Students and faculty who ride bicycles to school or around town will soon have their own lanes. The City of Starkville has put out a bid request for the repainting of University Drive to add bicycle lanes from Montgomery Street to the campus bike path at the Miss. Highway 12 bypass.
Starkville in Motion, a 2-year-old group of concerned citizens and organizations working to improve the Starkville community, is excited to see this project taking shape, the organization’s vice president Jimmy Richardson said.
“This is just a step in our efforts to increase usage of bike lanes, sidewalks and trails in Starkville,” said Richardson. “The increase in gas prices along with obesity studies should also help our efforts.”
The proposed plan, which is awaiting bids from paint is awaiting bids from painting companies, involves narrowing the car lanes on University Drive to make room for a bike lane roughly 5 feet wide on each side of the street. Some parallel parking spots along University Drive will be removed to make room.
Some of the parking spots to be nixed are located in front of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. These spots will be sorely missed during peak Mass hours, Rev. Jerry A. Mattingly said.
“We hate to relinquish parking spaces, but we support the greater cause of improving the community,” Mattingly said.
University Drive’s center line will be repainted to weave slightly down the street in order to allow alternation in which side of the street must lose parking spaces, Richardson said.
“All told there will be 40 to 50 total lost parking spots, and though some will be missed, most of the ones to go are unused or poorly marked,” he said.
Business owners along University Drive seem to agree in supporting the bike lanes.
The bike lanes may help parking situations at Strombolli’s, owner Tim Turman said.
“I don’t have a lot of parking, so the more people ride bikes, the less people will drive cars and the more room I’ll have,” he said.
The spots lost around City Bagel will not be missed, owner Mary Tkach said.
“I think the bike lane is great. We have a parking lot, so losing a few spots out front is not a problem,” Tkach said.
The only problem will be during busy times like Game Day, when parking becomes an issue everywhere and less street parking leads more people to try private lots along University Drive, Judy Davis, co-owner of Bill Davis Photography, said.
“We support a bike lane down University because it benefits the campus and the students. We just don’t want the parking situation to interfere with our tenants,” she said.
Another point that made some people unhappy was the speed limit reduction along University Drive, Richardson said.
“We found some resistance when we mentioned reducing the speed limit to 25 mph, but it is necessary for the safety of the cyclists,” he said.
Bicycle commuters will appreciate the safety of the bike lanes on their way to school, chemistry major Steven Kelly said.
“I only ride my bike, and I don’t like maneuvering out of the way of the faster cars, so I’m happy to have the lanes and the reduced speed,” he said.
This project, which will end up costing $6,000 to $12,000 depending on the painting costs, is work toward SIM’s long-term goal of providing safer routes to walk or bicycle around the city and university, Richardson said.
“It’s however we can move people without powered vehicles. We’d like more involvement from the student body so we can find out the needs of cyclists on-campus,” he said.
Starkville in Motion meets the second Monday of every month at 6:30 p.m. in the Bost Theatre.