Feb 10, 2009
Magnolia Complete Streets Re-Striping Approved By TIF
By: Kevin Buchanan
The re-striping of Magnolia Avenue in the Near Southside, which would transform the street from a four-lane design to a two-lane/turn lane/bike lane design, has cleared its last hurdle: on January 29th, Tax Increment Finance (TIF) District #4 approved the funding of the project. Now, it’s just a matter of getting the paint on the pavement.
The Magnolia “Complete Streets” project is expected to have several benefits – slowing automobile traffic on Magnolia and eliminating “slaloming” around cars waiting to turn left, creating a safer environment for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians; encouraging more bicycle traffic along the street thanks to the dedicated bicycle-only lanes, enticing more people to use bikes to get around; and creating a more pleasant environment for pedestrians by further buffering car traffic from the sidewalks and reducing the number of car lanes that must be crossed to get from one side of the street to the other.
In public meetings before the plan was approved, strong support was voiced by both neighborhood residents and a majority of business owners along the street. Bicycle traffic at several Magnolia destinations has been increasing – the owners of Spiral Diner actually installed their own larger bike racks on the sidewalk as the city’s standard “Texas star” racks were woefully inadequate to handle the amount of bikes parking there – and the dedicated bike lanes should provide an incentive for even more cycle usage, especially among non-hardcore riders who have previously been turned off by the current Magnolia configuration’s relatively high traffic speeds, something of a relic of older “cars first” thinking before the district was revitalized by New Urban planning.
The Magnolia re-striping is the first of what I expect will be many “Complete Streets” makeovers in the Near Southside. Narrower, more pedestrian-friendly streets are a key part of the Near Southside’s urban design standards, and bike lanes are as well – for those of you wondering if this was part of any sort of plan (Jonathan, you there? 
), striped bike lanes are recommended in the design standards for most/all portions of:
Magnolia
Rosedale
Pennsylvania
Vickery
Terrell
Cannon
Broadway
Cooper
12th/13th Avenue
Summit
7th Avenue
Henderson
Adams
College
Jennings
Mistletoe
Allen
South Main
That’s not a guarantee that they’ll all happen, but they are all in the design standards. It’s a real Complete Streets network. Magnolia can be thought of as a great place to introduce the bike lane standard to the public in preparation for a greater network moving forward.
The hope is to have the re-striping complete by Arts Goggle on Friday, March 27th.
saw this article and thought of you. not that i agree with it, but just to play devil’s advocate with you.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/Light_rail_isnt_the_track_to_the_future.html
Chad,
Ah, Randal O’Toole.
Randal O’Toole is notorious for, shall we say, being an anti-transit, pro-sprawl sort of person. CNU has called him out in the past for distorting and misrepresenting data in his attacks on Portland, Oregon:
http://www.cnu.org/node/1533
http://www.lightrailnow.org/myths/m_por_2007-10a.htm
He pops up every time somebody proposes any sort of rail transit, usually with similarly distorted facts and statements. A few samples:
http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2008/09/opposition-pundits-on-parade.html
http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2008/09/guess-who.html
I don’t expect everyone to just believe me right off the bat or anything – I hope everybody thinks for themselves and comes to their own conclusions. I’m only one guy, who runs a web site to publish his opinion and bring Fort Worth development news, and my opinion is far from the only one out there (of course, I make no secret of my biases – this is a blog, after all
), but O’Toole should also be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.
Anyway, back to the bike lane project. I’d prefer not to let the comments get too far off-topic, in keeping with the comment policy. Just for future reference, no biggie.
For those of you wondering what design standards Kevin is referring to, it is those for the near southside, available here: http://www.fortworthsouth.org/FWS/resources/2008_dev_guidelines.pdf
Ok, fair enough, but I remain wary of bike lanes since I maintain that all lanes of traffic are open to bikes and that cars and bikes should learn to coexist. In order to further that cause I implore cyclists to stay off sidewalks, out of crosswalks, and to follow the same rules that cars do. Motorists will respect you if you respect the same rules they do. I also remind motorists to give lots of room whenever possible and to treat a bike like any other vehicle on the road. Don’t forget that a bike can stop much faster than you can. I speak as a cyclist (though lapsed) and motorist.
This announcement is exciting-
and it will be a very exciting day when the paint has dried and Magnolia Ave has been transformed!
Bike Routes on and near Magnolia are nice, they’ve aided our rides in and through Near Southside, perhaps they even helped influence the worth of Bike Lanes; however, Bike Lanes and a real “Road Diet” on Magnolia- this is awesome! This is a “statement” type change!
With more emphasis on truly intermodal use of public roadways in and throughout the Near Southside area I can see the area developing into “a place to be”/destination where people come to interact, walk, shop, and eat.
While our bicycle club regularly rides to Paul’s Donut Shop for Saturday breakfasts, I’m sure greater and safer bicycle access will lead us and others to discover multiple other Near Southside destinations.
yeah, i dont doubt he cherry picked a few statistics to support his claim, i am sure we can all be guilty of that. but i saw that and wanted to just throw it out there.
and i did scroll down to try and find a streetcar post or something along those lines, but was too lazy to flip to another page and so i just chose the first post. sorry about that.
great blog by the way.
Chad,
No worries. Glad to have you reading us!
[...] at Fort Worthology notes that bike lanes are coming to the Near Southside. and asks whether the cultural district needs a neighborhood [...]
Think they need to re-surface a few streets first, don’t think the paint will even stick on some (ie. Jennings)