^no shit man, i might have to start leaving for work 5-10 minutes earlier b/c of this idiocy.

8/31/2010 3:21:18 PM

http://tinyurl.com/aventferry

8/31/2010 8:43:06 PM

at least they're finally working on the surface layer. bout damn time.

8/31/2010 8:57:37 PM

THEY PAVIN'! THEY PAVIN'!!!1

9/1/2010 12:05:57 AM

I saw them out there tonight!

9/1/2010 12:47:43 AM

things were gettin kinda weird from gorman to athens today

i guess it was one lane?

9/1/2010 6:11:09 PM

^ Yep. Last night, I just followed the cones and almost plowed head-on into a line of oncoming cars. Nobody was directing traffic at the time and they had cars going opposite directions in the same lane--in the dark!

9/1/2010 6:16:28 PM

oh yeh....

please tell me they're not putting in a bike lane on avent ferry and gorman at some places... because the road was painted that way... fucking bullshit if they did.

9/1/2010 6:50:37 PM

yup

hopefully, with the aid of a 10-step recovery program, you'll be able to move past it

9/1/2010 7:33:33 PM

what idiots decided that was a good idea?

9/1/2010 7:36:43 PM

my guess would be people who bothered to show up to a city council meeting

9/1/2010 7:39:10 PM

seriously, you are upset that there is a bike lane?

your city is making strides to become a better place for everyone and you still bitch?

its unfortunate that you arent able to see that the addition of bike lanes benefits everyone

9/1/2010 8:22:24 PM

from what i can tell, parts of avent ferry are indeed one lane now... perhaps they will re-draw the lines again, but i dunno... looking kinda permanent from gorman to athens

guess we'll have to wait and see

9/2/2010 9:00:13 AM

Why would anyone be upset over a bike lane?

I guess you hate bikes on the road?

You realize the bike lane makes it safer and easier for everyone, right?

9/2/2010 9:12:09 AM

If the bike lane took out a lane of traffic, I'd be pissed.

Not saying it will, but wdprice3 and marko's posts combined make it sound like that might be happening at least for a bit. Realistically if they add a bike lane without widening the road, that's going to be trouble.

[Edited on September 2, 2010 at 9:20 AM. Reason : .]

9/2/2010 9:20:12 AM

Traffic west of Gorman is pretty light

[Edited on September 2, 2010 at 9:24 AM. Reason : and Gorman to Athens is like half a mile]

9/2/2010 9:22:07 AM

1.) The bike lanes are very limited in length and have no real destinations, they were just put somewhere, which will be a failure.
2.) I don't hate bike lanes/bikers in the road, in fact, they're great... when properly designed and placed, which these lanes were not.
3.) Unless a road is experiencing decreasing ADT, then you should never decrease the capacity of the road. Such an example is Raleigh, a growing area... road capacities need to stay the same or increase, not be decreased for bike lanes... in a few years, we'll see those bike lanes changed back.
4.) Those areas are not known for heavy biking, thus the demand does not justify it either.
5.) Just throwing away lanes and putting in bike lanes doesn't make a city better or safer for everyone, it just doesn't
6.) If they really wanted bike lanes, the should've painted the traffic lanes a little narrower and possible have gotten rid of one of the sidewalks. You just don't take away traffic lanes in busy areas.

9/2/2010 9:34:39 AM

^agreed on all counts. It's pretty freaking stupid to install a bike lane for a 1/2 mile stretch. I really don't see what that accomplishes.

9/2/2010 10:55:18 AM

Quote :

"seriously, you are upset that there is a bike lane? your city is making strides to become a better place for everyone and you still bitch? its unfortunate that you arent able to see that the addition of bike lanes benefits everyone"

It's unfortunate that you can't see that sometimes they don't.

9/2/2010 3:40:59 PM

jeeze louise that bike lane on gorman is just a bear... people don't want to wait to get in the far lane when the actual road starts crossing avent ferry (going towards the 40 exits) so they're just loading up in the bike lane... i don't know the laws about all that, but can you get a ticket for driving in the bike lane?

there's no way they're gonna be able to keep people out of it unless they construct an actual barrier

and i hope people start getting used to avent ferry/athens split going towards lake johnson, because right now, there's a HUGE portion of people getting in that right lane, then realizing that they have get into the left lane to go straight

it was that way before they tore up the road, but the way the road sat, it seemed to be much more obvious that you weren't supposed to go straight

the relearning curve on these roads seems to be just as wacky for some of this traffic as the hillsborough street roundabout

9/8/2010 6:56:09 PM

well its because the only lane on avent ferry leads into the right turn lane, shit you have to drive over that bike lane in the middle to make it into the straight lane

9/10/2010 12:58:59 AM

^ You mean what I'm calling The Bike Lane to Nowhere? The lane simply ends at the fork of Avent Ferry Road and Athens Drive. There's nowhere for a cyclist to go from there except back into the road--or onto the sidewalk--because there's hardly any curb along that section of Avent Ferry near Athens Drive High School.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to bikeways--and I swear I'm not trying to make this political--but this design is right in the wheelhouse of left-wing urban planners. After all, bikeways and other segregated cycle facilities are one way to add to your overall energy efficiency plan. See Davis, California, as the model of what some planners would like to achieve ("25 percent of all passenger miles, as opposed to 2 percent statewide, are made by bicycle").

Hell, just read the "North Carolina State University Physical Master Plan" in which "pedestrian-friendly" seems to be regarded as the highest state of being. The idea is to discourage and even punish use of vehicles powered by C02-producing internal combustion engines.

And we're not the only ones having trouble with this sort of thing:

Controversial Vancouver bike lane will be scrapped if failure says councillor
September 9, 2010



http://tinyurl.com/29huay9

Again, I am not fundamentally opposed to bikeways. I am opposed to (1) the design of the bike lanes in question and (2) that these bike lanes took away two automobile lanes.

9/10/2010 3:36:43 AM

I'm still trying to figure out what they're doing with the turn lane at the Western intersection. They've painted the lines to take away that right turn in lane to the Avent Ferry dorm area, so there's just a super wide area of left turn lane at the stop light. I think somebody fucked that up.

9/10/2010 7:57:37 AM

^^this

9/10/2010 8:46:13 AM

i have now seen people turn left out of food lion and ride in the middle turn lane all the way down to the entrance of lake park

9/10/2010 11:42:04 AM

^ Don't worry. Pretty soon some planning organization or related group will give the designers an award for how great the road is.

9/10/2010 12:48:27 PM

Quote :

"Traffic west of Gorman is pretty light"

In the past not between 5 and 6 when it became an absolute clusterfuck with buses switching lanes, people pulling into the turn lanes poorly and cutting off traffic.

[Edited on September 10, 2010 at 1:47 PM. Reason : .]

9/10/2010 1:41:04 PM

well, i still wish that they hadn't made the lanes go from 2 to 1 after the avent ferry/gorman intersection, because now it lends itself to the same amount of asshattery that occurs going towards campus on gorman/hillsborough after arby's

but i will give it to them for restructuring the lines just before you get to athens drive so that it's more defined that that lane becomes right only

10/13/2010 12:01:30 PM

^yeah whoever decided that was a good idea needs to be beat with a rubber hose.

"Hey guyzzz, I've got a great idea. Let's reduce the capacity of this road...just for the hell of it."

10/13/2010 1:10:25 PM

i've heard that they're going to put bike lanes in East Chatham and SE Maynard in Cary

i wonder if this is about to happen again

10/13/2010 1:16:24 PM

So the avent ferry is no longer 2 lanes each way from Gorman to Athens?

10/13/2010 1:24:07 PM

nope.

10/13/2010 1:40:17 PM

Avent Ferry Biker Count:

In Bike Lane: 0
In Roadway: 1
On Sidewalk: 5

10/13/2010 1:42:56 PM

While we're on the road construction topic, does anyone have a clue when the I-40 widening project will be complete? Seems like traffic on I-40 has been getting especially bad the last 1-2 months.

I NEED RELIEF

10/13/2010 4:11:10 PM

the glare on that new Avent Ferry surface is something truly special

[Edited on October 21, 2010 at 8:59 AM. Reason : it greets me in the morning and on the ride home]

10/21/2010 8:58:14 AM