McClintock Drive within the city of Chandler is being re-configured to add a bike lane in both directions. The construction appears to be nearly completed — this entails moving both curbs of the median toward the center, it looks to be about four feet.
In the photo, at the left (taken Jan 31, 2021) you can see the blacker strip of fresh asphalt. The striping has yet to change; I don’t know if they are planning to resurface it first (? just guessing, not. Just draw the new BL stripe, and black-out and move the dashed line a couple of feet.
Here’s a google maps of the area.
The City of Chandler’s Transportation Master Plan, update 2019, lists this project, along with (presumably) similar projects along Kyrene and Rural which are both other nearby also N/S arterials, as “programmed near-term projects” which I believe means actually happening now.
Wasn’t there a big controversy about McClintock Drive a few years ago?
Yes. Huge. Further north of this project in the City of Tempe between approx. Guadalupe Road and Broadway / Apache. The City of Tempe added a buffered bike lane where there was no bike lane in 2015; this necessitated removal, in a few cases, of a third through lane; this in turn caused some delay for motorists, especially southbound at the PM peak commute times.
See mcclintock-road-resurfacing-and-left-buffered-bike-lanes for much much more.
Sadly, even though I imagine there are approx zero delays now with dramatic commute reductions due to pandemic, apparently the CoT is pressing ahead spending ~ $3million approved as recently as Jan 2021 to add a third general purpose travel lane south bound. It seems to me quite possibly the volume (commute volume) may never come back to pre-pandemic levels.
How wide is McClintock Here?
Why didn’t it have a BL in Chandler?
It appears to be same profile as Warner — 65′ from curb-to-curb both in Tempe and Chandler. The kicker is Chandler way-back-when decided to go with hard (raised) medians that are a bit wider than need-be while Tempe has only painted center areas. As a result there isn’t enough room in Chandler to stripe a legitimate BL, while in Tempe along the same road at the same width there is plenty.
I am not fond of what City of Chandler has done lo these many many years (it had been like this since at least as far back as the early 1990’s when I arrived in the area) — no bike lane, and striped each direction into two unequal-sized lanes, with the inner lane quite narrow and the outer lane wide(r) but not really wide enough for side-by-side sharing. This creates problems for cyclists wishing to avoid sideswipes by motorists who for whatever reason don’t want to simply change lanes. I will mention that to their credit they didn’t try and shoehorn in a BL in the limited amount of space.
Here’s an example of how Tempe divided Warner Road, a 65′ wide nearby arterial east-west street into in effect 5 travel lanes plus two bike lanes (not sure how or if the now-skinny medians would change this? I don’t see why it should)
5′ / 11′ / 11′ / 11′ / 11′ / 11′ / 5′ = 65′ excl. gutters
Note that a 5′ wide PLUS gutter pan is quite comfortable to ride in; whereas 4′ is minimal.
Segment-by-segment
To re-cap: going from south to north…
McClintock: Loop 202 (Pecos) to 1/2 mi north of Ray Road. This is all within City of Chandler, bike lanes to be added with this project completing spring 2021.
McClintock: 1/2 mi north of Ray Road to just south of Elliot Road. This is all fine except needs resurfacing. I mean it dramatically needs resurfacing, with PQIs in the 30s (that out of 100!). The picture at right was taken 5 years ago, and it still hasn’t be done; and worse yet, just checked w/city the current plan is for it to be done in FY2023 with a warning it might slip past that! It’s hard to understand how an arterial with PQIs in the 30s would have such a low priority(?).
The pic to the right is southbound; which has long (hundreds of feet), large (a couple of inches) lateral cracks. The northbound side, if you can believe it, is even more uncomfortable to ride on, the lateral cracks there have weirdly erupted upwards, making for a very jarring ride.
McClintock: the 1,500′ surrounding the intersection with Elliot: someone weirdly decided this needed to be 3 lanes in each direction. It is highly unlikely this was ever a good idea.
The upshot is on the south side, the northbound bike lane drops and the road flares a bit to become the third lane. Not a big deal.
What is a big deal is on the north side, in both directions the City has placed an unwarranted edge line (“fake bike lane“). This is not just a short distance, it extends from McNair all the way to Elliot, perhaps 900′.
Officially, there is no designated bike lane there.
This is a magnet for harassment.
When I raised the issue circa 2015 I was told the section would be resurfaced “soon” and at that time the striping would be re-worked to include a real bike lane. As time marches on, I’m told that area is now scheduled for FY2023 at the earliest (there’s some general sense that pavement preservation capital projects are likely to slip for fiscal reasons. So we have no bike lane there, even though there are real bike lanes both south and north of this problem segment.
McClintock north of Elliot to just north of Western Canal: I’m not sure but some of these BL widths appear to be sub-standard or just barely standard (4 feet or less of usable space; not including gutter).
McClintock north of Western Canal to US60: This area has left-buffered bike lanes, the ones detailed here.
McClintock at US60: northbound in fine and has a left-buffered BL. Southbound is problematic because was re-striped in 2018 to squeeze a third general purpose travel lane leaving now a barely standard BL on the bridge.
McClintock, Southern to Broadway: currently fine, a left buffered BL in both directions. See Sept 2017 updates: city is currently as of Jan 2021 letting contracts to spend $2.2 Million to add one mile of southbound lane. Seems expensive and may ultimately never be necessary or helpful wrt peak commute traffic volume/delay.
McClintock, Broadway to the UPRR underpass (i.e. almost to Apache): Northbound is currently a nightmare for bicyclists; city plans to simply stripe a BL. There’s plenty of room to do so, they just need to do it.
Southbound is a mess. In part of the decision that three general purpose lanes are an absolute necessity also see Sept 2017 updates:, the plan is to remove the left-buffered BL and replace it with a shared use sidewalk. The trouble is despite a cost of $800K claiming it will “widen” the sidewalk, it’s still constrained to be only 5 feet wide at the underpass. This is not wide enough for bi-directional foot + (likely bi-directional) “fast” moving bicyclist (it’s a the bottom of big hill) traffic.
I have mentioned and will keep mentioning to the City that the honest thing to do would be to place “Bikes May Use Full Lane” signs on the (southbound) road. Honest not only because it is true; but also that building adjacent, off-street facilities such as what is proposed here, brings out the worst in ignorant motorists.
Enough for now, McClintock keeps going northward; the BLs stop here, and at some point pick up again, I think just north of SR101. Eventually it turns into the the City of Scottsdale and the road changes names to Hayden