Riverside Drive: Getting Rid of Trucks

Riverside Drive is one of those, “it should be useful to bike, but really isn’t” places to bike in the valley.

For those trying to get from the west into the Griffith Park / Burbank area, there aren’t many good options and Riverside is the most direct.

Once you hit the 170 Freeway, the bike lanes disappear as you hit the five pointed intersection and the street actually continues diagonally while the straight ahead direction turns into Camarillo.

As you continue on, there’s not much to your right as a parallel segment of the Tujunga Wash is the only defining feature between the road and the freeway.

 

 

Because there’s nothing alongside, this area has been used as a staging area for construction trucks idling to pick up dirt.

Heck, there are so many drivers that normally a catering truck sets up to serve them.

Since these vehicles are extra wide, not only do they take up space where I could be biking, but you’re always in danger of an operator swinging open their door in a lane that’s now not wide enough for both a bike and car.

Yes, I do take the lane in this portion, but drivers aren’t happy to avoid their 50 mph sprint to get to backed up traffic at Vineland.

Yesterday morning, I was on the way to Sweet Salt when I saw work crews lined up with signage, but from this perspective, I couldn’t really see much going on.

On the way back, it became apparent what was going on.

 

RiversideDr01

Try fitting a semi in there now sucka….

 

The crew was adding paint to create parking spaces just long enough to fit a normal sized car.

In other words, if you’re driving a semi with a trailer attached, you’re too long to avoid being in the red zone.

I don’t know what facilitated this, but perhaps residents on the other side of the street were annoyed by the sounds of heavy machinery idling at early hours of the morning.

Since there’s no sidewalks on that side of the street or pedestrian crossings nearby, you rarely see any other vehicles parked on that side of the road which begs the question, why not build a bike lane there?

Oh logic….