Biking and walking along Third Street are about to become safer in the next year, Phoenix officials said Thursday, as they unveiled the final plans for bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly upgrades that have been in the works since 2013.
The project, which will span from Garfield Street to Indian School Road, includes major infrastructure changes, such as reducing the street from two lanes on each side to one, creating buffered bicycle lanes on both sides, and adding new shade structures, trees and lighting, said Brandy Ruark, a civil engineer who works on Phoenix’s Street Transportation Committee.
Bicyclist Dave Tapley, who lives in midtown Phoenix, said the upcoming project is a welcome and long-awaited change.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Tapley, who serves as vice president of the cycling group Phoenix Spokes People. “It’s always good to see the city make it toward the finish line. It’s important to get multi-modal transportation in the densely populated downtown area.”
The project will also upgrade sidewalks and curbs to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, and create safer street crossings for pedestrians, according to the city’s project plan.
Street Transportation Director Kini Knudson said the upcoming changes to Third Street are reflective of Phoenix’s effort to shed its longtime reputation as a car-centric city.
“Anybody who has lived in Phoenix for some time knows we’ve developed as a car-centric city,” said Knudson. “There are streets that are commuter streets, streets that are transit streets, and streets that need to be for bicycles as well. We’re now working on ways to be able to transform streets that were primarily vehicle-focused, and trying to figure out ways to safely accommodate other modes of travel.”
Phoenix ranked fifth for the most cyclist traffic fatalities in 2016 among U.S. cities with populations over 500,000, according to crash statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released in 2018. There were 31 cyclist deaths that year statewide, with eight in Phoenix.
Tapley said he knows how dangerous it can be to bike in some parts of downtown Phoenix. Originally from England, he has lived in Phoenix for about a decade, but it took him a while to learn the best routes to bike on.
“98% of the time, it’s fine, but I know all the little side streets,” he said. “But Google Maps might tell you to go down Seventh Street, and you might make it downtown before somebody knocks you off.”
Though he felt grateful for the Third Street improvements, Tapley said he felt disappointed by a Tuesday announcement from the city that bike lanes along a stretch of Van Buren Street between Seventh and 24th streets would no longer be part of an upcoming project there, and that another route would be sought out nearby.
“You can’t just ride downtown to Fry’s, you have to take your truck,” Tapley said. “It’s frustrating to look at downtown, where we finally got a Fry’s grocery store, and then there’s no real connectivity for anything other than a car.”
Struggles with connectivity, like Tapley’s inability to safely bike to the grocery store, are one of the reasons the local organization Urban Phoenix Project has been advocating for better pedestrian, bicycling and public transit accommodations over the past decade, Communications Director Ryan Boyd said.
“If you have lots of great bicycle lanes but they don’t connect anywhere, it doesn’t work,” Boyd explained. “That’s part of the greatest issue.”
Boyd said the Urban Phoenix Project is optimistic about the changes coming to Third Street.
“Third Street is important to us because we need the infrastructure,” Boyd said. “If you don’t have it, you’ll have trouble because drivers don’t necessarily pay attention to or care about bicycles.”
The city is planning to put out advertising for contractors in the next few weeks and begin construction in the spring, Ruark said Thursday. The project would take about nine to 12 months, wrapping up either at the end of 2021 or in early 2022.
“When we start construction, that’ll impact people on the short-term basis,” Knudson explained. “But when the project is all said and done, the benefits will be things like reduced traffic volumes on Third Street, the bicycling component and enhanced pedestrian connectivity.
“If you’re living along Third Street, it’s right out your front door, to be able to enjoy a nice corridor like that,” Knudson added. “If you’re a commuter or somebody who doesn’t live along Third Street, then it’s a transportation corridor for you that’s safer than maybe some of the higher-volume or higher-speed streets like Seventh Avenue or Seventh Street.”
Tapley said he hopes biking in Phoenix will become more normalized and popular over time, leading to more bike lane additions throughout the city in the future.
“The only thing to do is get more people. The more people you have riding, the lower the incident rate is,” he said. “You do that by making people safe, and the only way you do that is through dedicated bicycle infrastructure.”
More information on the Third Street Improvement Project can be found here.
Contact the reporter at gdelia1@asu.edu.
