Serraglio

I was out of town when the new Fourth Avenue underpass opened to a
fair amount of hoopla in late August. After many years of dithering and
delay, this keystone project was supposed to finally become part of the
solution, rather than part of the problem.

Pardon me for pooping on the party, but I think it’s still a great
example of the problem.

The first time I used the underpass, I was on a bicycle, headed to a
friend’s house on South Fourth Avenue. As I breezed down the slope, the
first thing I noticed was the fresh, smooth pavement. As a bicyclist,
you appreciate those routes that don’t loosen your teeth as you rattle
over the cracks and craters that plague so many of Tucson’s excessively
topographical road surfaces. The bike lane was a bit wider than usual,
also much appreciated by bicyclists, who understand the
life-threatening combination of careless motorists and miniscule
margins for error. So far, so good.

When I emerged from the south end of the underpass, the cruel joke
of this seemingly bicycle-friendly amenity became apparent: It delivers
you to a death trap at the intersection of Toole Avenue, Congress
Street, Fourth and Broadway Boulevard, where the bike lane ends, and
the same old motorhead mentality reigns. I was faced with several
compromised choices for continuing on my chosen path, none of them
safe, let alone convenient.

The sequence I chose went like this: I waited for the cars in the
underpass to make a right turn onto Toole; I looked every which way to
make sure I wouldn’t get crushed, then zipped across the no-bike’s land
of the intersection and headed into the old bus-station lot, where I
slowly snaked through pedestrians and cars, giving plenty of space to
each. Finally, I made a sketchy, indirect crossing of Broadway onto
Fourth Avenue going south.

I suppose I could have taken a right onto Toole and gone around the
block on Fifth Avenue. While this may be a legal way to proceed, it
certainly is no safer, considering the construction that creates
dangerous narrows and terrible sightlines in that area.

Don’t get me wrong; I had no illusions about the ease or
advisability of bicycling through downtown. I knew someone who was
killed bicycling in the very area that I avoided in the above scenario.
And I know that the underpass was not intended to be a miraculous
panacea for the downtown clusterfuck. But come on—yet
another bike lane to nowhere?

We’ve seen this phenomenon before, most notably with Mountain
Avenue, a major bicycle route just north of the university. I
appreciate the explanations provided to me by some nice folks who work
for the city on this stuff—transportation projects are expensive
and usually done in segments, which often results in a patchwork of
bike lanes—and I appreciate the “Bicycle Boulevard” project they
are undertaking, an effort to encourage biking with some propaganda and
a few bones thrown to cyclists.

Still, I have to ask: In this age of diminishing oil supplies and
global climate disruption, when are we going to stop letting
automobiles rule our society? Why do we always settle for baby steps?
Why can’t we come up with a design for downtown that encourages
positive civic behavior?

There are a number of cities in the West with designated pedestrian
zones—usually several blocks of a downtown street closed to
cars—that provide pleasant, attractive public spaces and a boon
to nearby businesses. Congress Street would be perfect for this, with
foot traffic from the bus station, bars and clubs, and the theaters at
each end. Block it off from Toole to Stone Avenue, and instead of
frightened (or dead) bicyclists and wary pedestrians competing for
space with auto traffic zooming through narrow lanes on its way to the
interstate, you would have a destination, for everyone,
including bikes.

What a concept. An early proposal for the underpass would have
preserved the historic structure for use by bicycles and pedestrians
while constructing a separate space for cars. That idea was rejected
due to the cost (never mind the hugely bloated price tag of what we
ended up with) and objections by “downtown interests,” who don’t seem
to understand their own interests.

In any event, Tucson is literally decades behind the rest of the
world, and even some U.S. cities, when it comes to transportation
policy. But, hey, not all is lost. I am told that the underpass will
soon display a water feature of some sort. Well, ain’t that the
frosting on the turd? Nothing says “idiotic American policy” like a
perpetual evaporation device in a desert, right next to a bike lane to
nowhere.

This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2009.