BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Nice. The city is repaving a section of 18th Street in the slopes, from Pius to the Flats. Kind of torn because milling off the asphalt course to reveal the Belgian block base slows down the traffic considerably...

I feel like we need to post a list of the streets in worst condition... and the ones that see some cyclist use as well. I cast my vote for Bates Street between the Boulevard of the Allies and Atwood Street in Central Oakland.

Obviously Negley and Center need to be up there as well...

Bates just north of the Boulevard is a colossal mess. The gravel gets out of control there, aside from any other issues of pavement condition.

I haven't been on it in a while, but Second Ave OB from Ross to the Birm. bridge was plain horrible a year ago. Very active door zone puts you just far enough out that you're straddling a longitudinal crack that runs the length of the street, so you pretty much have to take the lane. This is especially bad by the jail, which is slightly uphill so you cannot get any speed.

It's a perfect example of why "as far to the right as practicable" can mean three feet to the right of the double yellow, and I don't care who cares.

By far one of the worst is Negley...every single inch of it.

On the good side, they just re-did a nasty stretch on Ellsworth between Spahr and Shady. I'm hoping they extend that at least to Ivy.

@Lou, negley north of hampton is beautiful. unfortunately its only 2 blocks long.

Bates near the Boulevard right now has a huge pothole with standing water in it. It's a hazard for pedestrians too, because people still speed through there and you're likely to get hit with the water.

Ellsworth between Shady and that next stop sign on the other side of the Bus Terminal is being resurfaced. At least I hope they intend on putting the surface back on it, this Simulated Moon Surface is impressively obnoxious. It irritates car drivers too, who tend to drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid bumps/manholes, only to freak out when there's something (me on bike) coming the other way.

negley is the first thing i shout about any time bike pgh discussion turns to 'roads we need to fix'

If we broaden the discussion, I think the West Carson Sidewalk of Doom merits a top spot, considering it's made of plywood and glass. The first time I took it from the Corliss Tunnel to West End, I seriously started laughing because it was so bad. The laughing stopped as soon as I got a flat.

In addition to Negley, I second Stu's recommendation of 2nd Avenue to the 10th Street Bridge. I use that route frequently, and it is always dicey.

I did see Herron when they were working on it, and I'm definitely looking forward to giving it a go!

i also always chime in about negley. liberty through bloomfield is also pretty high on my list.

also: i don't care how smooth or debris free it is, i can't see gliding down herron without braking. if that street were straight, i could probably hit 45 on it without pedaling.

Yeah, it was a bit dangerous. I wouldn't have done it if I had seen any cars in either direction. Still, fun as hell.

Negley needs sharrows in addition to resurfacing.

Brighton Ave on the North Side is like Second Ave: Paved with very old concrete, with a huge longitudinal crack just outside the door zone. Going downhill from Marshall to Calif/Charles isn't so bad because you can take the lane w/o too much trouble, but uphill is irritating.

It's not that bad a hill, but like Second, you're too busy checking doors and checking that long crack and checking traffic coming up behind you. It'd be such a nice ride if it had a fresh paving job.

I'm sure there's some objective standard for surface quality -- ASTM or somebody must have one.

Though for our purposes, some kinds of surface imperfections are worse than others.

Generating such a standard seems like a way that the LAB and AASHTO could be useful. To my mind, road and trail surface quality should figure prominently in any "bicycle friendly community" metric.

friendship ave between the parklet and aiken-ish is pretty terrible.