New bicycle lane on Third Avenue SE puts cars on both sides of bikes

If you weren't aware that Cedar Rapids is a bicycle-friendly community, you might be now.

New lines on the new pavement on one-way Third Avenue SE as it leaves the downtown now feature a first for the city - a bike lane between two lanes of motor vehicle traffic.

Ron Griffith, a traffic engineer in the city's Public Works Department, on Monday explained that the painted bike lane along the curb moves from the curb to the left of a turn lane to allow motor-vehicle traffic to turn right on Sixth and Seventh streets SE. The bike lane then finds itself along the curb again as the right-turn-only lane ends at Seventh Street SE.

Griffith said that national transportation standards call for a dedicated right-turn lane to be to the right of a bicycle lane.

“That's what they determined to be the safest solution,” Griffith said. “It's definitely a new look (for Cedar Rapids). And it will take some time for drivers and bicyclists to get used to.”

In May, the League of American Bicyclists

named Cedar Rapids a bicycle-friendly city at the bronze level, the fourth-highest level in a rating system that encompasses about 200 communities nationwide.