Comments for “Connect Fairbanks: FAST Planning Non-Motorized Plan Update”
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Tanana Loop Reconstruction (UAF)
Yes!!! Has long been needed. There are a lot of bikes and walkers trying to get to UAF and they get to this section and their only option is to get in the road. Long overdue.
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Sheep Creek Road and W Tanana Drive Enhanced Crossing
One issue in this area is that the parking for UAF Trails is on the opposite side of the road from the trails. It is actually left over pavement from an earlier project to make a square intersection out of a curved old Parks Highway. Improving the crossing at the intersection does not solve the problem of the parking being on the wrong side of the road.
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West Fairbanks Intersection Improvements
A ped crossing of Farmers Loop Rd is badly needed! But if there is not a path to get people to the crossing it will be less effective. Many people live on Iniakuk and other subdivision roads. If the crossing is at Army Road there should at least be a path from Iniakuk to Army on the E side of Farmers Loop.
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coordination between DOT and the City on snow removal needs to be improved. Many times during the winter the roundabout and danby paths are cleared by DOT but the city is slow to clear the wembly sidewalk.
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There are numerous low spots along college rd that don't drain in rain or breakup. Drivers don't seem to notice these and drive right through them drenching pedestrians on the sidewalk. These areas need to be fixed
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johansen path from college to steese highway needs better winter maintenance.
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The danby to college section of the johansen path needs better, more frequent winter maintenance. It often goes a very long time between clearing. The johansen path is a corridor path from university ave to college and steese highway. It needs to be cleared from one end to the other during the winter.
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Making non-motorized use safer on Philips Fields should be High Priority not just Medium. It is a popular connection between University neighborhoods and downtown.
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Please finish paving the bottom of the bike path on Miller Hill - the break in pavement makes it too dangerous to use the bike path going downhill with road bike tires. People then continue to use Miller Hill, which is dangerously bumpy and lacks any shoulder.
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Please make a wider shoulder or bike path to connect Sheep Creek/Tanana Dr, Goldhill and Parks! This would connect 3 well used commuter trails.
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Geist is helpful throughway for cars and bikers, but it is dangerous for bikes. Unfortunate that at least wider shoulders were not included in the last "improvement".
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City of Fairbanks Bike Lane Signing and Striping
You just improved 17th, adding neighborhood identity posts and speed bumps. Then you improved the Gillam/17th intersection as part of the resurfacing and catchment basin installation. There's all this recent work down on 17th, in part because Hunter elementary and all the other schools to the Northwest. Put a bike lane here! Right now you're making the kids bike down to the homeless shelter to stay on the bike path. Connect 17th to the existing Noble northbound and you have a great parallel route that lets people take an efficient route from downtown to the big box stores. Otherwise this northeast traffic is going to be chaotic and counterproductive through all of downtown. Barnette is one-way the wrong way, Cushman you need to stay on Cushman. Give people an easy way to bypass this automobile center. Like the missing piece of 10th avenue by Barnette, the infrastructure already exists, it needs to be part of the plan.
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Lathrop Street Bicycle Facilities
Great idea, many local families use the recreation facilities
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5th Avenue Reconstruction
I looked on FNSB GIS and the parcel immediately north of here, between Bingo and the other building, is listed as owned by City Hall. It currently functions as a two-way street, serving the active bingo crowd. But what's the deal with that street? Is it actually city-owned?
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Johansen Path Bridge to Charles Street
I tried to walk the stub in winter once, walking from Randy Smith middle school to downtown. My boots were decent but heavy and even fit, strong, it was a grueling task walking from downtown to the school. The stub of asphalt rose up and I saw a vision of an actual road past railroad and freeway+slough. For a moment it felt like after the world's end, Fairbanks is full of promised roads that when you try to walk them, they just aren't there. "I'll die in there if I cross the fence," I thought. A grim dystopian land, acre-wide corridor with zero art, zero wayfinding, total hostile architecture. "Am I supposed to climb this fence or does the 3' unmaintained asphalt just peter out here?"
This connection is so vital though.
Virtually certainly, you, biker, are not trying to use College and Illinois intersection. You would rather connect with westbound Parks near the schools, train station, and fairgrounds. You're trying to go back and forth from UAF to downtown. When you were a kid, you remember your parents talking about a Chena riverwalk that would help you travel north/south from home to school. It never got built but you figured out how to navigate the strange goat trails near Pioneer Park. Now thirty years later you're still biking northeast until you can finally reach a street that will take you west, that isn't a narrow-shouldered speedway like Philips Field. Suddenly downtown hotels can confidently send guests north on rented bikes to Creamer's Field infrastructure. It could be the center of Fairbanks bike/pedestrian infrastructure. Such a better idea than the current patches on bad automobile intersections. The automobile intersection don't get better with more traffic.
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City of Fairbanks Bike Lane Signing and Striping
Sign here should say northbound, "Turn Back!" Even in summer, the left turners down Cushman and the right-turners from Cushman east are murderous. We have a great Airport crossing a few hundred feet to the East at the south terminus of Noble. DOT just put in a signal and crossing. It still is rough, you have a crossing onto a 50-foot bit of sidewalk and then you're in an uncontrolled 4 way intersection where drivers have no reason to expect a bike traveling against the green light (because it's still green from when you're crossing). Push a button to generate traffic going the other way. Still better than North bound on this murderous stretch of Cushman. Cushman north of Airport no better, it doesn't calm down until 10th Ave. Turn back, there's better bike infrastructure to the east and west.
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City of Fairbanks Bike Lane Signing and Striping
We already have a bikeway that continues west here. It goes through the park to the library. It also could connect to the proposed 10th avenue improvements westerly. Needs wayfinding totem here to indicate that, the entrance to the park is terrible and the intervening blocks of 10th avenue have nothing to suggest a library or park are proximate.
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City of Fairbanks Bike Lane Signing and Striping
11th/Lacey intersection still feels so unfinished. Where's the 1% for art? Street's permanently closed and the only mark on the endcap is Chiraq-style jersey barriers. Not even a planter. Road's closed, maybe put a bench? Maybe some of that long-term bike storage/lockers that everyone wants?
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City of Fairbanks Bike Lane Signing and Striping
This street is a bus corridor, with huge traffic jams at Barnette. Even in summer, navigating this narrow two-street is terrifying. Snow makes it worse. Westbound bikes trying to squeeze by an Eastbound bus that can't see 50 ft in the blowing snow. Sounds like a meat grinder. Terrible idea. Put a Berkely/Portland style soft closure on 5th and let that be a bike corridor.
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5th Avenue Reconstruction
Both ACS and Sadler building have relatively iconic north-facing awnings and entrances. Concrete is in decent shape, plumbed with the old straight-to-river system.
Recent years of flood control have caused elevated water levels in the river and I am concerned about the state of the storm sewers. Evidence of subsidence in asphalt right before the transition concrete strip. Old concrete sidewalk transition makes using the ACS driveway a bumpy ride. What's happening with the property to the north? It's just a parking lot with drab topiary, is there a plan to connect this lot with 5th Avenue.
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Clay Street Bicycle Facilities
Downtown has no good East/West corridor. Improving this street and the others between Cowles, improving the onramp to North/South Steese Bikeway. Graveyard is still like timber posts and antiquated intrepetative displays, is it actually the bike thoroughfare it resembles? Can we have more wayfinding totems with signage indicating directions and mileage?
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City of Fairbanks Bike Lane Signing and Striping
Normal Saturday: football game brings hundreds to LHS in the afternoon. Track is a neighborhood center. With basketball courts, gymnastic apparatus, and large playground areas. Needs formal bike passage through complex East/West. Weird conflicts with proposed North/South corridors. Currently middle of complex has one way the wrong way and confusing, unsigned fences blocking easy navigation.
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Peger Road: Chena River – Airport Way
Spring breakup and other high water events make the path under Peger Bridge unusable, but these events are short lived. During winter months the path on the up-stream side of the bridge has been kept adequately cleared of snow but on the down-stream side of the bridge there has been little to no snow removal, making the path unsafe for all but the most able-bodied users. Why not set some funds aside for winter maintenance to keep the entire path under Peger Bridge open and safe for all users?
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EDIT: This comment was meant to go here on the map.
Clear a break in the snow berm so we can use the bike path all the way to the sheep creek connector to access Goldhill road. When I bike through campus I have to ride on the road starting at the georgeson gardens to the sheep creek/ w tanana dr. T because I don't want to haul my bike over a five foot berm that I post hole up to my hips in.
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Parks Highway Path Rehabilitation
Clear a break in the snow berm so we can use the bike path all the way to the sheep creek connector to access Goldhill road. When I bike through campus I have to ride on the road starting at the georgeson gardens to the sheep creek/ w tanana dr. T because I don't want to haul my bike over a five foot berm that I post hole up to my hips in.