How bike-friendly is Lexington? City has 128 miles of trails. There’s still room to grow.
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Close your eyes and imagine a bicycle lane.
If you pictured those gutters you see on the edge of a street or road, outlined in white or green paint, cycling advocates would say you’ve missed the mark.
“Paint is not protection,” Chicago-area cyclist Christina Whitehouse recently told NPR for a report about a string of cyclist deaths in the city and advocate efforts to push for safer infrastructure.
20 years ago in Lexington, you’d be hard pressed to find even 5 miles of bicycle-dedicated facilities. Now, there’s nearly 128 miles.
“That kind of represents the beginning point,” said Chris Evilia, the transportation planning manager for the Lexington Area Metropolitan Planning Organizing. Evilia spoke with the Herald-Leader about the city’s efforts to improve and build out local cycling infrastructure.
The city has come a long way over the past two decades, but some advocates say there’s still room for improvement.
So how does Lexington’s cycling infrastructure stack up?
A civil engineer’s perspective on Lexington bike infrastructure
We corresponded with Nick Stamatiadis, a Ph.D. and Raymond-Blythe professor of civil engineering at the University of Kentucky for his perspective.
While he acknowledges Lexington’s cycling infrastructure is “lacking” in some respects, Stamatiadis notes the problem isn’t unique to the area.
“There has been a concerted and sustained effort to improve bicycling conditions in the city over the past 20 years,” he said.
He noted the city has tried to connect bike paths and expand the current network. Former and current pedestrian and bike coordinators have also worked to promote expansion and partner with UK on efforts, Stamatiadis said.
Progress has been slow, however.
“There is a bike plan that is being slowly implemented and as all public works it has limited funding and hence it cannot be quickly and fully implemented,” he said.
The expectations of drivers have also been an obstacle, Stamatiadis said.
“Driver culture is lacking in understanding bicyclist mobility needs and space as well as respect for cyclists, but again, this isn’t a Lexington only issue,” he said.
The problem is broader and rooted in how the U.S. designs infrastructure to be too car-dependent, he said.
“There are systematic and systemic efforts to improve infrastructure and this needs to be acknowledged,” Stamatiadis said.
Lexington’s cycling infrastructure: Where do we go from here?
Over the next several months, planners will be making some tweaks to a long-term bicycle-pedestrian master plan originally developed in 2018.
At a minimum, the city wants to create buffered bicycle lanes for certain corridors, Evilia told the Herald-Leader in an interview. However, the city also wants to create separate trails, “especially in some of our high volume corridors.”
Evilia said city planners want to have an ongoing conversation with the community about “complete streets.”
It would not be appropriate, he said, to have a parallel bike lane on every street, but he does want to accommodate everyone.
“What does that look like? We’re just at the very beginning stage of that,” Evilia said.
The city is also conducting the Connect East Lex Trail Study with the aim of joining east Lexington to downtown with a walkable, bike-friendly route. More specifically, the goal is to link the Brighton Trail in Hamburg to the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden Trailhead in downtown Lexington, where the Town Branch and Legacy Trails meet.
Evilia said feedback on that project is currently open and welcomed at connecteastlex.com.
With increased federal funding to build out walking and biking trails, Evilia said local leaders are asking themselves “what are the opportunities to expand our bike-ped network?”
The master plan and the top priorities will continue to be a focus.
“We’re still trying to build out the initial network,” Evilia said.
Do you have a question about recreation in Lexington for our service journalism team? We’d like to hear from you. Fill out the form below or email ask@herald-leader.com.
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 9:50 AM.
