Going in Circles

The weather forecast over the next two days is for rain, thunder and lightning storms, with high temperatures up to 90F. This is an interesting prospect, I love summer storms.

On to another matter: this spring the city of Bellingham completed a second traffic roundabout on Northwest Avenue, at the McLeod Road intersection. This is just on the other side of I-5 from the roundabout put in at the freeway on/off ramps near Sterling Drive. Traffic moves pretty smoothly through both roundabouts during the day, though I haven't seen them during the morning or evening rush hours.

The older roundabout by Sterling Drive

But of course I have a couple of small complaints about the configuration of the bike lanes. I griped a bit previously about the first roundabout, where bicyclists riding through the roundabout have to cross the car turn lane leading to the freeway on-ramp from the bike lane. Riders who are nervous about trying to ride with the flow of car traffic can ride up on the sidewalk, then use the crosswalk to the south side of the street, but are then stuck on the sidewalk on the "wrong" side of the street until after crossing under the freeway. The next crosswalk to get back to the right side is at the entry to the McLeod Road roundabout.

The new roundabout is smooth and more symmetrical than the older one, and makes for a fun, easy, swooping downhill run under the freeway. My gripe here is that the bike lane on the downhill side is designed to guide bicyclists up on the sidewalk, rather than directing them to ride through with cars. On the uphill side, going up Northwest Ave. to Bakerview, I belong on the sidewalk going through both roundabouts, and most cyclists would slow car traffic down and annoy drivers.

The new roundabout at McLeod Road. You can kind of see
under the black truck where the bike lane heads up on the sidewalk

As I said in my previous post, on the downhill ride in to town, it is very easy for cyclists, even arthritic middle-aged ladies like me, to get going as fast as car traffic. In fact, I usually have to slow down to avoid over-taking cars going through the roundabouts. Most experienced, confident adult riders would probably prefer to stay on the street through both circles, but these intersections are close to Shuksan Middle School so maybe the lanes were designed with safe routes to school in mind.