2019 Top 10 – #7: Starting the Crosstown Greenway Project
Before we bring you the Top 10 Key West Bike, Walk, Transit and Streets for People Stories of 2020 we are counting down last year’s 2019 Top 10 to refresh our memories of where we’ve been. Especially as many of the 2019 stories carry over into 2020. Each day we’ll share another story until we get to 2019’s #1 on December 18. THEN we’ll build on that and begin counting down 2020’s Top 10 till the end of the year. We hope you enjoy our 2019 Recap and our new 2020 stories throughout December. Thank you.
By Chris Hamilton; Monday, December 23, 2019
In November the City, with the help of the urban planning firm Street Plans from Miami, who brought along a $30,000 grant, introduced the first major project from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan adopted by City Commission in March. The “Crosstown Greenway” Pilot Project will create a neighborhood greenway along Staples Avenue/Von Phister Street between 12th and Reynolds. This is just part of the larger Crosstown Bicycle Route that stretches from S. Roosevelt through the heart of the city, including the bike bridge, to downtown. The pilot project will be designed to slow cars, reduce cut-through traffic and make it easier and safer while providing priority for bikes and pedestrians along the route. It will test temporary, short-term, low cost, scalable interventions such as painting new crosswalks, bulbouts and bikeways, traffic circles, pavement art, planters and wayfinding.
Things that work can be scaled for use along the entire route and things that don’t can be discarded. This is the beauty of testing via tactical urbanism. Public meetings were held November 5 to gather input with follow-up workshops on December 11 and 12 to share proposals, based upon the earlier input. The public will be invited to help implement the project later this winter. We applaud the City Engineering Department, in particular the Transportation and Sustainability Coordinators, for getting started on the Bike/Ped Plan using this method of involving the public to test ways to make it safer to bike and walk. Nicely done. We’d love to see these kinds of safety improvements more often please.
#8 Duval Street Revitalization Sought Via RFQ
#9 City Rebuilds Atlantic Boulevard Bike Path
#10 City Addresses Closing the Gap at Admiral’s Cut
