Once You Do The Math, Riverfront Plans Hardly Looks Like a “Complete Street”

Saturday morning we directed your attention to plans to turn IndustrialRiverfront Boulevard into a “complete street,” as it’s being presented to the city council’s Trinity River Corridor Project Committee tomorrow. But as a Friend of Unfair Park pointed out moments ago, at least one group thinks the city’s being disingenuous, at best, by co-opting the phrase. Right, you guessed it: Bike Friendly Oak Cliff is calling bullshit. An excerpt:

There’s nothing equal in the Riverfront renderings. It’s a 6 lanes + 2 turn lanes street with glorified sidewalks being developed as “cycle tracks” for shared bicycle and pedestrian use. In other words, its form is:

Pedestrian/Bicycle, Car, Car, Car, Car, Car, Car, Car, Car, Bicycle/Pedestrian

… What are we trying to enable? Pedestrianization of an area, or automotive through-way? When it’s far easier to drive than it is to walk or bicycle, why attempt another mode? And who exactly would want to walk, or dine, or bicycle beside a 6 lane arterial? When cities like New York are removing cars completely from major roadways, it’s odd that we’d take the opposite stance and shove more vehicles into an area that were trying to bill as people-friendly.