This is the first time I’ve been on in a while. Lots of things have kept me from blogging but I am beginning to believe that they are mostly unimportant fluff.
The City of Austin has just broken ground on a new bike bridge that will be built next to the highway bridge across Bull Creek south of town.
The highway there is 65 mph with a shoulder on the southbound (out of town) side but has been re-striped to add a lane and reduce the shoulder on the northbound (into town) side to just enough to keep cars out of the drain grates. The only saving grace is it is downhill.
The creek at this point is environmentally sensitive so construction opportunities are limited. The bridge is scheduled to cost $7.7 million and be completed in 2016.
The bridge is the only logical way across Bull Creek for miles so cyclists frequently brave traffic to cross even in rush hour. If the bridge had been built properly in the fist place I bet the cost would have been a lot lower.
We’ll learn to do it right the first time instead of having to doing it over.
Cyclist in the Lane 
An alternative would be to take that $8 million (plus all the cost overruns) and buy people bicycle racks for their cars. That way they could portage their bikes across the greenbelt and save all that construction mess.
😉