Agenda item D.1. tomorrow states there will be a staff report for possible action on completing a “Virginia Street Urban Placemaking Study in an amount not to exceed $150,000.” This has come to the angry surprise of some local bicycling enthusiasts who fear it will conflict with previous studies starting to pave the way for a Center street bike lane linking Midtown to UNR.
The Truckee Meadows Bicycle Alliance is organizing an urgent meeting tonight at 6 p.m. at Craft wine and beer on Martin Street to discuss strategy ahead of Wednesday’s public comments. Free "Save Center Street Cycletrack" tee-shirts will also be handed out.
“As a reminder, we will be attending the Reno City Council Meeting tomorrow at 9:30 AM to oppose Item D.1, a place-making study of downtown which the RTC [Regional Transportation Commission] has used as a reason to slow progress on the protected Center Street Cycletrack,” its latest statement reads.
The message by the alliance’s current president Ky Plaskon says there is no opposition to having bike lanes on Virginia Street, but rather is against “the pause on a priority project, the diversion of funds from the Center Street Cycletrack for use on road improvement and using funds for studying another street that has already been studied. We are proposing to ask the City Council to oppose the placemaking study and send a message to City Staff and RTC to get the Cycletrack project rolling again and stop increasing costs.”
There have been other road projects to make Reno more bike friendly, but many have been slow going or didn’t meet initial expectations, such as here in Midtown. Many cyclists still feel unsafe biking in many parts of town. Photo by Richard Bednarski.
An earlier message by Manny Becerra published on the alliance’s website put the blame on casinos. “Unfortunately, the City and RTC have put a pause on the approved project at the urging of The Row Casinos to study a bike path on Virginia street instead,” he alleged in a written statement. “This is causing months and even years of delays. That is despite the concept of a bike path on Virginia having already been studied in April 2019. Special event closures and traffic on Virginia led to a dismissal of the idea of a bike path on Virginia Street because it would “cause unacceptable traffic operations throughout the corridor”. Still, the City and RTC are going to spend $150,000 on a public opinion survey to study it again, putting months and even years of delays on this project.”
Efforts to establish better bike lanes in downtown areas go years back, frustrating many cyclists.
This week’s Barber Brief quoting a recent Reno News and Review article stated an attorney for downtown casinos known as The ROW Michael Pagni “expressed the company’s desire to have the protected bike lanes moved to Virginia Street, calling it “a more appropriate corridor” and arguing that “Virginia Street provides greater access to retail and other business uses which are likely to be frequented by bicyclists,” among other advantages.
The Brief then goes into a longer analysis of the overall future of Virginia street, encumbering perhaps the excruciatingly slow pedaling in getting more bike lanes in needed corridors to turn Reno into a safer, greener, more bike-friendly Biggest Little City.