Milwaukee's Department of Public Works (DPW) says it's studying how things are going with a traffic flow design that's a first in the area.
About a mile-long section of Edgewood Ave., just north of the UW-Milwaukee campus, now has just one lane for cars in the middle of the street. Engineers are counting on drivers to slow down and steer into unoccupied bike lanes to avoid motor vehicle collisions.
Edgewood Ave. is at the border between Milwaukee and Shorewood. The road runs from Lake Dr. to about Oakland Ave. There are two intersections along the way, with stop signs.
If you want the perspective of a frequent bicyclist who likes the new street design, it would hard to find a more enthusiastic supporter than Shorewood attorney Sandie Pendleton.
While riding bikes with Pendleton, WUWM asked about the recent repaving of Edgewood.
"It is a very nice new smooth street. It doesn't have the potholes. It doesn’t have any of the cracks that were previously making this street unpleasant for drivers, and unsafe for bike riders," he replied.
But after repaving, the traffic lines that were painted on the pavement were a first for the region. Solid white lines mark parking lanes each way at the sides of the street. Just inside those are dashes, arrows and bike symbols that mark a bike lane each way.
Then, in the middle of the road, there's a lane plenty wide for one motor vehicle, but not two. Traffic engineers say drivers heading for each other will slow down if there's a biker to his or her right and wait for the other vehicle to adjust. If the bike or parking lanes are clear, the hope is drivers will veer into those lanes to avoid a head-on collision, or sideswiping the other car.
At one point riding with Pendleton in the westbound bike lane, a car comes up behind us. He describes what happens.
"Got a car behind us. Pulled over behind us, and the other car went by and now this car's going to go by us. So, that's working. My subjective view, my subjective observation, at least near my house is the street is doing what they intend the street to do. That is, traffic's slowing down, and drivers are becoming more attentive."
Milwaukee is not the first city to try the design that's called advisory bike lanes, or edge lane roads. UW-Milwaukee Urban Planning Professor Robert Schneider says a few other U.S. communities are trying it on lower volume, lower speed streets. He says the key concepts are reducing vehicle speeds, and to have users of the street pay more attention to each other.
"Having opportunities for different users to see each other and react to each other creates that slower speed, more interactive environment, which is ultimately, hopefully, safe for all users. And, we do have some evidence from the study from San Jose State [University] that typically these designs result in fewer crashes," Schneider says.
That study reports a 44% decrease in crashes on the edge lane roads.
There have been some early critics of the new Edgewood Ave. design. A conservative news website calls it "insane." And, just over a month ago, Channel 58 aired this quote from Milwaukee County Judge David Borowski, who lives near Edgewood.
"Just in the last couple of days, I've seen cars driving right at each other — basically playing a game of chicken — and then having to pull over into the bike lane. It's terribly designed from my standpoint," Borowski told the television station.
WUWM later tried to connect with Borowski through his courtroom staff. The judge did not call us back.
Additional signage for Edgewood users has been posted. A spokesperson for Milwaukee DPW says speed and crash data are being collected, but declined to release any.
For those who don't like even the idea of advisory bike lanes, UW-Milwaukee Professor Schneider says there are limits: "It's not going to work on a very high-volume arterial street.
But Sandie Pendleton says it works on Edgewood, and he appeals to the collective community intelligence.
"Are people in this area, the UWM area, Shorewood, East Side, are we more stupid than people in Madison, Minneapolis and Boston? Are we so stupid we can't figure out how to use streets like this that they have? I don't think so," Pendleton says, adding that "time will tell."
