Autos vs. bikes: Watch for shrinking roads in metro Detroit

Last year, Livernois Avenue in Ferndale went on a diet. So did East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit. The city of Berkley slimmed down part of Coolidge Highway this spring.

So-called road diets that remove traffic lanes, frequently with the addition of bike lanes, are a hot urban trend that can be found in cities from New York to Seattle. 

Experts say road diets and bike lanes improve safety, business and quality of life.  

Opponents call the movement a “War on cars.”  

So the reaction was somewhat predictable last month when the news broke that officials in Ferndale and Pleasant Ridge were considering narrowing a 2-mile stretch of busy Woodward Avenue and adding bike lanes.

"Look, this ISN'T L.A., DENVER, OR PORTLAND or any of those tofu eating, carbon footprint, stupid places! So STOP TRYING TO TURN THE D into some lalaland B.S.!" said one Facebook commenter. 

That anger reflects a long-simmering tension between motorists and bicyclists over sharing the road.

Detroit's narrowing of more than 5 miles of East Jefferson Avenue with bike lanes last year certainly wasn't welcomed by everyone. But a common complaint from motorists that bike lanes aren't used is dismissed as a red herring by Todd Scott of the Detroit Greenways Coalition, which advocates for bicycle-friendly streets.

"What motorists really want — they want another lane of traffic so they can drive faster. But they can't say that, because that's an unjustifiable position," Scott said. 

Local officials admit road diets can slow car traffic at busy times, but say that is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s called traffic calming.

"I don't like saying it slows traffic,” Scott said. “It actually gets cars to drive the speed limit."

Rise of the bike lanes

If your commute doesn't already include a road with bike lanes, it could soon.

Detroit has about 145 miles of them, with more under construction. And cities along the Woodward Avenue corridor — such as Royal Oak, Oak Park and more — are among those converting streets used primarily by cars to accommodate bike lanes.

Detroit last year added 19 miles of protected bike lanes — which offer a buffer, unlike the conventional lanes that are painted alongside traffic lanes — including more than 5 miles along East Jefferson. And a stretch of more than a mile of Livernois Avenue south of 8 Mile is under construction to include raised bike lanes at the sidewalk level in Detroit's historic Avenue of Fashion.  

Royal Oak this spring is finishing up bike lanes on Campbell Road after recently adding them along segments of Washington Avenue and north Main Street. The city now has 3.8 miles of dedicated bicycle lanes. 

"We're in a lot of competition here in the metro region now days," Royal Oak City Engineer Matt Callahan said. "With Detroit back on the upswing, there's competition between communities to promote better commerce, and promote better businesses, and get people around, and get people to move to your community and live in your community — it keeps us on our toes." 

Bicycle lanes are frequently included in space left by road diets decreasing automobile traffic from four lanes to three with a middle turn lane. The designs, inspired by the National Complete Streets Coalition, consider pedestrians and transit, as well as bicycles and cars. 

Once the roads are converted, "people have a tendency to drive slower, so that in itself is a resulting safety improvement," Callahan said, adding that while these devices can cause traffic delays, drivers can avoid rush-hour slowdowns by using apps such as Waze for detours.  

'War on cars'

But opposition is loud and bold. Here are a few more Facebook comments from the Woodward Avenue story in the Free Press:

• "Bike lanes are a waste of road. I can count on one hand how many times I've seen them used over the last year."
• "Bike lanes make a lot more sense in places that don’t have freezing temperature and large amounts of snow several months of the year. We don’t have southern California’s weather."
• "Why are we giving lanes to bicycles? There's a friggin sidewalk!!!!!"

Even in Los Angeles, outrage over road diets has led to a recall effort against a local politician and a reversal undoing road diets on two boulevards, the L.A. Times reported. 

And there's organized opposition, with organizations such as the National Motorists Association and KeepTheUSMoving.com. 

"We do believe road diets can cause more accidents, more road rage, more frustrations," said Shelia Dunn with the National Motorists Association. "It's definitely a war on cars right now. There's a large group of people that really want to get us out of our cars."

She said motorists tend to be an "apathetic group" because so many people have driver's licenses. The association was started in the 1970s-1980s, opposing a 55 mph national speed limit, and lately their work has been more focused on road diets, license-plate readers and road cameras. 

The KeepTheUSMoving website names "delayed or blocked access for emergency response vehicles," "blocked egress during mass evacuations" and "decimated business districts — job losses, business closures" among what it calls the "detrimental effects of traffic calming measures on main thoroughfares." 

Dunn said her association has members who ride bicycles, and that for roads with lower traffic numbers, they can work. 

"It's great if there's enthusiasm — and I think biking is important," Dunn said. "But you have to remember that people are still using cars." 

Crushed in a crash

This spring, Amanda Jaczkowski started riding a bike again. Her new bike includes front and rear cameras and a rear-view mirror.

That might seem a bit of overkill, but Jaczkowski has a good reason for being cautious.

Two summers ago, the 27-year-old was riding her bicycle to work in Detroit when she was run over by a double-trailer gravel truck. 

She was in a bike lane, and the truck was turning right.

For 85 days, she was hospitalized. She had about two dozen surgeries, including blood transfusions and multiple skin grafts on her left leg that was crushed.

On a wall in her Hamtramck home is a framed box with the metal rod and screws that were once used to help fix her left leg. 

"We were stopped, and we started going forward," she said. "He turned right, I was in the bike lane."

The Detroit Police Department report indicates the crash, at 8 a.m. on July 25, 2017, occurred at a flashing red-light intersection on southbound Third Avenue at Temple Street — about a block west of the Masonic Temple in Midtown — and that she failed to yield, striking the "middle extension of semi truck and was thrown underneath." 

It doesn't appear that Jaczkowski was ticketed, but she said she's learned to put more effort into being aware of her surroundings. She'd been riding in a conventional bike lane, so there was no buffer between bicycles and motor vehicles other than a line on pavement. 

While she doesn't consider herself an avid cyclist, she enjoys riding when the weather's nice.

"You get a little bit of exercise," Jaczkowski said. "There's the whole environment deal... You see things differently when you're on your bike. You see that a business is having a sale."

Into the 'burbs

While road diet opponents claim that narrowing streets hurts business, this appears to be strong evidence to the contrary:

Ferndale, a 3.88-square-mile city with about 20,000 residents, is booming. Three mixed-use building projects are under construction, trendy restaurants and breweries keep opening as a rise in home prices is out-pacing nearby communities. 

Asked whether 2019 is the biggest year in the city's downtown, Jordan Twardy, director of community and economic development, in Ferndale responded: not quite.

"The narrowing of 9 Mile Road was one of the biggest moments in downtown's history, because it set the stage for all of this," Twardy told the Free Press. 

Nine Mile was narrowed in the 1990s, west of Woodward; the city followed up in 2015 with narrowing the road east of Woodward and installing bike lanes on that side. In 2018, Livernois between 8 Mile Road and 9 Mile was re-worked to include protected bike lanes. 

By the end of this year, Ferndale will have 14.05 miles of bike lanes, according to city staff. 

Jaczkowski previously lived in Ferndale and has pedaled her bike on Woodward in its current design with four lanes in each direction, separated by a grassy median. 

"It was scary — people would scream at you," she said. "Ferndale drivers were actually the worst. One time, a lady followed behind me for, easily, a quarter-mile and just like holding on her horn. And it's like, you have four other lanes you can be in right now." 

State law gives cyclists the right to ride on roads other than limited-access highways. Ferndale Police Sgt. Baron Brown said in an email that, indeed, it is legal to ride on Woodward, so long as you "follow all traffic control devices and signals as well as remain as far to the right as practicable." 

In four years up to August 2018, southeast Michigan added 47 miles of conventional bike lanes and 24 miles of protected bike lanes, among many more miles of bikeways and pathways, according to the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG). 

Berkley got its first bike lanes in May, on Coolidge between 11 Mile and 12 Mile Roads.

City Manager Matthew Baumgarten said it came with a road-narrowing project to go from four lanes and intermittent left-turn lanes, to three lanes that include a middle turn lane. In the earlier configuration, traffic would get backed up at times when a vehicle was turning left without a turn lane available.

"We saw people who were trying to turn left not able to do so right away, so they'd actually stop in the travel lane," he said. "Everybody behind that person would be coming to a stop."

By now including a full middle lane, it avoids such abrupt stops. Also, bike lanes make it easier for pedestrians to cross traffic. 

"There were safety issues we were excited to be able to address," Baumgarten said. 

He said the response has been mixed, with some motorists complaining about 10-minute delays but others saying they have no problems. 

Royal Oak this spring is finishing up bike lanes on Campbell Road after recently adding them along segments of Washington Avenue and north Main Street. 

Callahan, the city engineer, said motorists are expected to either get accustomed to them or find other routes. 

"Change to a lot of people is difficult," he said. "But over time, you know, I expect us to hear less and less of those questions, less and less complaints." 

Pedal power in the Motor City

Ask the City of Detroit's deputy director of Complete Streets, Caitlin Malloy-Marcon, why bike lanes should be added, and she makes a compelling response: 

"A quarter of Detroit's population does not have access to a single-occupancy vehicle," she said. "Unfortunately, we didn't have a whole lot of safe space dedicated to making sure that those people can get around in a safe manner." 

Musician Earle Davis, 81, lives in Detroit near Second and Brainerd in Midtown. He rides his 10-speed bicycle year-round, because a car involves too many expenses, including the city's high auto-insurance rates. 

"On good days I'm on the bike," he said. "If it's no ice on the ground, I'm gone. I pad up and hit the highway, buddy."

Davis, who moved to Detroit from the Big Apple several years ago, uses bike lanes when they are available. He said the ones in New York, where there was a separate lane area for bicycles to travel in both directions, were better. 

"It's an improvement, for sure," he said of the Detroit lanes. "I'll give them a 'B' for effort." 

The Joe Louis Greenway, a 31-mile loop around the city to include connections to Hamtramck, Highland Park and Dearborn, became closer to reality when the city this year acquired 7 miles of abandoned rail corridor. The project is anticipated to take seven to 10 years to complete. 

Detroit has a wide mix, from the Dequindre Cut dedicated pathway to the extensive protected-lane routes along Jefferson and on Cass Avenue. On Livernois, from 8 Mile south to Margareta, the city's first sidewalk-level bike lane is under construction. 

"Many of these streetscape projects we've really been focusing on community-driven design," Malloy-Marcon said. "We have a number of residents that have expressed that they are not comfortable in bike lanes when the parking is near the bike lane." 

Scott of the Detroit Greenways Coalition said Detroit's embrace of bike lanes has been a "wonderful surprise." 

Before it was the Motor City, Scott said bicycles were the normal way to navigate roads in the late 1890s. And it wasn't the car that affected the decline of bicycles, he said, it was the streetcar. 

"The network got really good, and you could go anywhere on a streetcar on a nickel. And so people biked less," Scott said. And bicycles, streetcars and even horses all traveled at "roughly the same speed," he said. 

Safety became a much more serious issue as cars entered the streets through the early 1900s. 

"When cars came along, they could travel at much higher speeds," leading to fatal crashes, Scott said. "It was a mess; it became epidemic." 

In 2016, there were 118 traffic fatalities in Detroit, including four cyclists. Statewide, there were 1,064 traffic fatalities and 38 were cyclists; and nationally that year, there were 37,461 traffic fatalities including 840 cyclist deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  

Empty bike lanes

How many people are actually using the bike lanes? Here are some recent counts from the City of Detroit: 

• Jefferson Avenue last summer: Averaged 300 cyclist per day last summer (weekends were much higher)
• Cass Avenue and Michigan Avenue intersection on a day in September: 437 cyclists and 230 scooters
• Griswold Street and Michigan Avenue intersection on the same day in September: 352 cyclists and 302 scooters
• Randolph Street and Congress Street intersection on the same day in September: 210 cyclists and 219 scooters

Brian Pawlik, a transportation engineer with the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, said in an email that that analysis from Michigan's household transportation survey "shows where investments have been made in biking infrastructure, usage has increased."

In Midtown and New Center, where new bicycling infrastructure was installed in recent years, "biking went from less than 1% mode share in 2005 to almost 5% in 2015." The city as a whole went from 0.5% to 1.5%, and the region went from 0.5% to 1.0%, he said. 

"One can easily expect even more usage as the network of protected bike lanes are been (sic) completed," Pawlik said. 

River Rouge, Ecorse, Highland Park, Hamtramck, Monroe, Frenchtown Township, Bedford Township, Pontiac, Oak Park, Warren, and Marysville, are just a few of the communities with existing or planned bike lanes now, Pawlik said. 

Paying attention

Weather-permitting, Amanda Jaczkowski is back to bicycling to work on the street, using bike lanes when available. As her recovery continues, she's even set a goal to run the Detroit Free Press half-marathon this fall. 

"I kind of have lofty goals sometimes," she said. 

And while bike lanes have their flaws, she said they're still better than traditional street lanes. 

"I feel like they give drivers a false sense of security... That's what I think a big problem with bike lanes is." 

More:Drivers could lose car lanes on Woodward Avenue in 2020

More:Don't Royal Oak my Ferndale? Progress tugs at progressive suburb

Scott said educating drivers on how to use bike lanes doesn't work very well with adults — people who voluntarily read educational materials aren't likely to be the ones causing problems with drunken, distracted or dangerous driving. 

In Royal Oak, they teach rules about cycling laws to third-graders. 

"This is the last year they listen to adults instead of their friends," city spokeswoman Judy Davids said. 

Jaczkowski has her own idea about how to get future drivers to pay attention. 

"It's a stupid example, but my family grew up playing punch bug. We have this sixth sense for Volkswagen Beetles," she said. In the game, the first kid to see a Beetle gets to punch another.

"(They) should make up a game for kids where you have to do it with bicycles." 

Contact Robert Allen on Twitter @rallenMI or rallen@freepress.com. 

6 kinds of bike lanes

Conventional bike lanes, are the most common in Michigan. But several different styles are being tried out. 

As Ferndale works to improve safety on Woodward Avenue, it sent out a survey of residents asking their level of comfort with six: 

• Conventional: lane for cyclists directly to the right of cars traveling in the same direction
• Buffered: separated from traffic by a buffer of space in the road
• Delineator protected: buffered with bollards or flexible posts between cyclists and cars
• Curb protected: buffered with a raised curb between bikes and cars
• Parking protected: buffered, along with a line of parallel-parking car spaces between bike lanes and car lanes. The buffer helps prevent cyclists from running into open, passenger-side car doors.
• Two-way separated cycle track: like a separate road that includes bicycle travel in both directions