closed #181586
Traffic Related Complaints
1525 E 7th St, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
- Case Date:
- 9/21/2022
Ever since the city created the bike lane on east seventh street between Walnut and the University the street has become a drag strip. Stop signs were taken away and people are traveling at excessive speeds. The condition has become exacerbated by an increase flow of bike traffic at various times of day. A person traveling north on Lincoln to safely cross must now watch the high speed vehicle traffic, the pedestrian traffic as well as the bike traffic. Visually it is a very difficult task to take in all of the information at the same time and the problem is that it is difficult to take in the bike lane when you are looking across the street at the pedestrian and high speed traffic. Bikers heading east come over the hill from Walnut and accelerate into the intersection. The curbs are extremely high and one cannot enter seventh street from Grant heading west without turning into the oncoming traffic lane or hitting the curb and damaging tires. On Monday I approached Seventh and Lincoln from the south around five o’clock pm. There was so much activity I missed a biker traveling west. I missed the person because there was simply too much to watch. Yesterday I made the decision to stop crossing Seventh St altogether because it was just too dangerous. I took a route that brought me from the west into the intersection. The city has now placed crosswalks without any warning signs of change all around the university and now pedestrians are no longer waiting for traffic to clear before attempting to cross and are now entering the crosswalks into the traffic flowing east and west with the expectation that it will stop, effectively a stop without a stop time. As I approached from the west to turn north onto Lincoln the east and westbound traffic had completely stopped for the cross walkers. Five persons on scooters zoomed into the intersection from south Lincoln and crossed through the stopped traffic. A six scooter, a straggler followed, suit entering right at the point when it had appeared to have cleared. These people should have been governed like the rest of cross traffic but instead acted effectively as pedestrians. Obviously no one was looking for them and they were traveling at a speed closer to a car than a pedestrian or biker. A dangerous situation has now been worsened by an intervention. We have spoken to the police officers in the neighborhood and obviously they cannot conceivably be there to do the work that traffic sign regulation had accomplished effectively for years. I can no longer move directly in my neighborhood because it is simply too dangerous. I am going out of my way to avoid the dangers and still cannot do that safely because of the chaos. We are going to see a scooter death or a bicyclist death if something is not done to prevent it. At least the City will be on notice when the lawsuit follows.