Salt Lake City's Main Street - slated to become the new frontier for bicycle commuters - will be dominated by cars until the snow melts next year.
Mayor Ralph Becker's plan to make room for cyclists by removing two motor-vehicle lanes on Main between 700 South and 1700 South and one lane south to 2100 South has been bumped until the spring.
Painting a green stripe for cars and bikes to share the single lanes from 700 South north into downtown also has been delayed, according to Dan Bergenthal, the city's trails coordinator.
"We tried one method and it kind of tore up the street a little bit," Bergenthal said about Main Street's makeover, originally scheduled for completion this fall. "That's essentially why it didn't happen."
Bergenthal notes the green lanes closer to downtown didn't happen because of Mother Nature. "We ran out of [good] weather."
But that doesn't mean the capital city has been idle on the bicycle front.
After a nationwide search, Becker has hired Becka Roolf to be the city's new bicycle coordinator. A cycling enthusiast, Roolf comes from Vermont, where she ran a private consulting firm committed to bicycling and pedestrian safety. Besides pushing for federal funding, Roolf will focus on citywide biking upgrades and overall walkability.
Some of that work got a kick-start this summer. The city staged its inaugural bicycle summit in May, installed 25 new bike racks downtown and painted 38 lane miles of white bicycle routes -- a 32 percent jump in total city bike lanes.
"Most of it was on the west side, in the industrial area," Bergenthal said. "This will help all those people who are working in that area if they choose to bike. Essentially, we had nothing out there, so this is filling in the gaps."
Engineers also added three sensor-activated yellow flashers at three intersections along the Jordan River Parkway and completed the trail connection underneath Interstate 80 between 200 South and 300 South.
Bike lanes were pasted on 1300 East from 1300 South to 600 South. That same stretch also has four new crosswalk-warning flashers, which will be upgraded next spring. Called "Hawk" signals, the planned traffic beacons first will flash yellow before switching to solid yellow, then red before going dark. The signals are used regularly in Arizona.
The Main Street change makes sense, city officials say, due to the road's proximity to light rail, pedestrian nature, and relatively low traffic flow. South of downtown, the corridor averages 10,000 cars a day, while Bergenthal notes just three lanes can easily handle 20,000.
Some business owners are less than thrilled with the already-funded plan.
"It's a bad idea," said Kirk Schneider, owner of the Nate Wade Subaru at 1207 S. Main. "To take out a whole lane of traffic to make it a bike lane is definitely overkill."
Schneider notes access to the dealership's service department is off Main and insists driving north on Main from 700 South already is a "nightmare."
"There's not a lot of bikes," he said . "I don't think the demand to ride my bike on Main Street is swelling."
Bergenthal says the city is planning another community meeting regarding Main Street for early next year.
