On June 6, 2014, the Orleans Parish Levee Board held an almost-unpublicized, very last minute emergency board meeting to decide the fate of bike lanes along Lakeshore Drive, one of New Orleans' most treasured waterfront recreational areas. The Blue Ribbon Committee (a sub-committee of the Levee Board) was tasked with the research and development of how to best design the new roadway "striping" usi
ng limited public funds. They were given 60 days to accomplish this task. Because of contractor deadlines, the committee did not complete a comprehensive study to determine the safest and most equitable method for painting Lakeshore Drive's traffic lanes. Instead, the committee voted to leave all four lanes open to vehicular traffic at all times, with bicycles, runners, and other recreational users being forced to negotiate increased traffic volume and speed. As a saving grace and an attempt at compromise, Recreation Commissioner Gregory Ernst presented an amendment to to the outdated plan of leaving all four lanes wide open to traffic. Commissioner Ernst hired a local urban planning firm to design a striping pattern that would leave 3/4 of a mile of the Lakefront limited to two lanes of vehicular traffic and two lanes of alternative use traffic. The remainder of Lakeshore Drive would be left as is, albeit with new paint--a sort of "test run" for a potentially permanent bike lane. This was proposed out of concern that without the continuous presence and safe bicycle/recreational use of the Lakeshore Drive corridor (in existence over the last few decades) the area will regress back to the high-volume, high-traffic highway atmosphere it had before the closure of the roadway (for safety concerns) in the 1980's. This is not to advocate that the road should be closed to vehicular traffic in any way whatsoever. What is difficult to comprehend is that when given the option to accommodate both vehicles and alternative uses of a portion of the roadway, certain members of the driving community and certain members of the Board resisted any attempt at compromise. This is not an acceptable way to govern a recreational space using taxpayer dollars--it is not in the best interest of New Orleans' Master Plan--and most assuredly not a neighborly way to share a roadway surrounded on all sides by beautiful waterfront and endless greenspace. The Blue Ribbon Committee's vote to implement non-dedicated traffic lanes will not be an improvement to the current situation and will not keep recreational users safer--it is simply a formality involving the laying of paint that will likely be ignored as traffic lanes continue to be dominated by vehicles unfamiliar with recreational users and traveling at a high rate of speed. Commissioner Ernst's amendment proposing a dedicated bike lane--even if only for a portion of Lakeshore Drive in the interim--had the potential to increase the public's overall awareness of the recreational use and cycling that has been taking place on the Lakefront for decades, and would have increased visibility and safety for vehicles and recreational users alike. Ultimately, the amendment failed. It will now take years of lobbying and grant writing before the Lakefront sees the federal dollars needed to implement a dedicated recreational lane. Because of the fractured state of our various levee authorities, funding to provide law enforcement for traffic and recreational user safety does not exist and is not a priority. The levee police are not being directed or funded to monitor the situation. It is up to our community--as avid recreational users of the New Orleans Lakefront--to come up with a plan that increases the safety of Lakeshore Drive traffic patterns and bolsters community awareness of the responsibility to drive vehicles at a safe speed along a "shared use" roadway. If we don't take action, our beautiful waterfront recreation space will revert back to the vehicular-dominated, four-lane highway of 1987.
