For many cyclists, Mountain Avenue is a major thoroughfare to and from work, school or The Loop, but the Mountain Avenue and Grand Road intersection has left many confused for years.
Why does the northbound bike infrastructure include green paint and no right on red signs, while the southbound infrastructure has nothing beyond a white line?
The intersection was completed in 2009, but at the time the Tucson Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee was only concerned about northbound traffic.
That however has changed and the southbound bike route is starting to see upgrades.
Tucson’s bicycle and pedestrian program manager Ann Chanecka said they have already added green paint to the intersection and will be adding flexible plastic poles, which are similar to the ones on St Mary’s, and signs in order to prevent motorists from trying to turn right out of the bike lane.
Chanecka said residents in the neighborhood requested improvements to the intersection.
Well now…..it’s nice to know the neighborhood residents have the welfare of cyclists in mind. Why does it take their request to implement improvements of that nature for infrastructure. The BAC over the past 6 years could have asked for them or any engineer/planner could have seen that the need existed. Fifteen minutes of observation would have revealed the disregard motorists have for turning from the bike lane. My opinion is that it was and has been known for some time, so why did it take neighborhood residents requests to get the ball rolling?
With the addition of flexible plastic poles to segregate bikes from cars, what’s going to prevent motorists from right-hooking cyclists?
arsolot At present, literally nothing stops car drivers from right-hooking people on bikes. There are already signs saying “no motorized vehicles in bike lane” that routinely go ignored by drivers. But given that there is a single travel lane, and right-turning car traffic must turn across the bike lane, the issue of right hooks is already present.
These flexible poles don’t totally fix the issue, but they do add another visual barrier and another reminder that people on bikes are present in huge numbers on that road. Ideally, these will cause people to look for other people on bikes before turning.
@zz Good question. Tucson seems to have a pretty strong neighborhood government and advocacy structure, so maybe that’s why it’s property owners who get listened to, and not road users.
Mountain Ave is great, but far from perfect. I’m glad to see some more improvements to this heavily-used corridor.