Pedaling a vision for El Paso

"Armed with a folding bicycle and endless energy," urban planners Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia spent a week figuring out how to make this west Texas city bicycle-friendly.

The El Paso Times reports that Lydon and Garcia biked a combined 200 miles, their efforts part of Plan El Paso — a $2 million planning effort that is examining how this city can accommodate a swelling population due to an expansion of Fort Bliss, an Army base.

El Paso has doubled its bicycle lanes — to 97 miles from 47 miles — as the result of a 1997 bicycle plan, but many of the lanes are poorly marked, according to Lydon and Garcia of Street Plans Collaborative. Many streets have plenty of room for bicycles, but the automobile travel lanes are too wide.

One street, Montana Avenue, "can become a good bikeway just by narrowing the width of the street's two lanes," the planners told the newspaper.

"Currently those lanes are about 15 feet wide. By repainting the street, the car lanes can be narrowed to 10 or 12 feet and a safe bikeway can be painted onto the sides.

" 'The narrower streets will also slow down the traffic, which makes them more bike-friendly,' Garcia said. 'That's what we found throughout El Paso. There are a lot of wide streets that make for fast traffic. If you narrow them, the traffic will slow down, leaving room for bikes.' "

The bottom line: " 'Central El Paso and the Downtown area can easily be transformed, all you have to do is repaint the streets,' Lydon said. 'The rest of the city will take a little more work.' "

Plan El Paso's lead planner is Dover, Kohl & Partners of Miami.