The city of Tempe did a complete re-surfacing, a mill-and-overlay, of Priest Drive between Ray and Elliot Roads completed in March or maybe April 2026; a 2 mile stretch. Here’s some dash cam of some of the new treatment

[fun facts: Ray Road here is the city-limit of Tempe, south of there is Chandler. Priest Drive is known as 56th Street in Chandler. Somewhere north of Elliot and past the new-ish traffic circle, the jurisdiction changes to the Town of Guadalupe and the street there is known as Avenida del Yaqui and in 2022 completed an extensive remodeling of the street including a new bike lane there. And then, continuing north of there it switches back to city of Tempe and named Priest Drive again]

Background 2020

There was a public meetings held in July 2020, see the page still on tempe.gov as of July 2026 Priest Drive Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Project (when that link inevitably goes dead here is wayback archive). The short link also still works as of this writing www.tempe.gov/priestdrive and redirects to the project page.

At that time, ADT was 29,000. (probably similar to today? that would have been measured probably before the big covid drop-off?)

There were several possible variations of ambitious plans proposed, multi-use paths and so forth; as far as I can tell the Next Steps (“Public Meetings Round 2 Fall 2020; Transportation Commission Fall 2020 ;Finalized 15% Plans and Report Submitted to MAG Winter 2020”) for this project never happened.

Resurfacing 2026

It appears that the city had been working silently on an extensive re-striping plan that they intended to slip in during the re-surfacing without notifying anyone. This doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the studies and public meeting that occurred years ago.

Fortunately a bicycling advocate, who happened to live in the area received a postcard ~ March 2026 indicating the resurfacing was happening and inquired (and received — i will say, to the city’s credit — the detailed engineering plan for the project. The file is relatively large and you’ll probably want to d/l it and view it locally). He was able to help the city mitigate some latent striping issues that were in the plans, so this was just in the nick of time, the construction was done in later part of March IIRC. And as everyone knows, it’s much easier not to mention cheaper to tweak incorrect/bad striping before it gets painted and then has to be ground up.

The new bike lane

Overall, where it exists, the new BL and lane striping is very nice. The BL is typically 6.5′ wide (including gutter; so wider than the recommended min width of 5′), and the travel lanes are a nice tight 10′. One of my major annoyances with the previous conditions were between Warner and Elliot was the travel lanes were wider than they should be leading to ill-defined sharing conditions where controlling the lane was difficult… cyclists had to choose between hugging the gutter and getting grazed, or attracting the ire of ignorant motorists by moving toward the center of the lane.

The County Island

The main trouble is a stretch of (northbound only) about 1,100 feet between Knox and just north of Caroline; where the bike lane just unceremoniously STOPS at Knox. No shit, it just ends. There’s a BL ends sign but that’s it. There is no sidewalk, no shoulder, no gutter pan… just dirt for 1,100 feet.

The reason for the gap is the land to the east of Priest there is a County island and not under the control of City of Tempe. I have no idea how that works. (see map, interestingly Caroline Ln is in the island and it terminates at a new-ish gated communtiy which is wholly within CoT but the only non-emergency access is thru Caroline??).

It’s worth mentioning — and I don’t recommend it — that crossing to the other side of the street and continuing north would be illegal both in the bike lane (counterflow in the street is illegal, obviously), or the sidewalk (since counterflow sidewalk is illegal in Tempe).

Regular reader of these pages will recognize the travel lane here is “too narrow to safely share…”, and that the legal and safest way to proceed here is to merge in and control the right hand travel lane, and to not ride near the edge (which by the way, drops off to dirt).

What should be done? Well, assuming there’s not “fix” for the county island problem; I recommend at a minimum signing BMUFL signs, including the (AZ) state-specific placard “change lanes to pass” this is in the current Arizona MOAS. City staff has flatly refused to do that for reasons that are not clear to me. The city can and should also do a standard bike warning (i.e. diamond shaped yellow sign) along with the new (11th ed MUTCD) MERGE placard. Other ideas are the new (also 11th ed. MUTCD) Bicycle Passing Clearance Sign, R4-19.

The city could also place share lane markings in the right lane. Given that city staff won’t hear of placing BMUFL signs I don’t give this any hope, it is however the most honest form of marking and the most likely to be seen and understood. (there’s a misconception that SLMs aren’t permitted on streets posted > 35mph)

Other trouble-spots

There are some troubles southbound only approaching Warner… There’s this confusion between the Highline Canal’s Trail/Sidepath which crosses Priest at Commerce Drive. Initial plans called for a discontinuation of the BL there, implying that bicyclists should or must vacate the road and ride on the sidepath. Some late fiddling with the plans continue the BL. It’s weird they wanted to stop the BL, there was plenty of room to continue and in the end it just required removing hash marks. Cyclist still may ride on the sidepath if they choose to but this does leave them vulnerable to right hooks at the intersection with Warner (they would be to the right of a right-turn only lane).

Another trouble spot is the north end which I don’t exactly appreciate what goes on there because I rarely ride thru there. It involves a brief segment of designated bus lane. Maybe more on that later.