A Merge Too Far

I’ve written about the Glendale-Hyperion bridge before on this blog (here and here), but I never really looked hard enough at the problematic merge of the upper and lower decks of the bridge at the northern end.

The bridge will soon be refurbished, and, while some arcane requirement forbids the DOT (or so it claims) from removing any motor lanes, there’s plenty of room to narrow the median and the current lanes to make room for bike lanes. Sharrows might be needed under the Waverly overpass, but overall there’s just enough room. Narrow lanes would likely slow the wack-job drivers who career down the bridge at stupid speeds nowadays too. As the bridge is a direct connection between the bike-rich districts of Silver Lake and Atwater, it is going to be used by bicyclists, and we deserve safe and comfortable facilities as much as motorists, who are so much more wasteful of tax dollars anyway.

The problem lies at the Atwater end of the Glendale bridge: the bridge slopes downhill to Atwater, which, along with overly wide lanes, encourages speeding—and then the two upper bridge lanes merge into the two lower bridge lanes, leaving cyclists with two lanes of speeding cars on either side.

To make it worse, much of the traffic on the lower bridge has just gotten off the freeway, and the drivers’ minds are still stuck in high gear.

I used just to ride the line, looking over my shoulder till I saw a clear space in traffic. But lately I’ve been trying to figure out a way that a casual neighborhood rider could negotiate this same merge, and so I’ve instead been pulling into the little painted triangle just past the sidewalk’s end, stopping, and waiting till I can cross the right lanes in a relaxed and anxiety-free manner. Turning it into a variant of the bike box, as it were.

I have in the past suggested stop signs for the lower road at this point. But now I realize that there’s a solid rationale for putting in a formal crossing there: because not only cyclists but pedestrians use this bridge too—and are pretty much stranded when they come to the end of the sidewalk. Which you will note is not ADA-compliant either!

So, if not stop signs, certainly an elaborated active crosswalk here—the kind that flashes lights in the roadway when someone is about to cross:

With a wheelchair ramp from sidewalk to street, and a painted and bollarded waiting area big enough for a reasonable number of cyclists, pedestrians, and wheelchair users to wait in until the crosswalk lights up and the drivers (one hopes!) stop. A couple of signs on the downslope to let cyclists know that the crosswalk option is there for them. And, of course, signs on the lower roadway to slow down the speed-addled unfortunates pouring out of the freeway offramp.

This would encourage more walking and cycling across the bridge, with no cost to drivers except being urged to obey the laws they so gaily flout right now.