Central Ave bike lanes

This morning on my way to work, the city of Phoenix surprised me with a gift: freshly painted bike lanes on Central Ave for the one mile between Bethany Home and Camelback Rd. Here's the relevant AZ Central article, complete with the usual user-comment trolling that accompanies any article about bicycle infrastructure in this city.

I welcome this change. The addition of this one mile stretch of bike privilege increases the total distance I travel by bike lane during my morning commute to 1.3 miles. That's more than a 300% increase. Way to go, Phoenix!

Seriously though, if someone had asked me where to install one mile of bike lanes anywhere on my morning commute, this is exactly the mile I would have suggested. From my (admittedly subjective) perspective, it's the busiest, nastiest stretch of Central Ave anywhere between the Mountain Preserve and downtown. North of Bethany Home, Central Ave drivers are polite and patient. South of Camelback, they may be less polite and less patient, but the inclusion of light rail infrastructure chokes traffic and generally befuddles a lot of drivers, with the end result that they drive slower and more cautiously. But for the one mile between Bethany Home and Camelback, drivers are jerks. Were jerks. Now, with the addition of the bike lanes, drivers are choked there, too. Way to go, Phoenix!

This isn't to say I favor the outright choking of drivers—not even literally. Rather, I favor road design that encourages consistent driving, and if that means slowing traffic in one spot to match the speeds driven in the surrounding spots, then so be it. Hopefully the city then compensates for the change by quickening traffic somewhere else, say on the parallel-running 7th St and 7th Ave roads, to encourage northbound and southbound motorists to take those roads instead of Central Ave. Those two roads are already unsafe for cyclists, so we may as well squeeze through a few more cars on them.

While I can't imagine the addition of bike lanes ever making a road less safe for cyclists, I often imagine better ways to calm traffic or force drivers to pay more attention. But I'll take the new bike lanes on Central Ave.