NewUrbanStreets

The City of Houston’s Department of Public Works and Engineering converted a parking and vehicular lane to a dedicated bike lane as you see here. The lane is “isolated” from the vehicular lane by the long stripped dome shapes that we Texans–not surprisingly–call armadillos.

Note the special signage as well as the special traffic signals for bike riders. Look closely at the red lens as it shows a red bike rider.

I also noticed at one intersection it appeared the bike signal turned green ahead of the vehicular green signal by several seconds. My traffic engineering buddies would call that preemption to allow the bike rider to get into the cross street before the cars start.

You can see the lane on Dallas St. in downtown Houston.

Click here to see a one-page paper about the lane, how it fits in the street and a location map.

How well they work will be interesting to watch.

Here are photos of very old street brick on 2nd Street in Alexandria Louisiana. The crosswalk is next to the James Wade Bolton House.

Alexandria has a rich southern history although most of the very old structures were burned out during the Civil War by the North. These photos are here to provide a visual reference about how restored brick streets should look–at least in Alexandria.

And unusual cracking has been observed in the concrete unit pavers either side of the crown of concrete streets. The crosswalks have been in service for 10-15 years and there are others installed at the same relative time that do not show similar cracking. The pavers are installed in recesses in a reinforced concrete street cross-section and placed on a 1″ deep sand bed with sand swept and vibrated in after placement to lock them in place. (more…)