City officials are working toward making Austin's streets more cyclist-friendly.
According to a group of Reddit users in a cycling group local to Austin, the recently built bicycle lanes have fallen short in safety measures for those on two wheels in several places.
"I'll give [the Austin Transportation Department] the benefit of the doubt and assume this was an honest oversight somewhere between planning and implementation," wrote one user with the Reddit username Ekard14. "But this feels like a situation where the crews on the ground should be able to pause work and take this up the chain."
The backlash on Reddit came when a picture of the Morrow bike lane at N. Lamar St. crosses right over a storm sewer drain, giving the cyclist nowhere safe and level to navigate except out onto the street or up onto the pedestrian sidewalk—a "lawsuit waiting to happen," according to the Reddit group.
Another disgruntled user called the unsafe path over the drain "absolutely ridiculous," speculating that the city's Public Works Department failed to send an inspector out before lining the lanes.
"This is a safety hazard and yes, a city lawsuit they clearly want to happen. It's not difficult to set proper bike lanes up," Reddit user Dembo21 vented. "You can literally Google bike-friendly cities, look at the pictures of their infrastructure, and see how it can be implemented here. Texas has A LOT of space for it and has no excuse for poor execution especially since smaller, more crammed cities can make this work."
The bike lanes were added as part of Austin's Vision Zero transportation plan, aimed at eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries on Austin streets. The intersection and pedestrian safety improvements are being paid for by a $15 million voter-approved bond.
The unimpressed response has the city going back to the blueprints for its bike lanes. Austin is redoing the lanes with new markings, estimating the work to take two weeks, weather permitting.
"Austin, we hear you, and we're on it!" the City of Austin Transportation Department said in a tweet. "Many of you reached out with concerns about issues [with] the shared-use paths on a section of Morrow, west of N. Lamar. We are working with our engineer, inspector and contractor crews to better serve people walking and biking at that intersection."