Bike Bollards Are “Negatively Impacting the Beauty” of Seventh Avenue Historic District: Residents

On July 20, District 5 City Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer facilitated a virtual meeting between Nick Williams, DOTI’s deputy manager of internal and external affairs, and concerned Seventh Avenue residents who say that the bike lane infrastructure improvements not only showed up out of nowhere, but are confusing, potentially less safe — and ugly.

Williams’s response: Safety first.

“Safety and traffic safety is a top priority. If anything, we’re turbocharging it,” he said.

“Will DOTI make sacrifices to safety on projects like this based on community feedback?” Williams said. “Our goals are safety around this. Community feedback is an important part of this. But I will say without making blanket statements that our goal is and remains — and I don’t anticipate this changing under a new administration — that Vision Zero  commitment.” Vision Zero was the program introduced in 2017 by then-Mayor Michael Hancock to end traffic fatality deaths by 2030.

But Williams was receptive to considering the concerns raised by residents, particularly those who believe that some of the changes at the corner of Seventh and Williams have made the intersection more dangerous by preventing cyclists from riding closer to the sidewalk in order to avoid bad drivers.

“At the Seventh and Williams intersection, few are using the right turn lane correctly. Usually, bikes go on the outside of the [bollards] and there’s poor signage. It’s not working,” Sandra Goldhaber had said in a written comment submitted before the meeting that was read aloud. Williams’s response: “We have heard that that intersection specifically is a little bit confusing, a little bit wonky, and the team is looking at that.”

As for concerns that the bollards have damaged the neighborhood aesthetic of the Seventh Avenue Historic District, Wiliams said, “What is there now is theoretically temporary infrastructure. A long-term plan is to build in more hardened infrastructure; typically that is going to be more aesthetically pleasing. … “We do not have a solid timeline on when that will happen.”

After sharing a few more comments, Williams said, “If I take one thing from this meeting, it’s that work needs to be done on Seventh and Williams.”

In 2020, when city officials were in the planning and concept development phase, they held multiple meetings and conducted surveys with community organizations and residents in order to be as transparent as possible, according to Williams.

“Since the construction began in April, we have really tried to hit different newsletters, mailers, yard signs, dedicated phone [calls] and emails for the project,” he explained. “And making sure that folks are aware of who they can talk to when they have questions about this.”

“An element of protection allows folks to feel safer,” he said. “It also has the effect of encouraging folks to give [using the bike lanes] a shot, which is a really big part of the city’s goals. … The goal for the city has been — whether it’s climate goals, whether it is traffic goals — it is to reduce the instances of single occupancy vehicles and increase the instances of bicycles and pedestrians. And how we do that is make it a favorable option.

“If it is more comfortable, you are more apt to do that,” Williams concluded.