City Adds Bike Lanes To Urge Drivers To ‘Share The Road’

The City of Tulsa will add bike travel lanes to about 50 miles of streets for everything other than cars.

There is a line of traffic cones protecting new paint and new lanes on 11th street for bicycles. The City is repainting stripes on 11th to create bike lanes with the idea that a street isn’t complete until everyone can use it.

"The 'complete streets' is the philosophy there's multiple users of the streets, not just cars," said Doug Helt with the City of Tulsa.

The City expects that once construction is finished and the routes are complete, riders will be more common. The work started in downtown and more streets are in the works.

Out on the streets, Mitch Drummond from the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee said the lanes are most important for the 30,000 Tulsans without a car.

"This configuration where we have the bike lane up against the curb and parking out by traffic, that's called a protected bike lane," said Drummond. "That's the end goal because the parked cars provide protection between moving traffic and people on bicycles."

As the infrastructure for bicycles improves, the City expects more people will embrace the changes to the design of streets to accommodate the new alternatives.