Cyclists worried over safety of Michigan Ave.’s new bike lanes

David Ellis was riding his bike to work one day in 2022 when he was hit by a car. Ellis, who had been riding on the sidewalk, was struck when he entered the crosswalk at Michigan Avenue and Museum Drive in downtown Lansing. He said the driver went through a stop sign.

“Luckily, I was uninjured,” he said. The driver stopped to make sure he “wasn’t dead” then left before police arrived.

For Ellis, this experience was “the catalyst to everything.”

“I asked myself why riding on the sidewalk on Michigan Avenue got me hit. That’s what got me down this rabbit hole. I had inklings in my head that it wasn’t the safest before, but it wasn’t until then that I fully realized that this was a very real, tangible issue we have here,” he said. “I ride almost exclusively in the road now.”

Shortly after the incident, Ellis heard about Lansing’s $14 million Michigan Avenue redesign project, which started last spring and will last through late 2025. In addition to removing one eastbound traffic lane between Howard Street and Pennsylvania Avenue and upgrading water and sewer mains and traffic signals, workers are adding new sidewalks featuring a 6-foot-wide bike lane that is separated by 6 feet from the roadway.

Ellis, 24, a downtown resident who still bikes to work, said the design is unsafe.

“A design that puts cyclists so far away from the right of way and so close to the edge of the buildings makes you less visible and more likely to hit someone or be hit at an intersection. A good design would account for this,” Ellis said.

He was among residents who met with representatives from the city’s Public Service Department in 2022 to discuss how the new bike lanes should be configured.

Mike Dombrowski, 38, a member of both the city’s Park Board and the Lansing Bike Co-Op, was also there.

Both indicated a preference for buffered bike lanes built between the street and sidewalk. Ellis is partial to using concrete bollards to divide them, while Dombrowski favors an elevated curb between the street and bike lane.

At any rate, they said, the city didn’t go with either.

“They seemed pretty on board, and we thought they heard us. But when we saw the designs, they made no changes whatsoever. We were surprised and disappointed,” Dombrowski said.

For Dombrowski, Ellis and other bicyclists, the final configuration was far from ideal.

“Take a bus to Ann Arbor,  Detroit, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Chicago or any developed city other than Lansing, and you’ll see properly designed bike lanes,” Ellis said, citing Ann Arbor’s South Division Street as an example.

David Ellis

In 2021, Ann Arbor completed a new, two-way bike lane on the east side of Division Street, separated from traffic by a buffer curb that’s large enough to place trash and recycling containers on. A traffic study that compiled collision data from before and after they were installed found that bike accidents had decreased by 42%. When the city issued a followup survey in 2023, 85% of respondents said they were now more likely to bike downtown.

Lansing Public Service Director Andy Kilpatrick said the city did consider a design placing the bikeways next to the street. Kilpatrick cited numerous constraints, including meeting deadlines to use $7.6 million in federal funds for the project. Coming up with a new design would have taken more time, he said.

Kilpatrick added that a separate, street-adjacent bike lane would be more difficult to maintain. If the city followed Ann Arbor’s lead and created another curbed section, he said, the city wouldn’t have the proper equipment to keep it free of debris and snow.

“The other consideration is, at the corners where pedestrians are crossing, either the bikes would have to ramp up to meet pedestrians at the sidewalk level, or the pedestrians would have to ramp down before crossing the bike facility. That creates issues with water ponding, debris and everything else,” Kilpatrick said.

Kilpatrick admitted the project isn’t perfect.

“I think the possible negative is that, now, the bikes are next to pedestrians and there might be some mixing between the two. We’ll have to make sure that we can train the pedestrians for that separation,” he said.

That will come through sidewalk markers as well as signs. Due to the wear and tear of construction equipment, Kilpatrick said the city will have to wait until the process is complete to start painting or indenting the sidewalk to separate the bike and pedestrian sections. In other cities, bike lanes are often stained green, but he said the final markings are still up in the air.

Kilpatrick said the city might add separated, fully buffered, street-adjacent bike lanes along this stretch of Michigan Avenue later. He said traffic levels along the route had been “flat” since roughly 1997 before dropping significantly during COVID. They have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

If that trend holds, Kilpatrick explained, the city could then consider removing one of the remaining four lanes to build another 9-foot-wide bike lane along the street. First, they’ll have to conduct a post-construction traffic study to see if usage rates stay stagnant.

“It would be at least 2026 before we could make that change, but we’d essentially be taking a half lane out on either side. So, you’d have about a 2-foot buffer on each side, with the bikes in the middle,” Kilpatrick said.

Similarly, the city could also collect usage data for the bike lanes on the sidewalk to get a feel for how often similar projects could be used.

“We definitely want to start measuring their usage, because, honestly, we need to be able to justify to the public why we’d put them in if they’re not being used,” he said. “If it turns out that they aren’t used a lot, that’s possibly because there’s just not a full network yet. If roads didn’t connect, you’re not going to have a lot of cars using them, either.”

Dombrowski offered a similar comparison.

“If a river doesn’t have a bridge, nobody’s going to be crossing it. But time and time again, when cities have built bike infrastructure, more people start biking,” he said.

As far as the Michigan Avenue project is concerned, Dombrowski said he doesn’t “have high hopes.”

“I don’t know who they designed this for or really wins with this design. A lot of people in the neighborhood feel burned by the city on this,” he said.

According to Kilpatrick, the city will start collecting more input and hearing concerns from pedestrians and cyclists alike when it begins hosting community sessions for its updated Non-Motorized Plan early next year.

“We want to know where people think connections are missing, or about crossings that they feel should be improved. That plan, and the input we get for it, will help us focus our projects for the next five years,” Kilpatrick said.

Like Ellis, Dombrowski believes the city could still be doing more to show that it’s serious about pursuing safe, forward-thinking bicycling infrastructure. He issued a friendly challenge.

“It would be super cool to see Andy Schor bike to work,” Dombrowski said, referring to the mayor. “He lives in the Moores River neighborhood, and you really can’t ask for a much better commute than from there to downtown.”