A bike lane on Fountainebleau Drive. Months after the street was torn up, a ramp was provided for the lane servicing cars, no such treatment extended to the bike lane (though this bump can cause serious damage to a bicycle and even cause crashes) Further down the street, a municipal vehicle blocks the bike lane.

Recently, the city has seen lots of road construction, with streets becoming unusable even to bikes with off-road capabilities. It’s become difficult to rely on your typical route to work or your favorite location, as any day a street can be torn up and not repaved for months (or even years) and now most traffic has to use artillery roads to get to their destination.

Though some of these options may have bike lanes, these lanes are also subject to having obstructions in them including: torn up road surfaces, debris, trash cans regularly taking up the bike lane, and cars driving in or parked in the bike lane.

What can we do about it?

While we continue to try to promote improving biking in Greater New Orleans, the city and surrounding municipalities need to hear from you to know that it is a cause directly effecting residents.  There are a few ways we’d recommend reaching out to report bike lane issues.

1. Report the issue to 311. Using NOLA311.org and the Citizen Dashboard allows you to report your claim and will provide you a case number and any follow-up done on the request- We’ve found that reporting on 311 can have many barriers, there needs to be an exact address associated with your request, which can be not applicable to certain locations (for example an issue outside of a parking lot that has no registered address) there is also an option to post pictures, but most pictures wont upload, with no guidance as to the requirements. We are working with the City to try to resolve these barriers.
2. Contact your City Council Member when services requested fall under their jurisdiction. Also contact your Council-Member at Large.
3. Add your request to our Document to Report Bike Lane Issues. This is only a supplement to the above 2 steps, so we can help track the City’s process on addressing these issues. 

Why is reporting important?

Though it may seem like issues in bike lanes may be a small issue when entire streets are torn up for years on end, and 311 reports are rarely satisfactorily addressed, it’s important to document these issues with the City and take charge to report the issue yourself. Instead of thinking “someone else has probably reported this” consider, you may be the first one to report it, or you may be the fifth person, which finally gets the City to address the issue.

Ultimately, the hope is for these issues to be resolved, but Charlie Thomas with Bike Law Louisiana recently helped with a case in Texas, which showed the importance of reporting issues with bicycle infrastructure.

In Louisiana, we’re used to having poorly maintained roads. The roads next door in Texas may be better, but only marginally so for biking. Recently, we took a case to trial against the Texas Department of Transportation. The case involved an injured doctor who was hurt by a recurring hazard in a bike lane. We prevailed, but the fight was tough! Check out our latest Bike Law post on how we took TxDOT’s $0 offer to a million dollar verdict. Although these funds will help pay for medical bills and lost wages, we’re also hopeful this verdict will help the Department of Transportation understand the importance of maintaining safe bike lanes.

• Bike Law Louisiana

This case came down to a question of if the DOT had been made aware of the roadway issue which caused the incident. The deciding factor was reports of this issue and receipts brought about by a citizen. Read more about this case on Bike Law’s Blog.

What else is Bike Easy doing to advocate for better biking?

In addition to regularly meeting with City workers, we have a couple of campaigns we’re currently working on to help improve bike safety in New Orleans.

Our Policy and Design Committee is leading Safety Sundays where we take a couple of hours to clean up bike lanes with volunteers. For volunteer safety, we’re currently only working on protected bike lanes. Though it’s a great thing to see the bike lanes clean, the true effort of these clean-ups is to identify systemic issues that are causing buildup. We’ve identified drainage issues, runoff, and large amounts of foliage as recurring issues to address. We’ve shared our findings with the Department of Public Works and made suggestions to mitigate this happening in the future. Stay tuned for announcements of our next Safety Sunday and come join us from 9-11 to start your Sunday off right!

We’re also working to improve signage on roadways with bike infrastructure. We’re identifying placement and destinations for wayfinding signs for parts of the network that people can use to get to these destinations. In addition, we’re placing requests for needed signage along our existing lanes. If you’ve ever ridden down O’Keefe towards Poydras, you may know of the years old hole which is present right at the end of conventional bike lane. It becomes an issue for everybody, as anyone riding in the bike lane has to suddenly merge to the left or ride through a hole likely to get them a flat if not completely destroy their wheel. Since there seems to be no priority from the city to repair that hole, nor is the bike lane likely to be extended, we are requesting “Bike May Use Full Lane” signage at this spot. We’ve identified many other areas where infrastructure no longer serves bikes, and we need to make sure motorists are prepared and made aware that people on bikes are to be expected and allowed in the travel lane.