Maintenance and Repair Priorities

 As it turns to spring here in the QCA, and thus to road repair season (as opposed to all the other times of the year...but I digress), I have been thinking a lot about how not only what gets built shows a city's urbanist priorities, but also (and perhaps more significantly) what gets maintained and repaired.

It is one thing to build a bike path, or a train line, or a road for that matter. It is another entirely to care enough about it to actually make sure it is functional, especially after something goes wrong.

Similarly, it is all very well to talk about how a space is a shared space (say, a road used by both bikes and cars--maybe with an iconic sharrow!) but it is a different thing entirely to actually maintain it as such, rather than prioritizing one group of road users over another when it comes time to patch the thing up.

1. Stop Repairing Roads Badly

On that latter point: there are a number of roads here that have gotten their pot holes patched recently. Huzzah! Hurrah! Or rather, not. 

Because for some of them, it was safer for me as a bicyclist to bike when there were holes in the road, which I could avoid, as opposed to a) a series of much larger bumps that caused me significant issues where they were covering the holes and/or b) random bits of asphalt scattered like confetti from where they had come off the patch.

The above street is not one that has recently been repaired, but it shows the issue. The layers of repairs over the years have produced something that is fine for a car (though by no means optimal!) but which presents serious tire damage and/or bumpy ride issues for a bike. 

This patch is a lesser problem, in that it hasn't actually made it worse to bike on, but it also hasn't made it any better. That is to say: this is a fix for cars but not for bikes.

The maintenance priorities show that this is not a bike space, even if legally it might be one. Stop repairing roads in ways that only help cars!

2. Clear the Edges!

Another version of this that we're coming out of (hopefully--always a chance for a freak March, April, or even May snowstorm!) is the building of barriers and ramparts out of snow that create lanes for cars and blockages for every other form of road use. Even buses are impacted, because they let out on the side of the road, which becomes an ice wall.

As you can see here, this goes for drainage as well. Design your drains to allow other things than cars to use the road when it rains!

Who gets to use the road in bad weather is another choice. 

3. Actually Repair Everything

It has been over a month since the Duck Creek bridge on Harrison Street in Davenport was repaired and restored to four lanes.

They have still not paved the path on the Duck Creek Trail underneath the restored bridge.

They removed the crossing that had been present during the construction, with a demand light for bikes and pedestrians, and now suggest a route that involves biking up the road across the bridge, crossing at the light at 35th Street, and biking back down. One of these directions will be against traffic on a thin sidewalk (and you shouldn't bike on the sidewalk by both law and safety, so it means walking the bike for several blocks). 

It's ridiculous.

If you're repairing infrastructure: repair all the infrastructure and don't call the repairs complete when they aren't. 

This photo isn't of that detour, but stands in for the larger point: if someone's still being detoured, your repairs aren't done, and you shouldn't go back to business as normal.

All of these show that in the QCA, the car is unsurprisingly king. There might be places where the same principles are used to devalue the car--but I have to admit, I've never seen them.