The City of Lubbock’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), the Chamber of Commerce and representatives from Texas Tech are teaming up to bring more bike lanes to Lubbock’s city streets.
For cyclists like Mark Moser, the addition of more bike lanes is something long overdue. He is also a mechanic at Broadway Bikes, just across the street from the Tech campus. He says his customers, who are all primarily Tech students, seem to feel the same way.
“Quite often I have customers coming in who are students and they believe there are too few bike lanes in Lubbock,” said Moser. “There are really no options for bike lanes going east to west in Lubbock, all of them travel north to south. I guess you could exclude – there are a few bike lanes on campus that loop around, but as for the actual city itself it altogether lacks east to west bike lanes.”
Moser and his customers aren’t alone. According to the Chamber of Commerce, when they asked for input from the community in regard to what they would like to see change about the city, bike lanes proved to be at the top of the list.
“Bike lanes and the desire for increased bike amenities was one of the top priorities when it came to a sense of place or how to improve Lubbock as a place,” said Norma Ritz Johnson, Executive President of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce. “For those who provided an input under the age of 30, it was the number one desire from a place standpoint in terms that could improve our community.”
Wood Franklin, the director of Public Works for the City of Lubbock, says the current bike plan is being updated. Once it is established where exactly new lanes are needed most, the City will begin marking new lanes and routes.
For cyclists like Moser, who say although he’s excited to hear updates are being made to the city’s current bike plan to better accommodate more cyclists around the city, his main concern is that these plans may become “bogged down” as they slowly move forward.
“I know that from having also lived in other cities where bike plans were being instituted, these things can take many years,” Moser said. “I’ll just be patient, I guess.”
The MPO hopes to have designs and layouts for new lanes in the upcoming months. They say their hope is to make the city of Lubbock safer and more accessible for its cyclists.
