Bicyclist incensed by Mt. Pleasant's plans

Published June 26, 2008 at 10:35 pm by Ken Hawkins.

Filed in: Outdoors, News, Sports, bike, new urbanism, Mount Pleasant, cyclist, Coleman Boulevard, biking, bike lane.

Bicyclist incensed by Mt. Pleasant's plans

flickr user mlcastle

Mount Pleasant officials feared bike lanes plus parallel parking (like in the above photo) equalled mass chaos. Bicyclists argued it’s perfectly sane.

A revitalization plan to re-direct bicyclists from Coleman Boulevard has drawn the ire of area bicyclists.

Local biker and famous bike-frame maker, Dave Moulton writes in his blog:

The Charleston area has precious few bike lanes as it is, we cannot afford to loose what we have. Mount Pleasant’s plans are a huge step backwards. We have this beautiful bridge with a bike path, encouraging people to ride over to Mount Pleasant. Cyclists need to be accommodated when they get there.

Mount Pleasant planners seem to be concerned about the supposed incompatibility of parallel parkers and bike lines, believing that the combination will result in disastrous results.

But bicyclists argued, as Charleston Moves put it, that:

Moreover, we believe that adopting the ‘discourage-bikes” position will make things less safe. Motorists, not seeing signs that bikes are present, will not be anticipating them, perhaps with disastrous consequences.

…

In these days of $4-per-gallon gasoline, and of epidemics of obesity and diabetes, we KNOW we must deal forthrightly with society’s “epidemic of inactivity.” Not only should bicycles be welcome on Coleman Boulevard but their welcome should be signaled and controlled by painted bike lane markers and state-of-the-art signage and signals.

At the end, town officials seemed to be swayed to go back and reconsider the inclusion of bike lanes. We’ll keep you posted.

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