LITTLE ROCK — Diane McConnell is an avid bicyclist.
The 65-year-old Little Rock resident goes on self guided bicycle camping tours and leads others on bicycle excursions around the city to spread her love of two wheels and the breeze in her face.
McConnell was in a coma after being hit by a car attempting to pass her bicycle on a sharp curve on Kavanaugh Boulevard in the Heights. According to her friends, McConnell was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital, where she underwent surgery to stop a brain hemorrhage and where she remains in the intensive care unit.
Her friends and fellow bicycle advocates gathered Tuesday at Little Rock City Hall with a petition of almost 1,000 signatures to ask the Board of Directors and mayor to make bicycle safety a priority for the city’s streets.
The conversation between the bicycle community and city officials on how to make traveling on two wheels as safe as traveling on four wheels has been ongoing for months, if not years. Bicycle advocates say that the city has fulfilled promises to increase recreational opportunities and safety on bicycle trails, but has not moved at the same speed to make commuting by bicycle safer.
The nonprofit Bicycle Advocacy of Central Arkansas started the petition soon after McConnell’s Nov. 10 accident, asking the city to install “sharrows,” decals of stick figure bicyclists wearing helmets with arrows pointing toward the flow of traffic. The symbols don’t change traffic flow or limit access for cars or bicycles to certain lanes, but they ask all travelers to be aware of one another and keep in mind they must share the road.
“We have been told that those have been green-lighted and fast-tracked,” Tim McKuin, president of Bicycle Advocacy, said during the city board’s public-comment session Tuesday. “We in the city’s cycling community see safe streets as a necessity for safety in the city. A lot of times bikes get treated as recreation or a hobby, but if we make safety a priority instead of a luxury, then it will be easier for everyone to make healthy choices.”
The accident happened as McConnell was returning home after attending the Pop-Up Main Street event - a festival-style celebration highlighting a mock-up of a design concept for the future of South Main Street with more pedestrian-, bicycle- and business-friendly features. The organizers of that event spoke in favor of the petition this week.
According to the police report, the driver of the car was tested for sobriety and witness statements corroborated that the crash appeared to be an accident exacerbated by the stretch of the road where it happened. No charges have been filed in the accident.
While bicycle advocates are lamenting that McConnell’s accident had to happen at all, they are asking the city to move the conversation forward more quickly, with sharrows being the first priority.
The sharrow symbols don’t create a dedicated bicycle lane or prohibit cars from using any space in the roadway, officials said Wednesday.
“According to Arkansas law, bicyclists have the right to be on most roads other than the interstates, and the symbols serve as a reminder to bicyclists as well as drivers that they should be aware of each other and share the road accordingly,” said Assistant City Manager Bryan Day.
Day said the city is fast tracking ordering the sharrows and engineering the street to determine where they should be placed along Kavanaugh Boulevard between Markham Street and University Avenue. Generally accepted transportation planning guidelines say they should be spaced about 200 feet apart and should not be installed in the parking lanes or door zones.
Because installing the signs will be a new procedure for the city, Day said the city is working through the bidding process and will put that order out for bid once the engineering staff determines how many decals the city will need for Kavanaugh Boulevard and where they should be placed.
He said the first of the decals should be in place by the end of the year or early next year.
Other streets should soon follow behind Kavanaugh Boulevard, he said.
“We’ve agreed to look at stretches of Markham Street and study whether the sharrows would be appropriate,” he said. “I think in the next few weeks Mr. McKuin is gathering a group of advocates to discuss the most used thoroughfares east to west and north to south for bicycle traffic, so we can figure out the best roadways to study for this next step.”
Day said some roads are easily identified like Fair Park Boulevard or Mabelvale Pike, which connect at Asher Avenue, but other bicycle thoroughfares may not be as easy to identify without a conversation with the bicycle groups.
Other discussion on bicycle safety has centered on education about traffic laws and bicycle rules such as not riding bicycles on sidewalks, obeying traffic signals that apply to cars such as stop signs and red lights, and teaching drivers to treat bicyclists like cars in terms of passing them.
“Further discussions are going to happen. The mayor and the city manager have made this a priority issue. It’s something they’ve put a lot of effort into and something they will continue to work on,” Day said.
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 11/23/2012