Justin Henry, transportation program planner with the OKC Planning Department. “Not to mention that moving the parked cars closer to traffic will slow down the traffic as well.”
Addressing Safety
This kind of new, re-thought approach to cyclist safety and street design is something that local biking advocates have been hopeful to see from the city for years, and was near the top of recent suggestions made during open comments for the next phase of the BikeWalkOKC plan.
“The new update to the plan kind of challenges us to try some new things,” Henry said. “This is a slightly more complex design, but it’s becoming one of the best practices in a lot of other major cities, and it’s something that we’ve been looking to try for a while. Public Works decided that Lottie would be a good place for us to pilot it and try it out.”
That stretch of Lottie Ave. has been a particularly dangerous area for cyclists over the past few years, making it both a perfect place to test the new parking-protected system and also a badly needed safety upgrade for the city.
“In the past seven years, we’ve had eleven cyclists and pedestrians hit by cars on Lottie,” Henry said. “So that told us we needed to do something there. We chose to try the parking-protected system because we had the room there on the street.”
Unique Concerns
Of course, a new system like this is bound to come with some unique concerns of its own, something that Henry and his department have studied closely in other cities that have already adopted the approach.
“Tulsa actually tried to do parking-protected bike lanes with angled parking,” he explained, “and they found that a lot of people were pulling their front wheel into the bike lanes and creating a lot of obstructions, so they had to rework that. But with a lot of bike infrastructure, we have to just try things and figure them out.”
The hope with OKC’s adoption of the new system is that it can be a significant help to biker safety without requiring any major change in driver behavior.
“One issue we have with some traditional bike lanes is when drivers are not expecting a cyclist and will open the door and a cyclist will run into it because they won’t have time to react,” Henry said. “With parking-protected lanes, it obviously happens a lot less because your drivers are now on the left side.”
Henry acknowledges, however, that it might take some amount of public messaging to help teach exiting car passengers to check for cyclists before opening their doors, a responsibility that most passengers have rarely had to consider.
More to Come
Henry and his team have high hopes for the success and efficacy of the new parking-protected lane on Lottie, and are already making plans for adopting the system on other streets around the city if the results are as positive as expected.
“We’re already looking at possibly doing a part of 6th Street Downtown for the next parking-protected bike lane,” Henry said. “If you have room for it on the street, it’s really not much more expensive. It’s pretty much the same cost as any other bike lane. It would be the same amount of paint.”
And in addition to the added safety for bikers, the system also offers an extra safety upgrade for pedestrians as well, especially on a busy Downtown street like 6th.
“One of the really great things about bike lanes in general, but particularly with parking-protected bike lanes like this, is that it really narrows and reduces the crossing distance for pedestrians,” Henry said. “So that really helps with safety as well.”
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
