The city of Syracuse has finished installing a bike path on Waverly and Comstock avenues, connecting the pre-existing Euclid Avenue bike path to the Connective Corridor.

The new bike path is part of the Syracuse’s larger Bike Infrastructure Master Plan, which set a goal for what the city’s bike infrastructure will look like in 2040. The city refers back to the plan during construction, said Neil Burke, the city’s transportation planner.

With the additional bike path, there is now a six-mile set of continuous bike lanes connecting Syracuse’s downtown to its Eastside, Burke said. The goal of the path is to “to bring everyone from the Eastside into a connected system of bike lanes,” he added.   

For the safety of riders, the bike paths are painted green. There are also barriers between the bike lane and the road. Given the separation, the number of available parking spots on Waverly Avenue has decreased, Burke said.

It’s critical to have bike lanes marked to help prevent cyclists from getting injured, said Aidan Ackerman, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at SUNY-ESF.

“The more there are marked bike lanes and the more bikers there are, then there is a higher awareness among drivers and cyclists so both know where to go,” Ackerman said.

During the morning rush to classes, there can be 10 to 15 people biking on the path, he said. He added that this was an increase from the number of people he saw last year.

City-wide improvements are being made to bike technology and infrastructure, among them the implementation of a bike share program. Residents can rent and return electronic bikes at 35 locations around the city through the Syracuse Sync program, a collaboration between the city and Gotcha, a national mobility service company.

Through the Gotcha app, users have the ability to pay for their rental bikes by the minute or through a monthly and annual plan. The program makes it more financially sustainable to ride without investing in an individual bike, Ackerman said.

Syracuse University plans to install bike hubs — sites where users can take out and return the electronic bikes — on four campus locations. The hubs will be placed at the University Avenue and Marshall Street intersection, in front of Lawrinson Hall and outside both Bird Library and the Goldstein Student Center.

John Petosa, a professor at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said the new bike paths connect the university and the city in a more symbolic than physical way. It would be hard for Syracuse to become a biking city because it snows for many months of the year, Petosa said.

“Through different projects like the Connective Corridor, we’ve seen that the city is here to support the university and the university is here to support the city,” he said.

Published on September 18, 2019 at 2:02 pm

Contact Mira: mlberenb@syr.edu