I was stuck at LaGuardia airport last night, and wasn’t able to get to the public meeting until 8:30. By that time, the meeting had broken up. However, the one person left was Richard Koss, an engineer with the City of Rochester. He was very helpful and was nice enough to stay and give me a run-down of the meeting and the repavement plan. The main part of the plan is to reduce Dewey from 4 lanes to three, while keeping existing on-street parking for the apartment dwellers and merchants along the street. I noted that on the plan drawings, bike lanes were NOT visible. Richard said that the bike lanes were an “option” that the City was discussing (would involve narrowing the lanes), and that he believes that the City has gotten the County “on board” with allowing the bike lanes. Bike lanes WERE brought up at the meeting in a positive way, with residents noting that the area has a large immigrant (Burmese and Bhutanese) population who use bicycles as their main transportation. However, the desire was expressed to have arrow pavement markings showing the correct direction of travel, as bicyclists along Dewey are often seen going the wrong way. Richard indicated that the City was going to check to see if arrows were an allowable pavement marking.
The presentation will be re-given at the monthly Maplewood Neighborhood Association on March 3rd, at the Aquinas Cafeteria.