Cyclists on the motor-vehicle short A Street section of Anchorage’s new downtown bike lane system/Craig Medred photo
Motorists enraged by city’s new bike lanes
Of the wands that have sprouted along two streets in downtown Anchorage, one thing can be said for certain:
Never has so much been made of so little by so many.
Angry drivers over the weekend flooded social media with their shock and anger that the municipality reduced two, three-lane downtown streets to two lanes so they could convert the third lane into a two-way bike route through the heart of the country’s northernmost metropolis.
Cyclists offered wider and more diverse views, ranging from “it’s about time” to expressing fear that the wanded lanes would make already hostile Alaska motorists even more aggressive toward cyclists in Alaska’s largest city.
Anchorage was once considered a bike and pedestrian-friendly community but municipal planners almost two decades ago identified it as fast outgrowing its friendliness. They subsequently wrote a pedestrian transportation plan approved by the Anchorage Assembly in 2007 with the intent of increasing “opportunities to choose walking as a mode of transportation to reach school, work, and shopping.”
Little happened after that other than the continuing diminishment of the friendliness.
Meanwhile, motonormativity – the belief that cars own the roads and Americans have a “right” to drive – has come to rule the 49th state’s largest city as it has many other American cities. This belief was well illustrated last week by Corey Harris, a Michigan man, who connected to a Zoom conference with a judge while behind the wheel of his vehicle and visibly rolling down a Michigan street. Video of the incident made national and international news given that the Zoom call was for Harris to deal with accusations of driving with a suspended license.
The country’s motonormativity was only underlined by those subsequently willing to overlook Harris’s participation in a Zoom meeting while beyond the wheel of a moving vehicle – the very definition of “distracted driving” the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says now results in the deaths of about nine Americans per day – because his licensing problem was later tied to a court paperwork error Harris never bothered to get straightened out.
The problem of distracted driving in Anchorage appears to be every bit as bad as it is in the rest of the country and quite possibly worse, which is one of the arguments for wanded and thus visually obvious bicycle lanes in downtown to offer 200-pound cyclists at least a promise of protection from 4,300-pound motor vehicles. Concrete barriers would be even better, but some consider them unsightly.
How well the new bike lane serves the needs of cyclists is another matter. Curious about that, I went and pedaled it Saturday and can offer an analysis, but that is going to have to wait because the matter of the public reaction to these lanes deserves more attention first.
The big entitlement
After stories started appearing in the news last week reporting Anchorage was “getting a protected bike lane for the summer” (if plastic wands can actually be considered protection against anything), the social media pages of Alaska’s News Source, the Anchorage Police Department (APD), and others began lighting up with the outrage of hundreds.
The “90 percent” apparently referred to cyclists, not to roads. The complaint of motorists that cyclist don’t obey traffic laws is a common one despite an oft-cited Danish study that concluded motorists violate traffic laws more than cyclists and a U.S. study concluding the two groups break the laws at about the same rate with one big difference:
The latter study blamed the “popular press” for portraying “bicyclists as reckless and a pervasive problem with potentially dire consequences,” although one could argue that problem is more in the lame, legacy media reporting on bicycle accidents that reinforces the public believe that if a cyclist died in an accident it was because the cyclist caused the accident.
The legacy media might not be fully responsible for the public perception that if cyclists get hit on American roads, it was their own fault. But they have done little to dispell the danger of inattentive drivers or highlight the attitudes of drivers that make the roads more dangerous for anyone not encased in a steel cage.
“Get bikes out of the road FFS; no bike can go 35 let alone 45,” Dave Zian posted on APD’s Facebook page, overlooking the facts that 1.) the streets now sporting bike lanes have 30 mph speed limits, meaning that no one should be driving them at 35 mph let alone 45 mph; and 2.) that the idea of the two-way bike lane was specifically to “get bikes out of the road” to offer them some protection from incompetent drivers.
Others were even more direct than Zian about their feelings on the issue.
“You do realize Alaskan’s (sic) can’t stand bicycles on the roads?” Jon Kronback chimed in. “So check this out, I want to see their license, registration, and insurance to be on the roadway. Just once in my life, I want to see a police officer pull a bicyclist over for failure to maintain speed limit. Those folks are usually doing 25 in a 45.”
Kronback appeared unaware of the facts that 1.) there are no “minimum required” speed limits on city streets; 2. the streets in question have 30 mph speed limits, not 45 mph (though some might drive them that fast); and 3.) few cyclists in Anchorage, with the possible exception of those on illegal e-bikes, can hold 25 mph on the flat if they can get up to that speed at all, which another reason why the bike lanes were installed.
If cyclists could do 25, the simple solution for downtown Anchorage would be to drop the speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph, and let everyone share the street, which might solve the problem Doris Belle Farrell saw with the new bike lanes.
Belle Farrel appeared unaware that existing traffic laws require drivers yield to any vehicle on their right when moving to the right on any roadway, and that drivers are equally required to yield to pedestrians when turning right into an intersection.
Ignorance of existing traffic laws was all too common in the Facebook comments.
“Let’s start ticketing the cyclists who don’t obey traffic laws as they ride in the road,” Pat Riot added on the APD page, seemingly unaware that it would be hard to ticket cyclists for riding in the road given that it is legal for them to ride in the road. And when Lee Weikert responded to Riot with the observation that the protected bike lanes are a good idea due to “drivers that speed, run red lights, stop signs and over pedestrians,” Gail Moore took Wiekert’s comment as an opportunity to justify speeding and running red lights.
“They have to,” she wrote, “when all the bicyclists hold them up.”
There are, however, no requirements – legal or otherwise – stipulating that motorists “have to” exceed the speed limit – let alone “run red lights, stops signs and over pedestrians” – because they have been slowed by a cyclist, a bus, a moose that didn’t want to get out of the road, a slow-moving truck or anything else.
The law makes speeding, running red lights and stop signs, or colliding with pedestrians illegal no matter the degree of the driver’s rage at being slowed down. The good thing for drivers, though, is that if they hit and kill the pedestrian it only costs them $100 and a few points on their license.
And while Moore suggested cyclists were forcing motorists to break the law, Pearl King was on the APD page lamenting the loss of possible parking and suggesting there would be no problem if cyclists would get out of the road and illegally ride on the sidewalks instead.
She wrote that “all the cones are an eye sore and problematic and if I’m looking at pictures right they took away street parking which is much cheaper then garage parking. So again ride your bike on the sidewalk like we have done for years before people thought they could pedal fast enough knowing they can not.”
Many others made the sidewalk suggestion apparently unaware that the Anchorage Municipal Code dictates that “no person shall ride a bicycle upon a sidewalk within the central business traffic district,” which is the downtown area through which the bike lanes run. The law was written because of the inherent conflicts of people walking at 3 mph or less on the sidewalks and bicycles doing 10 mph or more.
Overall, the drivers commenting on Facebook displayed a Flattop Mountain-size ignorance of Anchorage and Alaska traffic laws and a Mount Denali-size sense of entitlement while, ironically, accusing cyclists of acting entitled. The motorists’ justification for their self-centered views was often that they pay for Anchorage roads with fuel taxes, plus motor-vehicle registration and stud fees.
Who pays?
Any motorist who thinks these fees pay for the roads is delusional. They not only don’t pay for the cost of building roads; they don’t bring in enough revenue to fund the maintenance of the roads.
The stud fee, to start with, is a loser.
About $1.6 million in studded tire fees is collected by the state each year, but a 2019 study concluded the damage done to road surfaces by studded tires costs the state about $13.7 million per year, meaning the state is losing about $12 million per year on that deal.
The state does better on non-aviation fuel taxes. These taxes are expected to produce about $34 million in revenue in fiscal year 2024.
The state Division of Motor Vehicles reports the state also takes in another $53 million per year from “vehicle registration and titling, boat registration, driver licensing, and motor vehicle records.” This, however, helps to cover less than 20 percent of the more than $323 million budget of the Department of Administration of which the division is part.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) in 2021 calculated it was spending more than $37 million per year to maintain the 5,268 miles of road in its Central Region alone. This is $3 million more per year than the $34 million brought in by the statewide fuel tax, and the DOT’s Northern Region spends even more per mile for road maintenance than the Central Region due to the costs associated with weather and climate.
The municipality’s 10 cents per gallon fuel tax produced a little more than $22 million last year or less than a quarter of the $94 million it costs to maintain roads for motorized vehicles. The reality is that maintenance of the municipal road system is heavily subsidized by homeowners who drive, walk and pedal.
And these are just the maintenance costs.
The costs of road construction in Anchorage come from bonds, which homeowners also subsidize; from oil revenues – still the state’s biggest source of revenue – and from the Federal Highway Administration, which reported more than $562 million available to Alaska for the construction of state-maintained roads in fiscal year 2024.
Motorists who think they are paying the bill for the roads beneath the wheels of their pavement-smashing vehicles simply have no understanding of the costs of road construction, road maintenance or the damage that can be done by motor vehicles.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the weight of the average U.S. motor vehicles has now reached a record high of 4,303 pounds. Blame this on the steady increase in sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and electric cars which are heavier due to their batteries.
Whatever the reasons, a 4,300 motor vehicle has the potential to do about 17 times the damage to a road surface as a 200-pound cyclist on a 50-pound bike, and most cyclists on their bikes weigh in at less than 250 pounds.
For anyone worried about road maintenance, getting more people out of motor vehicles and onto bikes should be a good thing. It would drive down road maintenance costs while improving the general health of the citizens of a country that now spends a world-leading $4.5 trillion per year, or $13,493 per person, on health care, according to government numbers.
A significant part of this cost is linked to a legion of Americans unhealthy due to a lack of exercise in youth that only gets worse after they obtain a driver’s license and join the “why walk (or cycle) when you can drive” society that now has so many people sitting on their asses so much that there has become a name for the behavior: the sedentary lifestyle.
In the latter regard, if the downtown bike lanes get even a few people off their asses, out of their cars and pedaling, it might be worth it, but will it work?
Bike commuter view
For decades while working at the Anchorage Daily News and later at the now-gone Alaska Dispatch, I regularly pedaled, and sometimes ran, the 15 miles from a Hillside home to work. Needless to say, none of the route choices were great, but for many of those years, the traffic was light on Rabbit Creek Road and Hillside Drive with a multi-use trail through Far North Bicentennial Park connecting to Basher Drive where the traffic was also light.
Basher connects to a multi-use trail along Tudor Road and from there any of several routes to the northwest are possible using generally quiet residential streets. The big strength of the route was that the only place that required a legal stop was Tudor Road, where I usually used a traffic-light-controlled intersection to cross safely.
When commuting by bicycle, a lack of stops is even more important than when commuting by motor vehicle because of the increased time required to get up to speed on a bike. Given the lack of traffic and traffic lights, commuting by bike to town for these 15 miles often took me only 10 or 15 minutes longer than by car, via the much more circuitous route down Rabbit Creek Road to the Seward Highway and inbound to where the various traffic lights began.
So the first thing I noticed about the new bike route in downtown is that it has traffic-light issues for bike commuters. The A-Street section is fine, and if I were a commuter headed for a job on the east side of downtown, I’d certainly use it, but Sixth Street would be an unlikely choice for moving east to west to the other side of downtown simply because of the traffic lights.
If you can do a little over 20 mph on your bike, the lights are synchronized such that you can make the entire run down the street without stopping, but not a lot of people can maintain this sort of speed on a standard pedal bicycle and even if you can, there is a pedestrian problem.
Even late on a fairly quiet, Saturday afternoon, people were regularly stepping into the bike lane and requiring me to hit the brakes. And once out of sync with the lights it was hard to generate enough speed quickly enough to get back in sync. Thus, on a half-dozen passes up and down Sixth Street, there was only one during which it was possible to make a run without a stop.
For commuters with a job within a couple of blocks off the A-Street lane – say, for instance, employees of the Alaska Region of the National Park Service building between B and C streets – this wouldn’t be an issue, but for anyone going deeper into the city to the west of A, there are other, relatively quiet streets without bike lanes that would likely permit faster transit for people headed downtown if arriving from the east or south.
The same might be said for commuters in the Turnagain area using the Coastal Trail to access downtown. A faster route than Sixth Street for them would be to exit the trail at Westchester Lagoon in favor of U Street and Bootlegger’s Cove to 11th Street and then Beach Lane to quiet 10th Avenue off which there is a pick of trails across the Park Strip and roads north into the heart of Downtown.
Were it up to me, with a commuter’s bias, I’ll confess, I could find better ways to spend bike-route money than on this system of lanes unlikely to do much for Anchorage residents. But if the route is actually about tourism, one of Alaska’s most successful industries these days, it’s a different matter.
The route does make it lot easier to get to major tourist attractions like the Anchorage Museum, the Performing Arts Center, Town Square Park, the Fifth Avenue Mall, and a wide variety of jobs and drinking establishments without feeling like you’re taking your life in your hands by riding in downtown traffic.
And there are several downtown, bike rental shops only a block or two off the route. Two of those shops are near the intersection of Fifth Avenue and L Street just up the hill from the Coastal Trail and connected to the Sixth Street bike by lanes by Coastal Place, a narrow neighborhood road which is now marked as part of the bike trail system. The only problem there is that Coastal is legally a one-way, southbound road, which would technically make it illegal for northbound cyclists to turn down it to get to the lower bit of Fifth Avenue just above Elderberry Park and the Coastal Trail.
And any law-abiding tourist who turns south on Coastal to comply with the road’s one-way status is going to face a long detour in getting to the Coastal Trail. There is a bike sign painted on the Coastal asphalt indicating the city might now be considering it legal for bikes coming down Sixth Street to turn north into motor-vehicle traffic on that road, but it might be good if the city got the paint out and put a bike lane strip and some arrows down Coastal if this is indeed the case and maybe putting up a “bikes only” right turn sign at the intersection.
Then again, any “bikes only ” sign might only serve to further infuriate those who don’t think bikes should be on Anchorage roads at all FFS. And if you are a cyclist who happens to use Anchorage roads, you’re almost certain to have been close-passed by one of these people wishing to show their displeasure at your being there FFS.
Maybe AK bike safety enthusiasts should try this.
https://apnews.com/video/mexico-mexico-city-1d619daef4a44c3d9cb735a80e823a1f
In Alaska, given the driving skills, that would probably catch the attention of the few drivers who aren’t driving distracted just enough that they’d run into you.
Sorta related, I live on the Coastal Trail. All day long, I see people coming by at 30 mph on 50 lb ebikes, feet not moving. Somebody is going to get hurt.
Agreed. People doing 30 mph on 50 lb ebikes while lacking the skill to handle a pedal bicycle at 20 mph. But my favorites are the Onewheelers in full-face helmets and full body armor. It’s a little unsettling to encounter people doing 20 mph after prepping themselves for the role of a human missile.
I live on the bike trail where it makes the corner by Northern Lights and Wesleyan. The bikers come around that blind corner so fast with no regard for pedestrians, or kids learning to ride bikes. It is so dangerous. I have asked bikers to slow down and have gotten responses of…I’m on my way to work, share the trail, or one guy yelled he is disabled. So why do they have the right to speed past pedestrians and little kids trying to learn how to ride a bike and be a courteous bike rider when they grow up. I called the police non emergency line, and was told by the guy there is no speed limit on the bike trail. The can legally go as fast as they want and to share the trail. I am beyond frustrated that my granddaughters don’t have any rights to use the trail, or any legal safety protections for them. I might as well take them to the highway to learn to ride a bike.
Funny that APD would tell you there is no speed limit when the Chester Creek Trail across from East High has an obvious 20 mph speed limit sign posted west of the Northern Lights overpass. There’s clearly a speed limit some places. My memory is that there’s another stating 10 mph or so (mayb less) on the Campbell Creek bike trail on the west side of the Arctic or C Street underpass.
Traditionally, there have not been speed lmits for bikes because most bikes lack for speedometers, but most e-bikes have them. I’m a big fan of ebikes on road-related bike trails where they are all trafficking in one direction. I am not a big fan of them on our multi-use, park/greenbelt trails for the simple fact that it’s been my observation that too many people riding there are operating at speeds that exceed their bike handling skills.
It’s the old judgment probem which is always compounded by motors. Some people just don’t seem to have the sense to slow down when going past dogs or children, both of which are well known to make random movements.
And the reality is, if you want to cover distance fast on a bike, there are lots of times per day when those trails are simply a bad choice. Too many people. Too many pets. Too many photographers who don’t understand it’s a busy trail. Too many tourists who don’t know America is a “keep right” country. Too many walkers who thinks it fine to walk and talk in a group that takes up both lanes. Too many onewheelers in full-face helmets and full body armor who are scarier than most ebikers. The list goes on and on…
On a certain level it is the wrong question. How many used Uber in 2008? None. But if there was Uber, I mean
safe-interconnected bike lanes cross the city more folks would bike. Build a ski resort near Anchorage, more people will own/use alpine skis…build a speed skating ring….its not atmospheric science. The better question is, why has it taken so long to build a network of interconnecting safe bike lanes in Anchorage? Or to lower the speed limit to 20. Both can be done.
Can be done if there is a politial will. One of the big problems at the political level these days is that no politicians are publicly willing to accept the health problems that have been created for this country by letting motor vehicles for decades now dictate the design and construction of U.S. cities along with the help of urban planners who helped move businesses out of neighborhoods with their desires to create a shopping-center world.
It’s amazing to walk around subdivisions in realatively new communities like Sammish, Wash., and discover that though you’re only about a quarter mile from one of those shopping centers it is a walk of a mile and a half to get there because the “planners” put in all sorts of little-used trails for strolling around the neighborhood but never gain a thought to maintaining access for direct links to the shopping center so people could walk there rather than drive.
I guess my obvious question is, has anyone put a camera on the bike lanes to determine the volume of actual use? Perhaps capture and record correctable issues and possible improvements?
I’m of the opinion every restriction should be required to have money set aside for study – real data tracking if the claimed purpose and benefits are actually being realized by the means proponents claimed they would. Not aspirational self-reports by folks who think it is a “good idea,” hard quantifiable data.
There should also be mandatory sunsets after the period proponents state will provide supporting evidence. With a renewal vote only allowed after clear evidence shows the restriction has actually achieved its particular stated goals via the particular means claimed. Not some sort of undefined “it’s better,somehow.”
If the bike lanes are only regularly being used by a handful of people then there has to be a cost-benefit analysis done. If easy fixes which would improve their performance and increase use during this roll-out period can be identified, that’d be good too.
The idea is obviously worthwhile.
Cameras? Not that I know of.
If I’d had my druthers, the city would have used this money to buy speed cameras that can track and ticket drivers and started sprinkling those cameras around town to bring speed limits down somewhere close to what the signs say they should be. That would make me feel safer on Anchorage roads whether on the bike or in the car.
And along those lines, the whole downtown issue could have been solved by slowing everyone down to 20 mph and letting everyone use the road without a segrated bike lane. Not to mention how much nicer the slower speeds would make downtown. When I was in London for Christmas, I was amazed how much quieter, friendlier and peaceful a city with 20 mph speed limits.
They made walking around in London so much more enjoyble than walking around Anchorage. Yeah, it meant it took a little more time to take a cab anywhere on the few occassions that we did so/ But traffic in in London is so bad anyway, I’m not sure it took that much more time.
Speed makes a big difference on the freeway when you’re racking up lots of miles, but over the distance of a mile, the diffence between going 20 mph and 50 mph is less than two minutes. But don’t tell that to the people going 60 mph down Northern Lights to get to Midtown for whatever reason.
This project was 100% funded by a FHWA research program, so “the city” wasn’t spending anything on it. Part of the project is to collect data on use, so there will be some analysis done. Plenty of information to be found at https://anchoragepbl.com/
All the emotion and hyperbole aside, what is the bicycle density in Anchorage per thousand citizens?
How does that compare with other similarly sized winter cities like Minneapolis, Juneau, Duluth, Erie, Syracuse, Boulder, Rochester and Buffalo?
What is the bicycle accident rate per thousand for Anchorage and those cities?
Please tell us how snow removal will deal with the new bicycle lane markers?
The wands are removal and get pulled out in winter. The other questions I can’t answer becuase there is no data available. From what I saw of fatbikes last winter, I’d say the Anchroage density appears to be a shit town.
Other cities, who knows. I used to live in Juneau and walked everywhere. Boulder is nationally known for a massive cycling community. I live in Duluth for a couple years at the start of the ’70s and biked everywhere. There were a lot of folks on bikes there then. Who knows today. Many have become fearful to ride almost everywhere because of traffic.
The bicycle accident rate per thousand is unknown in Anchorage becuase APD doesn’t track all accidents, and it appears only some of the deaths get reported.
So the short answer here is most of the questions have no answers, and I’m not sure the questions matter. There’s a positive return even if only a handful of people get out of their cars and start pedaling.