Saturday, July 1, 2017

Looking at FDOT's data on bike lanes, paved shoulders, and speed limits




Striking how many big arterial roads have speed limits 45 mph and greater and no shoulders.  Few bike lanes and paved shoulders on slower roads.  The street grid is often interrupted and this forces people who bicycles on to these bigger roads.

Less stressful north-south connections east of Ridgewood Ave/US-1  and between Hand Ave to the north and  Beville Rd/SR 400 to the south can use the network of smaller, low traffic-volume city streets.   North of Hand Ave many cul-de-sacs provide little to no connectivity and people on bicycles must brave busy roads and take lengthy detours.

On the Beachside, connectively south of Mason Ave/SR 430 is absent apart from Peninsula Dr and A1A, both of which lack shoulders.

All or parts of several wide east-west, 35-mph roads like Mason Ave and Dunn/George W Engram Blvd,  lack shoulders or bike lanes.

There appears to be errors in the paved shoulder database.   For example, paved shoulders are indicated on Beach St between Orange Ave and Bay St in Daytona Beach.  Instead there are four lanes with a median and no shoulders.

Daytona Beach in currently working on a Bike/Ped master plan.  I hope they take this lack connectivity into serious consideration.

Bike lane data: https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT/co/planning/transtat/gis/shapefiles/bike_lane.zip
Shoulder data: https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT/co/planning/transtat/gis/shapefiles/outside_shoulder_type.zip
Speed limit data: https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT/co/planning/transtat/gis/shapefiles/maxspeed.zip



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