Fort Collins is a bike-friendly city that recently hosted Bike MS – the largest bicycle festival here in Colorado. The city is also implementing new initiatives intended to increase safety for cyclists and encourage others to adopt this form of transportation.
These initiatives include:
- Designating a number of streets to include new on-street parking exclusively available for cyclists and scooters to use.
- Advisory bike lines on certain streets with dashed bike lanes on either side of a single center lane.
How many new parking spaces will be available to cyclists?
The city will be adding new parking locations for cyclists to seven locations throughout the town. These new parking spaces are taking advantage of locations where street parking for motor vehicles is unavailable due to normal parking restrictions, such as within 30 feet of a stop sign. This means that this new initiative will not inconvenience ordinary drivers by taking over any existing parking spaces.
Fort Collins is committed to making the city a safe and practical place to commute via bicycle and scooter, which is why the city has partnered with the electric scooter and bicycle vendor Spin to provide locals with flexible and accessible transportation options. Complaints regarding the lack of locations to park these devices in part prompted the city to add these new parking locations.
Advisory bike lines in Fort Collins
Other projects are also in process in Fort Collins to increase the accessibility and safety for cyclists in the city, including dedicated cyclist lanes to help reduce congestion on some of the more cluttered thoroughfares.
Advisory bike lanes are used in over 70 U.S. cities, including Boulder and Windsor. They are intended to improve safety by creating dashed bicycle lanes on either side of a single center lane used by motorists. When motorists need to pass an approaching vehicle, they merge into the advisory bike lane after yielding to cyclists.
The Fort Collins advisory bike lanes program began with the area from Remington Street to Stover Street and is expected to expand.
Avoiding bike accidents
These programs should help to lower the risks for cyclists and help prevent injuries that may be caused by collisions with motor vehicles.
Bicycle safety must be taken seriously. We hope these new bike initiatives will make the roads safer for all of us, but always be aware of your surroundings, ride defensively and ensure that you are taking all necessary safety precautions. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for a free copy of our new book on road cycling safety at www.vanmeverenlaw.com .