by: Diane Benjamin
When I took pictures of Jersey Avenue in Normal and the new bike lanes, it seemed silly that the lanes just stopped before getting to Towanda Avenue.
http://blnnews.com/2014/09/10/the-wonderful-world-of-bikes-normal/
On the Bloomington City Council Agenda for Monday night is this:
G. Bicycle Lanes on Jersey Ave. (Recommend that the bicycle lanes for Jersey Ave. from the Sugar Creek bridge from Towanda Ave. be approved.)
Kiss your on-street parking goodbye BLOOMINGTON residents of Jersey Avenue.
Can a resident count the bikes and let me know how many actually use it?
Isn’t paying for 2 local governments just wonderful?
FWIW, almost all of Jersey in Bloomington only has houses on one side (and all of those have garages and driveways that will accommodate at least 2-3 cars) — the other side has Ewing Park and a non-connected neighborhood without houses fronting on Jersey. There is an apartment complex right on the line at Eisenhower, but in traveling Jersey regularly at various times of day I rarely see many cars parked on the Bloomington portion of Jersey — I can’t see this as a real problem for parking.
When I took pictures around 3:00pm cars were parked bumper to bumper on both sides by Towanda Ave.
Interesting. That is a time of day I’ve not been there — I travel Jersey in the morning and after 6 in the evening — and then it is usually pretty empty. I wonder why 3 p.m. is prime parking — does Country/Farm Bureau across Towanda have a parking shortage or charge for it? Hard to imagine those would be Jersey residents, as that would mean 6+ cars per house fronting on Jersey — which would mean it was always congested, not only at 3.
I can’t answer that one. Maybe some people just want a quick escape when work ends.
Grand total “0” bikes. Yeah I live there.
The parking is used or used to be used a lot by groups of youths who come to the park
to run for cross-country training from local schools.
So since the park users might be occasional users of parking when they get out of there car there might be a “thunk, crash, boom, oh sorry guy didn’t see you coming,,,wow, dude, your head is bleeding.” People who travel this road will also notice that there is sparkling new re-pavement for half of this section.
Agenda 21 one-way Jersey Ave. bike lanes (located just one long block south of existing East-West leg of Constitution Trail) – and now Bloomington’s joining the party on out to Towanda, all in the hope that 100s of cyclists will use it to get to work at Country Co. This is another colossal waste of taxpayer’s money on an incredibly stupid idea.
Will be interested to see if Normal police will be handing out parking tickets hand over fist this winter come sledding time.