Angry bicyclists met at the Westcott Community Center Tuesday night to discuss the need for bicycle lanes in the Syracuse area.

Mayor Matt Driscoll said in a statement read at the meeting he believes, with weather permitting, bicycle lanes will be added to connect South Campus to main campus within the next two weeks, and hopes to have bicycle lanes added to Euclid Avenue in three to four weeks.

Engineers have been doing research on where to appropriately put the bike lanes, and have been studying traffic patterns since the second week of September, he said.

With increasing fuel costs, many are turning to bicycles as a means of transportation, making the bicycle lanes more necessary than ever.

Congress recently passed a transportation bill titled Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, which grants $370 million to the Recreational Trails Program, where at least 30 percent is meant for non-motorized trails.

Bicycle activist Nancy Karraker, a doctoral student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has been protesting in favor of bicycle lanes for four years, and is optimistic about this new transportation bill.

Karraker said she feels bike lanes are important especially around the university area because many students ride bikes, and there needs to be better safety for the students.

A problem with the bicycle lanes would be students would no longer be able to park their cars on the streets outside of their houses on Euclid Avenue. Each house on Euclid Avenue typically has three or four cars, instead of the traditional one or two the driveways are meant to hold, forcing students to park on the street, said John Murray, a member of the Syracuse Onondaga Cycling Coalition.

Paul Salvatore Mercurio, a landscape architecture graduate student at SUNY-ESF, said he believes ‘we have enough spaces for cars to park elsewhere,’ so parking should not be the issue.

Mercurio is strictly a driver, but has two friends who have been hit on their bicycles just this year, one resulting in broken fingers.

John Murray’s proposal for the bicycle lanes on Euclid Avenue is 4 feet for a bike lane on each side of the street, 11 feet for a car lanes and 8 feet for car parking eastbound.

This compromise gives students an opportunity to park their cars on the east side of the road, and there will be room for bicycle lanes, car lanes and parking spaces.

As far as plowing goes, Murray said there will be ‘a certain period of time each week where parking is not allowed on the street,’ so they can plow efficiently.

Another problem is cyclists need to be given an education about riding. It was suggested that arrows in the bike lanes would direct the cyclists in the right direction, to prevent them from riding in the wrong direction.

Since Councilor Bill Simmons of the 5th Council District was elected, he has been actively trying to help bicycle coalitions to get bike lanes. He said he believes meetings such as last night are ‘the beginning of a long and important process,’ but feels it is a necessary process at that.

Published on October 25, 2005 at 12:00 pm