18: Jollyville 1

Linking to anchors currently broken, so you'll have to scroll to see the medium version of the picture you clicked on.

Jollyville Rd. at Great Hills Rd. looking westerly/northerly

Jollyville Rd. at Braker Lane looking northerly

2004 update: BIKE LANES ARE FINALLY HERE! YEE-HAW!

Jollyville Rd. comprises the majority of the second half of my commute to work. While this facility is fine for experienced commuters, it is absolutely inadequate for any other cyclists, despite being heavily marked as a bike route (see next slide?). The right lane is slightly wider than the inside lane, but not enough to reasonably qualify as a "wide outside lane", and there are no sidewalks on the vast majority of its length. This road pretty much epitomizes 1970s-1980s suburban design; support the automobile to the exclusion of all other modes of travel. Pedestrians have the choice of walking in the street(!) or in a ditch on the side of the road; and cyclists must travel with the 45mph car traffic without the benefit of extra space or a marked lane.

These are the conditions which must be faced by the typical suburban cyclist (either a resident of a suburban area or somebody like me trying to travel through one). There is no grid pattern as in the older sections of the city, so there is no alternate route to Jollyville (ironically, Jollyville is supposed to be the safer alternate to US 183!). Conditions like this are why I first got involved with the UTC's bike/ped subcommitte after noticing that even though suburban cyclists' best facilities are like this one, they were still spending most of their money in the central city, where the worst bike route is still better than Jollyville Rd.

Could be worse, though; you could live in Round Rock where you can't get anywhere without travelling on a road like RM620...

So the next time you hear an acquaintance talking about how we shouldn't spend any money on cyclists because nobody uses their bike to get to their job, show them this slide and compare to the first Bull Creek slide: (click here to see slide)

We have to spend money in suburban areas on cycling precisely because suburban roads are currently designed in bike-hostile ways compared to older urban streets.