Interestingly, as I was getting these photos, I came across one pedestrian (jogging in the bike lane) and one cyclist (riding against the flow of traffic on the sidewalk, even though there was a coned-off bike lane and almost no vehicular traffic).

But it was good to see the new facilities getting some use already!

1. On intersections without dedicated right turn lane (2nd & 3rd photos), the bike lane typically extends to the stop bar for all lanes. If there is anything that could be done to improve these, possibly it would be adding a sign on the signal cross arm or pole saying “Right turning vehicles yield to bicycles”. But from the photos this appears to be straight out of AASHTO.

2. On intersections with dedicated right-turn lanes (4th & 5th photos), the striping is correct. They should be signed consistently, however, with a yield to bikes sign at each occurrence where motorists must cross a bike lane to use the right turn lane as you stated. This would be worth noting to the project engineer. The one without the sign is still coned-off so maybe they’re not finished.

3. The wide sidewalk on the west side is to accommodate a future trail connection between Cedar Lake Park and Lone Elm Park, which in turn will ultimately connect to a future Cedar Creek Trail running north from Cedar Lake, through Lake Olathe to the Kansas River. The sidewalk on the east side is a regular width sidewalk. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but all the sidewalk work may not be done at this point. The wide sidewalk ending at the off-ramp intersection may be its temporary ending point until it can be extended further south to Lone Elm Park with the next road widening to 167th Street (if and when that happens). I’m guessing they had to end it here or in the grass at the southern terminus of the project a couple of hundred feet further south.

4. Sidewalks on both sides of 159th Street bridge was a lost battle in the design. Not much can be done about that now. There are still engineers that only walk from their house to the car in the garage and the parking lot to their office and thus cannot grasp why pedestrians need to be on both sides of road even if it is in a major growth area with hundreds of millions of dollars expected to be spent building up the area because of the new interchange, per the Mayor.

5. There are no bike lanes on the 159th Street bridge because they are not on Olathe’s transportation plan. Of course Olathe has not adopted or even acted on the almost 3-year old draft bicycle transportation plan, which is what really needs to be pushed. I can’t recall if 159th is targeted for bike lanes on the draft plan or not. It would make sense if it was as its 2 miles south of 143rd/Dennis and 2 miles north of 175th and the draft bike plan attempted to identify bike lanes every two miles.

6. I’ll have to look at those grates, too. I was assured they would be “bicycle-friendly” grates. If they’re really not, but are called as such, then the issue needs to be raised. The reason the large bars are turned the way they are is the grate functions better as a storm grate with the large bars horizontal to the flow of water. However, I think there are better grates with “vanes” perpendicular to the water flow that provide a safer bicycle design without loosing much in flow capacity. One of the other issues that comes into play in grate selection is weight loading and clogging. I’m sure these are designed for maximum vehicle weight. The “vaned” grates I’m thinking of may not have as high a design loading as the bars are thinner steel and sense the perpendicular bars are closer together, they are more prone to get clogged by debris.

7. The “wrong way bike” signs are supposed to be on the back of the first sign from a street intersection if you were to go in the wrong direction in the bike lane. I’ve also seen a sign telling pedestrians to walk on the left and to yield to bikes in bike lane, but those are generally in much higher density areas than here where bike-ped conflicts are an issue.

It’s nice to see the pavement milled down slightly for the bike lane icons and stripping. They’ll last much longer and not get peeled off next winter by the snow plows, like on Woodland Road.

The “right turn yield to bikes” is only meant for intersections where a right turn lane crosses the bike lane. This is also designed correctly with the “bike slot” that allows the bike to continue straight while cars yield before crossing into the turn lane.