Chasperli

This morning on South Union, North Union and South Willard the bike lanes were littered with empty recycling bins. This has been a reoccurring issue, but today it was particular bad.

I regards this as an safety issue, I was riding with my daughter to school utilizing the designated bike lanes. Unfortunately we found the lanes blocked with empty bins. This requires a bike rider to enter the car lane to avoid a collision with the empty bin.

It seems to me, that this issue is avoidable without any investments from the city. It would require the city employee to deposit the empty bin between the sidewalk and the bike lane.

When you close the issue as resolved, please indicate what has been done to prevent this issue from reoccurring. Obviously, the issue will temporary resolve itself when the bins are collected by the people living in the houses. If that is the solution public works department pursues it will happen again next Wednesday.

The drain is clogged and causes the water collect. This creates a big puddle that makes it difficult to use the bike lane. Pedestrians coming down the drive are being sprayed by the cars.

The traffic light on the intersection between Pearl Street an Union (South/North) appears the have random cycles. The light seem to miss switching to green for traffic going North on South Union street.

I was waiting at the intersection on a red light this morning at 8:00 am. The Pearl street traffic went through 3 cycles before the Union Street light turned green. During that time the Pearl street cross walk signal went three times from wait to walk. My perception was that the switch got triggered after I pressed the button for pedestrian crosswalk that crosses Pearl street.

I had the same experience in the previous weeks.

At 8:00 AM recycling material and containers were scatters on the street and sidewalk after the city's recycling truck performed their pickup. This is not the first time I have observed the lousy pickup and scattering of recycling bins. I was observing one worker picking up and emptying the recycling bins without making any effort to avoid loosing parts of the bins content while loading it into the truck. There was no effort to pickup pieces left on the ground.

Also, at two occasions the side walk was blocked with bins.

My perception is, that there is an ongoing quality issue with the pickup and placing of the recycling bins blocking the sidewalk or bike lanes. The design of the open recycling bins are not helpful since the content gets often scattered in to street and sidewalk.

My hope is that the ticket is not just acknowledged, but the city provides some reasoning why the current situation is tolerated or what will be done to eliminate this unnecessary source of pollution.

The drain is clogged and causes the water collect. This creates a big puddle that makes it difficult to use the bike lane. Pedestrians coming down the drive are being sprayed by the cars.

The street light on the east side of the street is out.

On North Union street several bike lane protector bases are loose and get pushed into the bike lane. This has been a reoccurring issue last winter and during this winter. The loose bases make the bike lane useless when there is snow on the street. The bases are not visible and are angled. When the front wheel hits the base, the wheel slips off and there is a good chance the rider will fall. This happen to me last year on my cargo bike with my children on the bike. Also the bases that have no post on them create an issue when there is snow on the street. When trying to exit the bike lane to the left, one never knows where the bases are located. If the wheel hits a base the same effect on the front wheel is experienced and can lead to a crash. The condition of the protected bike lane is counter productive to it's intend. In the winter, the design does not protect the bike riders, it puts them in more danger due to the increase chance of a crash. In addition riders start riding in the car lane, which gives car drivers the justified impression that spending money on protected bike lanes is a useless investment. I suggest that you either completely remove the bases for the winter or restore the protected bike lane to its original condition. In case the protected bike lane is restored, you will need to a better job maintaining the plowing and deal with the frozen puddles.

One of the planters that divides the North bound bike lane on Elmwood Avenue is turned over and blocking the lane. We tried to turn over and reposition the planter, it appears that the planter and its content is frozen to the bike lane.

This is a general observation that I made during the recent snow storms. The Elmwood section of the wiggle was plowed in a way that made the bike lane useless. The plow pushed the snow pile into the south facing bike lane that leads to Grant street. A snow pile and burr prevents a bike going south to turn left into Grant street. The alternative was to used the unprotected bike lane. The issue defeats the design of a protected bike lane when a bicyclist needs to use the car lane when snow is on the street. Note the snow amount was significantly larger the day before the image was taken.

Please don't respond to the ticket that the snow is gone. But forward the issue to the party responsible designing the bike lanes and for the plowing of the streets so they can take this issue into account when they evaluate or upgrade the design.

The new crosswalk following the wiggle crossing Elmwood to access Grant street cannot be used when it snows. The west side of the crosswalk is so low that the water collects on that side. The paddle was 6" deep. Unless you have rubberboots you would not cross there. this issue might be caused by the snow piles pushed on both sides of the cross walk. The snow pile appeared to form a perfect dam. The purpose why the protected crosswalk was built is defeated since a pedestrian will not be using the crosswalk in winter condition.

Concrete plate moved. The plate hangs into the bike lane and also exposes a whole between the lane and side walk.

The grass along the bike path has been torn up by the contractor that delivered the docks for the new marine that is being built next to the fishing pier.