Rehoboth bike plan shifts into high gear

Rehoboth Beach citizens are set to get a second look at a citywide master plan to improve walking and cycling in the city.

Consultant Delaware Greenways will hold a public meeting at 10 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 18, in the city commissioners’ room to present recommendations for improving biking and walking throughout the city.

Key proposals in the plan are two new bridges across Silver Lake, one that would replace the Bayard Avenue bridge with a wider bridge to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act; the other a 150-foot bridge linking Stockley Avenue Extended and Silver Lake Park.

In a public workshop in November, citizens identified the lack of an east-west bike route  other than Rehoboth Avenue as the No. 1 challenge to be addressed by the plan.

To remedy that, the centerpiece of the plan is the concept of “bicycle boulevards," low-speed, low-traffic streets that bicycles and cars will share. Bicycle boulevards, which have been implemented in cities such as Portland, Ore., use existing city streets to give cyclists easy access to various destinations without traveling on roads with heavy vehicle traffic. Bike boulevards are typically designated by road signs or street markings.

In the case of Rehoboth Beach, the city’s streets and transportation committee was looking for alternatives to keep the majority of bicyclists off Rehoboth and Bayard avenues. Project manager Jeff Greene of Delaware Greenways said these two streets were identified as the most heavily traveled and least bike-friendly streets in the city.

Greene said if implemented, Rehoboth would be the first city on the East Coast to have bicycle boulevards.

He said the committee would look at ways to implement bicycle boulevards on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Among the streets Greene has designated in early drafts of the plan are King Charles Avenue, Lake Drive, Oak Avenue and Scarborough Avenue.

“They’re pretty much the glue that is going to hold our plan together,” Greene said.

He said bike boulevards were favored over more bicycle lanes because there aren’t many streets in Rehoboth where bike lanes could be designated.

The plan calls for several streets to be reconfigured to accommodate bicycles, including the bridge over the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal leading into town. The plan calls for narrowing the lane going into town and the two lanes going out of town to 12 feet each and putting in a 5-foot bike lane on each side.

Also recommended is a new connection between Country Club Estates and the Schoolvue area, now connected only by a narrow pedestrian bridge, which Greene called the "Turtle Bridge.”

He said right now, the only remedy for bicyclists is to walk their bikes across, but in the long-term, the plan recommends building a new, more bike-friendly bridge. The existing bridge would stay, but a second, 150-foot bridge would be built between Stockley Street Extended and Silver Lake Park, linking with the planned bike boulevard on Stockley Street in Country Club Estates.

Greene said the city could buy a predesigned, package structure that could be assembled quickly at a low cost, although Greene could not provide cost estimates.

In November, citizens identified the Bayard Avenue Bridge over Silver Lake as a problem area for bicyclists and pedestrians. The bridge has 3-foot wide sidewalks on each side, but no designated bike lane. As a remedy, Greene proposed relocating the sidewalks to one side of the bridge creating a 6-foot sidewalk on one side. Bicyclists would have to walk their bikes across the bridge, but the wider sidewalk would comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ultimately, he said, a new bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly bridge would have to be built.

“There really isn’t another solution. The bridge has got to go for it to be bicycle and pedestrian friendly,” Greene said.

Commissioner reaction

Commissioner Pat Coluzzi said the concepts in the plan, such as bicycle boulevards, are a way to make bicycling safer and easier for citizens and visitors.

“People want to be able to be ride their bikes safely," Coluzzi said. "There’s people who ride bicycles in town, and they don’t know where they can ride safely. And when you see kids riding on Rehoboth Avenue with their parents, I think its pretty scary.”

Commissioner Mark Hunker said the plan addresses some legitimate safety concerns for bikers in the city.

Mayor Sam Cooper didn’t seem as convinced.

“People come here to get away from a lot of this stuff, the regimentation of signage and all that. It’s a problem for three months,” he said. “I don’t think the bicycling is as horrible as some people are making it out in Rehoboth or that we need all these huge changes to make it better.”

Greene said the streets and transportation committee would set priorities for improvements at a future meeting, although it is the city commissioners who will determine what parts of the plan are implemented.