Monthly Archives: July 2012

I had a conversation today with Gary Graham about the bike plan and the construction on 75. The plans for the upgrade on 75 were in the works, reviewed, signed off and funded long before the bike plan was a twinkle in our council’s eye, so nobody should be surprised that there are things being built in the 75 upgrade that do not support a bicycle-friendly environment – and some that actually make things worse for bike traffic.

We talked a lot about how to get bikes from one side of 75 to the other – the pathways are El Dorado, Park View/Valley Creek Trail, Virginia Pkwy, White Ave and 380/University. Here’s a snapshot of what’s going on.

El Dorado. This interchange is being turned into what is called a SPUI – Single Point Urban Interchange. The existing bridge over 75 at El Dorado sucks for pedestrians and cyclists, and the SPUI will have a more appropriate sidewalk but it creates a mixmaster of traffic across the bridge that turns a person on a bicycle into a slow moving obstacle in a chaotic exchange (a target). For this reason the Bike Plan specifically avoids using El Dorado as a means to cross 75.

Park View/Valley Creek Trail. This interchange is being drastically reduced for vehicular traffic. Currently it supports north bound and south bound service roads as they cross two parallel minor roads – one of which only leads to the community Center, the other is a connector from Towne lake to the Soccer fields at Al Ruschhaupt Park. The service roads will be elevated to the level of the highway and pass over Park View and Valley Creek Trail, greatly reducing the traffic there. Valley Creek Trail leads only to the Community Center, very low traffic demands, leaving only the connector between Towne Lake and Ruschhaupt Park as a traffic draw. The good thing here is the huge drop in traffic, the bad thing is the silly sidewalk split (sidewalk is on the South side of the street EXCEPT when crossing under 75 when you have to go to the North side of the street) remains in place – there was no plan to correct this. Gary said the city intends to review this sidewalk after the 75 project ends in the winter of 2015. Because of the drop in traffic and coinciding increase in safety, the bike plan pushes hard to use this as the prime connector east-west across 75.

Virginia Parkway. The bridge at Virginia Parkway will soon be demolished and replaced with a larger roadway that includes u-turn lanes for north and south bound traffic. The traffic lane structure will remain basically unchanged – 2 lanes for thru traffic and 2 lanes for turning traffic. There will be only one cross walk under 75, on the North side of the street. We talked a while about how to make this underpass more bike-friendly, and it boils down to signage and a possible Sharrow lane.

White Avenue. We didn’t talk about this interchange at all. I just realized this as I’m writing. Dan Heischman had mentioned last summer that White was being promoted as one of the key bike pass-thru points, but the plan for 75 didn’t include widening this underpass. I’ll ask Gary about this next time I see him (or if you read this Gary, please add a comment).

380/University. This was never a contender for a bike traffic thru point. Too many road fatalities on 380 over the years have made the thought of promoting bicycle traffic on that road a political no-show.

Gary will be meeting us on Wednesday Aug 15th at 7:30pm at the Pub in McKinney. I strongly encourage you to try and drop by to ask questions and meet Gary.

Be Safe!

This next month’s meeting will have as our guest, Gary Graham. Gary is the city’s traffic engineer, and is the new leader for the on-street bicycle plan. Gary is looking for feedback and suggestions from the people in the city who will benefit most from the implementation of the plan, and that’s what Bike Friendly McKinney was created to do!

The meet up will be Wednesday evening, August 15th from 7:30 to 8:30 (or whenever we finish) at the usual place – the Pub in McKinney. This time we’ll move to the backroom, since its 100 degrees on the porch and we might need more space. As always the meetup is informal – bring questions and be ready to make new friends.

In order to try and get a feel for how many people will be able to come, please go to our Survey Monkey when you get a minute and tell us what you think of the 4 questions there – this looks at what the prime candidates are for the bike plan’s implementation.

Bike Friendly McKinney was founded to support the bike community in our city and help the city setup a good plan for us. Now is when we start getting an opportunity to make an impact – the city needs to know what the citizens want and need, and unless we tell them, they are making educated guesses. Please come and let Gary know what we need, and show your support!

Be safe!

One of our members rides a sleek purple recumbent that he has gone to great lengths to make visible to cars. He commutes from McKinney into Plano everyday and takes the train on into work, so he has lots of opportunity to see the poor behavior of motorists. He mounted a camera to the back of his bike so should he get run over he would have a video record of the license plate that hit him. He added a wing to the bike with lights so there’s no chance anyone could say “oh, I didn’t see him there”.

He rides on the service road in some areas, which you would expect to be a hazard. He has to go through some high speed limit streets (40 – 45 mph) everyday. He takes some chances for his commute. BTW – this is a guy trying to get to work everyday, not someone trying to make a protest or a big political point, he should have the same concerns everyone has in the morning when getting to work, except the sweat of course.

He also happens to ride by my house pretty often (I don’t think he knows that). Monday afternoon, he was riding up Virginia Parkway (speed limit 30mph) and was being followed by a pick up truck with a gap of less than two feet between the bumper and his head (his HEAD), then the truck honked into his ear, peeled around him and sped away up Virginia Parkway yelling insults out the window.

Aside from the traffic problem with Virginia Parkway from 75 to the Square, the high population of children in the area, the number of accidents and cars landing on people’s front yards – this guy is riding his bike in a legal manner very close to the posted speed limit only to have someone in a pickup truck think they have so much ownership of the road that they can wave the bumper of a 2 ton steel vehicle next to the head of one of their neighbors.

In my humble opinion the first and biggest thing the city needs to do is develop an education campaign for motorists and cyclists. Cyclists need to know how to safely behave and operate on the city streets, and motorists need to be aware that cyclists are here and deserve to be able to ride in safety. The idiot in the pick up truck isn’t representing the average motorist, but he sure is a posterboy for the biggest road hazard a cyclist faces – ignorance and arrogance behind the wheel.

Next Month (August) we will have a meeting with the new head for the On-Street Bike Plan, Gary Graham. I will be posting the time and day here and on FaceBook shortly – please try to come and show Gary how much we care about what he is doing for our city. We can talk about this issue and anything else you like.

Be safe!