Highway Gets Bike Lane Makeover

Highway 101 will get just a little bit more useful in the coming months as Belmont prepares to build a bike bridge over the highway.

The freeway was closed late last night, and drivers were directed to a detour on El Camino Real. The lanes are now open, but with new infrastructure in place that will support the new bridge, according to the CC Times.

It'll cost $6.2 million and connect the two halves of the cities. Freeways have always caused major problems when they fragment a town, cutting portions off from each other. The bike bridge will, to a limited extent, solve that problem. But eliminating the highway altogether is the only way to reunite the west and east sides of Belmont.

Sebastopol, meanwhile, is still debating whether bicyclists deserve safe roads. Residents are reluctant to give up parking spaces, even though a study showed that the excess spaces would not be missed. Sebastopol is the only town in Sonoma County with no bike lanes, according to the Press Democrat, putting bicyclists at significant risk of injury or death.

In Santa Rosa, a motorist hit a bicyclist yesterday morning, sending them to the hospital. The location was a massive intersection at West Steele Lane and Range Avenue. Although there are limited bike lanes in the area, there are no safety features for bicyclists such as green bike boxes, painted lanes, and bike priority signals to allow bike to go ahead of cars.