| Bicycle Watchdog Hounding authorities to make your ride safer! |
It's something I find enjoyable. Whether it is a road bike or mountain bike or tandem bike. I enjoy riding a bike. - Lance Armstrong
|
|
|
||
|
It's something I find enjoyable. Whether it is a road bike or mountain bike or tandem bike. I enjoy riding a bike. - Lance Armstrong |
|||
|
|
|||
Login/Register
|
Hazard Report #158
|
|||||
|
Status: Active Location: Both sides of 96th street between McKinley and Steele Description: There are multiple trees overhanging to bike lane. Most are too low and/or too wide. One actually covers the entire lane and reaches down to about one foot off the ground. Most are high enough to walk under but too low to ride under unless crouched down. This is an extreme hazard. While passing under one last week, a limb caught my helmet mounted headlight and ripped it off my helmet. I nearly crashed. Cross Streets: McKinley ave. E. to Steele st. S. Direction: West Facility Type: Bike Lane City: Lakewood County: Pierce State: WA Lat/Long: 47.17012, -122.436646 Geocoded? Location has been entered Hazard Type: Plants Hazard Level: 4 - Major (fix before someone gets hurt!) Annoyance Level: 4 - Extremely Annoying Incidents: 2 - Bicycle damage Report Date: 2008-10-02 Reported by: James Daly[112] Last Modified by: [1] Last Modified Date: 2008-10-14 Modes Affected: Bicyclist Start Date: 2008-05-01 End Date: 0000-00-00 |
 |
|
Recommendation: Trim the trees and inform property owners of their obligations to keep them trimmed in the future. Comments: On that stretch of road, the trees were planted between the roadway and the sidewalk, every 80 to 100 feet or so, on both sides of the road, presumably by whatever road department is responsible for that area. So it would be about every third property line. It would be impossible to narrow down unless we wanted to handle it one block at a time or something similar. About two or three months ago, I sent emails to the Road Maintenance Departments of Tacoma and Pierce County. Tacoma said it was Pierce County's area. Pierce County said a short stretch, on one side of the road was theirs and the rest was Tacoma's. A couple days later the fellow from Pierce County emailed me again stating that he drove through the area and agreed that it needed to be dealt with. He said he would send letters to the addresses in his area. Within the next two weeks, the single worst tree was trimmed back. Unfortunately, that leaves about 100 trees that need to be trimmed. This seems to be one of those situations where the government decides to beautify an area and then expects the property owners to maintain the trees. The property owners will not do it because there is a sidewalk separating their yard from the tree and, they did not plant the tree. One day these trees will be tall enough that they won't be a problem. Right now, most are tall enough to walk under so they don't appear to be in need of trimming. However, they are too low to ride under. This means that to use the bike lane I would have ride into and out of the traffic lane every 100 feet or so. I find it safer to just stay in the traffic lane. This keeps me very popular with the motorists. The next time my helmet catches a limb though, I may not be so fortunate. I may end up falling in front of car. Another unfortunate side effect is that when the street sweeper sweeps this area, they go around most of the trees too. This leaves a lot of debris that never gets taken care of. I don't know if this helps but, I really wouldn't know where to begin to try to narrow it down. I guess I could just start at one end and go down block by block. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Log: geocoded (just picked a spot in the middle of the stretch). Added more specific about the problem******************[11 Oct 2008 16:57:19 EDT] Report edited/modified by: Rebecca Slivka [1] ********************************************************************************** 11 Oct 2008 17:01:27 EDT, Rebecca Slivka [1] comments: [ sent email to Tacoma (pwaintrn@cityoftacoma.org) ] ********** ********************************************************************************** 11 Oct 2008 17:09:49 EDT, Rebecca Slivka [1] comments: [ Submitted to Pierce County (ref #200838097) through their officious webform at http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/cfapps/secure/publicworks/request.cfm ] ********** ********************************************************************************** 14 Oct 2008 15:57:08 EDT, Rebecca Slivka [1] comments: [ Pierce County (Paul Burg) says there are no bike lanes in their section of 96th (east of McKinley)... so it's all the City of Tacoma's problem. ] ****************************[14 Oct 2008 15:57:33 EDT] Report edited/modified by: Rebecca Slivka [1] |
|
back to Top | back to Bicycle Watchdog Home
© 2005
- 2010 Rebecca Slivka, All Rights Reserved
Website design and implementation by
Slivka Consulting
[release 1.5]