New protected bike lane has people parking in this Fresno street. It’s causing drama

Earlier this month, the city of Fresno installed a new protected bike lane along a stretch of Van Ness Avenue running through the Tower District.

The work was done with posted notice, but with little other fanfare.

And almost immediately, it was met with confusion and frustration.

“We had no clue,” says Chris Eacock, who runs Tower Velo, a bicycle repair shop on Van Ness Avenue between Olive and McKinley avenues.

“So, we couldn’t explain it to anyone before it arrived.”

Some explanation is needed.

Protected bike lanes in Fresno

Protected bike lanes are like regular bike lanes, except they use planters, curbs, flexible posts or — as is the case on Van Ness — parked cars, as a physical barrier between bicyclists and traffic. That separation is designed to give riders a feeling of safety, but also offers definitive demarcation of where bicyclists should be riding.

The lane on Van Ness is considered a Class IV Cycle Track.

Bicyclists ride closest to curb, with parking moved out toward the middle of the street in spots designated by white lines and plastic bollards.

Those bollards have only been installed on a small section of the new bike lane, near Van Ness and Olive Avenue.

There isn’t any signage to help inform drivers and bike riders, either.

To accommodate the new format, the street was from taken two lanes down to one and the amount of parking in front houses and businesses was reduced. The results have been visually jarring and somewhat confusing for drivers as they try to figure out exactly where to park.

“It is a little weird parking your car in the middle of the street,” Eacock says.

He admits there was a gut reaction the first time he had to park in front of his shop and away from the curb, but he adds most of his customers haven’t had any issues.

Violations for parking within protected bike lanes?

On Tuesday afternoon, several cars along Van Ness — including Eacock’s — were parked in the proper spots, left of the bike lane. But others were still parked along the curb in the bike lane, especially in the residential areas and north of McKinley Avenue near Fresno City College.

In those spots, bicyclists were forced to navigate around cars, which is far from being protected and actually puts them at risk, as was pointed out on social media.

But those drivers parking in the bike lane won’t be getting ticketed.

In response to outcry from residents in the area, the city is already redesigning the bike lane along Van Ness to include more parking for residents and businesses.

“We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion the new bike lanes may have caused you and we ask you trust we are diligently working on a bike lane that is better fit for our community,” the city wrote in a letter to residents.

The city hasn’t said exactly what those changes will be, or when they will be completed, but “residents and business owners can expect more road construction in the coming weeks while we remedy the parking issue.”

In the meantime, the city says parking restrictions along the curb are relaxed until the project is completed.

Where are Fresno’s protected bike lanes?

Protected bike lanes aren’t new.

Similar bike paths are used in cities across the world to help protect bicyclists, but also make biking more accessible. New York City announced it would add 250 miles of protected bike lanes in 2019 after 25 cyclists were killed the prior year. After buffered bike lanes were installed in Philadelphia, bike traffic increased 95% and the number of people biking on the sidewalks fell by 22%, according to data from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

“It isn’t like the city just invented this out of thin air,” Eacock says.

In fact, Fresno has been working on installing protected bike lanes since at least 2020, when council members unveiled a plan that would add them along Palm Avenue from Dakota to H Street. The hope was to eventually have protected bike lanes connecting downtown to north Fresno.

The city actually installed its first protected bike lane on R Street between Ventura Street and Tulare Street last year. Pictures of those lanes, along with a fairly comprehensive review is available on the blog site Stop and Move. There is also a class IV lane on Maple Avenue from Gettysburg to Shaw.

This story was originally published September 24, 2022 at 5:30 AM.