Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday approved a plan that will shape bicycle safety and infrastructure priorities for the next five years.
A vote “yes” meant the city was adopting the vision of the plan, but it did not commit the commission to future spending or specific projects, said Jessica Mortinger, transportation planning manager for the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Organization.
“The bike plan doesn’t call for future facilities because we’re doing a system plan,” Mortinger said. “We have to look at the entire network, and we’re looking … from the vision of what the bicycling community envisions for that need.”
The plan was the product of a steering committee and many meetings, and it’s an update to the previously approved 2019 plan. Having a current plan adopted is also necessary for the city and county to receive state and federal funding for certain projects.
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Mortinger said that as the city gets into project selection to choose bikeways, there are a lot of other tradeoffs and values that have to be considered.
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Mayor Brad Finkeldei said some residents have asked the city to designate protected bikeways on Kentucky and Tennessee streets. He asked if it would be appropriate at this planning stage to include that in this plan or if that would be for future consideration.
“We really haven’t felt that’s appropriate because we are not, at a system level, able to do the due diligence that’s needed for design and engineering work or planning,” Mortinger said. It’s also a question of timing, and those particular roads are a challenge because the plan doesn’t identify them as part of the priority or secondary network for increased funding in the long-range vision for bikeability.
In response to a question from Commissioners Amber Sellers, Mortinger said state and federal grants have favored bikeway projects that improve safety, help to improve high-injury road networks and reduce vehicle miles driven, making bicycles more of an option for transportation.
Several members of the public spoke to the commission, most in favor of approving the plan.
Throughout the discussion, some members of the public and Vice Mayor Mike Courtney raised concerns about e-bikes and how to regulate them — particularly the issue of e-bike riders going at high speeds on sidewalks.
Mortinger said the market is delivering devices faster than some of them can be regulated, though there is some guidance in standard traffic ordinances and state statutes. The city is also reviewing some recent policy recommendations from the Mid-America Regional Council, she said.
“I think that’s going to have to be a continued conversation because I think the bicycles or the mobility devices that have unregulated speed are going to be an increasing concern for safety, and iteration of trying to figure out how we coexist in this space in a safe way and all work together,” Mortinger said.
Commissioner Mike Dever spoke highly of Mortinger and her work on the plan. He also said, in response to Courtney, that as an e-bike owner, “I don’t want you regulating me out of the use of the shared-use paths.”
“I think there’s a reasonable way to share the road, and I’ve been doing it for over four years,” Dever said. “But I also see the threat of unregulated and ungoverned speeds on these newer devices.” He said he thinks the plan successfully discusses the different classes of e-bikes.
In regard to gathering data for future projects, Dever and Courtney both suggested possible use of artificial intelligence to analyze data from counters or filter a video stream to see how many people are riding bikes in certain areas.
Finkeldei, Courtney, Sellers and Dever voted to approve the bikes plan. Commissioner Kristine Polian was not present.
See the now-approved draft plan at this link.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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