Our Report on the Classen Corridor and Bike Safety Community Meeting

Hi  First name,

We attended the recent community meeting and thought we'd share an update on what we observed. We'll be honest, it felt more like a "here's how it's going to be" than a collaborative session with the community. Though the community certainly provided plenty of feedback.

There was a slide deck presented. We'll go through the slides and explain each one.

This slide is just giving an overview of the current and future bike network in the city core. Yellow is bike lane, dark green is trail, purple is "shared route". Interestingly, we see some new projects here that haven't started construction yet. Red is funded new bike lane, light green is funded new trail.

So, for example, we see the unfinished section of the deep fork (wasn't really discussed, but from what we know it's in re-design), as well as a new trail that will go under the highway on 36th (nice!), the final connection between Okana and the South River trail, the rail bridge over the river just west of Wheeler Wheel and a connecting rail-trail, and even a tiny piece of the Eastern Ave trail that will connect to the SE 59th cycle track (not shown).

Not conveyed here is that the new bike lane on 6th/Linwood from Walker to Indiana will be parking protected. Having a bike lane through downtown on 4th all the way to the Katy trail will be pretty great.

This slide mostly just enumerates what was shown on the map above, but adds in a few approximate timelines.

This slide covers features that have been funded for Classen (prior to any of the hullabaloo of the last few months, just with the bike lane changed to trail, and the addition of the improved crossings -- more on that later). Note that the off-street path is only going from 10th to 6th, NOT all the way to Sheridan. This is because the city owns this right-of-way (ROW) now and so can build this part of the trail now. The city will have to acquire the ROW down to Sheridan. This will take more time and cost more money than if they had just done the originally planned/approved bike lane.

Here they focus on emphasizing Western and Shartel bike lanes, with improved crossings, and new bike lanes on 4th and 6th.

Do not get your hopes up here. This is an example from Indianapolis. The Classen off-street trail COULD look like this, but it's unlikely ours would include pavers, there's no current precedent for this in OKC with the possible  exception of the Scissortail promenade.

Here we have more of that emphasis on using future bike lanes on 6th and 4th to get between Western and Shartel.

More talk of improved crossings, but also at Main and Sheridan.

This is what new crossings at Main, Sheridan, 4th, and 6th should look like. We have some examples of this already in OKC. The photo at the top left is OKC (N Kelley Ave), but the bottom left photo is NOT OKC.

A more specific diagram of the future 4th Street crossing.

This is where the trail will get built near-term (West side of Classen) due to already owning the ROW as noted above. Yes, it will be a mess (and a non-trivial time delay) crisscrossing Classen a couple times, but that is where the new crossings are supposed to help.

A highly conceptual cross-section of what Classen could look like in this stretch.

And that's it for the slides. Note that construction is starting in the Spring on the off-street trail. Not really shown on this slide, but something that was mentioned, is that there will be separate public meetings for the streetscape project. We'll let you know when we hear more about that.

Councilperson James Cooper was present and spoke at length and took many questions. We can't get into every question asked (there were very good ones) and answered, but it's important to note that he encouraged us to mark-up the drawings that were on every table with our idealized versions of Classen, which we did. The below picture is from before the mark-ups, but there were A LOT of great suggestions written down. We hope most of them can be incorporated. If you were unable to make it to the meeting, we highly recommend communicating your wishes to your councilperson, asking in particular that they be forwarded to the planning team.

Here is one of the drawings that were on tables, before it was marked-up by attendees.

As always, even if you did attend, it's never a bad idea to convey your thoughts about all this to your councilperson.

If you didn't know already, our primary mission is to provide bikes to those transitioning out of homelessness, removing the transportation barrier as they work towards improving their lives. We have plenty of bikes, but many need some fixing up. If you're good at fixing bikes, and you'd like to volunteer your time to help us do so, please complete the volunteer form and waiver (if you haven't already).

We're having a Bike Fixing Party on Sunday, March 22nd. More details will be forthcoming, but there will be food, drinks, and plenty of work to do. We will need people who can fix bikes, and likely as well some folks with cars who are willing to haul parts and finished bikes. If you have only some basic skills but are looking to get some experience with more advanced bike repairs you are welcome to join as well!

We've been doing bike lane clean-ups every second Saturday. The next one is planned for Saturday, March14th, from 10am to Noon. The March clean-up location is TBD, so follow social media for updates. Please dress appropriately for a couple hours of light work in whatever weather comes our way. Things to bring: Brooms 🧹 , water 💧, gloves 🧤.

Watch social media for additional details or updates.

Note: Make sure you have a waiver on file before you join in on the clean-ups!

It's important to keep up! The absolute fastest way to get information is via our Discord. The next best is social media, followed by this newsletter.