Green line is the new connection (there were no roads through here). Yellow line is new, completed sidewalk. Pink line is proposed sidewalk (survey flags mark it now). Purple lines are quiet street routes to/from Cady Way and Audubon Park. A lot of people prefer to cut through the mall, so that’s an option, but I’m more comfortable on the road. The purple routes use a parking lot cut-through. This has long been used by cyclists and pedestrians to cut into the back of the Target shopping center. It’s private property, so it will never be part of an official route.

The cones are still there, but the concrete is dry and people are already using it. Here are some photos, starting from the East end at Warehouse Rd.

Looking West from Warehouse Rd.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this! This is a connection to Primrose. This will change my route for a number of common trips, especially at high-traffic times.

Here’s the West end, looking toward the Lake Druid Park entrance at the end of Coy St.

Looking back to the East (right). I like that the city has chosen to use the medians rather than bollards. Check out the contrail in the sky. Turns out, this is also a good place to watch a rocket launch (which happened behind my back when I was riding west).

There is more to this project. The city has added an enormous sidewalk along Maguire Blvd. and Warehouse Rd.

This will be great for rollerbladers, wheelchair users and people pushing strollers to connect to Cady Way and the mall.

I hope there is a plan to add good, marked and signalized crosswalks to get across Maguire from this deluxe sidewalk. Right now there is only one crosswalk at the main mall entrance and it has an unreasonably long delay if you don’t catch it at the right point in the cycle. The mall entrance does not line up with any of the roads, so it is not a convenient place to cross if you are coming from Executive Center, Lawton or Woodcock (where there are no marked crosswalks).

There are also no sidewalks on Woodcock or Lawton (people walk in the gutter and wait at the Lynx stops in the grass). But the city’s sidewalk improvement project is underway!

I saw new sidewalks being installed in Audubon Park last week and I was very excited to see a new sidewalk under construction on Executive Center Dr. (right).

Thank you Orlando! This makes a big difference for us!

For more on connectivity, see:

Collaborative Connectivity Project

Making Biking Easier than Driving

Little Big Things 

This is what people want! They want to use quiet, shady streets with light, slow traffic to get to their destinations.

Even though this route is relatively direct, it involves 12 different streets in less than a mile.

Living in Audubon Park, the majority of my local trips are on roads with no traffic. It’s absolutely deluxe! I can get from here to downtown Orlando, Winter Park and Maitland with very little traffic interaction.

The challenge for most people is our convoluted street network—it takes a lot of local knowledge and a good sense of direction to navigate it. The advantage is there is little traffic because the cut-thru motorists can’t figure it out. The disadvantage is, a person without that street knowledge can’t either. Most of my routes involve connecting more than a dozen different streets within 2 miles of my home. It’s become second nature because I do it all the time, but it would be unreasonable to follow a map or cue sheet with such frequent turns.

The map image (above right) links to a google map with two quiet street routes from Cady Way to College Park. These are among several perfect corridors for wayfinding. I use both of these frequently, choosing the one that comes closest to my final destination. These routes offer features that make cycling a superior experience:

• They are shady and quiet, free of the noise and frustration of traffic (traffic frustration being more of a factor in my car than on my bike).
• They offer lots of opportunity for community interaction with humans walking dogs, jogging or just out in their yards. I have usually exchanged friendly greetings with 3 or 4 people within 2 miles of leaving home. I place a high value on that.
• I see very few cars, even at rush hour. The motorists I do see are typically friendly and will exchange a wave and smile as readily as anyone. We’re all operating in space that is understood to be human.
• Amazingly, both routes are only 1/10th of a mile longer than the arterial route. While they have more turns, they also have fewer traffic lights. For someone traveling at 10-15mph (regardless of the road’s speed limit), it’s faster to add a tenth of a mile if you’re subtracting 5 red lights.

This could be a powerful tool to promote cycling. Due to our lack of connectivity, we’d also need better permeability to complete a truly useful network of preferred routes. But we’re working on that, too.

Previous posts on this topic:

Little Big Things

A Slow Street Movement

Connecting roads less traveled.. and finding shade

Strategic trail connections can make biking easier than driving

Connect the Quiet Streets

Yesterday, I had the time and was thinking about it, so Lisa and I rode up there to solve the mystery.

There is, in fact, a path connecting the two roads. But someone has strung a metal cable across it. Here are some photos:

It would be possible for a skilled mountain biker to jump over the concrete curb, but we carried our bikes through. The cable across the path begs the question, “why?” Is this private property or is there some public right-of-way there? If there is right-of-way, what would it take to create a bike/walk connection? It would be useful (specifically at rush hour) to be able to cross Corrine at the Palm/Bumby traffic light.