This post originally appeared on the Detroitography:
The Detroit Green Task Force visited Philadelphia earlier this year to learn from that city’s sustainability efforts. The group included city councilmembers, department directors, sustainability advocates and others. As co-chair of the GTF Transportation and Mobility committee (and executive director of the Detroit Greenways Coalition), my focus was learning what they did best in helping people use green travel modes.
One big takeaway was Philly had a very decent bike network in their Center City — a sharp contrast with Downtown Detroit, which only has the Cass bike lanes and RiverWalk.
It got us to thinking what would a bike network look like in Detroit?
We came up with this vision map. The solid lines are existing bike lanes, though we did fudge things to include the forthcoming bike lanes on Michigan Avenue east of Cass. We also could have made Wilkins and Grand River solid but those bike lanes need some improvement.All of the dashed lines are proposed bike lanes. Some could get built in the near-term, too:
- MDOT will be constructing Hastings and Montcalm as part of the I-375 Reconnecting Communities project.
- MDOT has initial designs for Gratiot Avenue.
- DDP has plans to build an Adams cycletrack.
- A portion of the Second Avenue is getting built with the Water Square and Huntington Place improvement project.
What about Woodward? It should have bike lanes, but of course the curb-running Q Line makes that much more difficult.
What are your thoughts? Would building out this bike lane network help you get around Downtown Detroit?