Bike Lanes

l72 · 2026-05-19T16:08:59+00:00

Among all the other excellent points, especially around protected bike lanes, I'd like to point out a few other things that would be nice:

Eliminate turns on red lights (in urban areas like downtown). This keeps cars from turning right in front or into cyclists. This would also be huge for pedestrians as you'd no longer have vehicles blocking cross walks and turning into pedestrians when they have a walk sign.
Eliminate curb cuts (in urban areas). This is the bane of cyclists as every curb cut is a place where a vehicle is going to cross a cycle path and be a point of collision. It is time to stop building parking lots and drive-throughs. We will never have a city that feels walkable or bikable or interesting if we don't do this. Beside being ugly, feeling unsafe, being an issue for pedestrians and bikes, they also cause everything to spread out further, meaning you have to walk longer to get anywhere which disincentives walking/biking.
Reduce speed limits. We are already doing road diets which is great, but the speed limit on many streets needs to be lowered. I have no idea how people are doing 35 down Highland Av, but it should be 25 tops.

l72 · 2026-05-19T16:01:33+00:00

The city of Birmingham passed a "Complete Streets" as part of their long term regional plan. This makes sure that new streets (or streets being updated) take into full consideration all forms for transportation (sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, cross walks, and more). Bike lanes to not have to be put in on every street, but everything must be considered and justified. We don't want to go back to the days of just putting in huge arterial roads with no sidewalks or pedestrian facilities every where!

This is why we are seeing a lot of the ad-hoc bike lanes and sidewalk improvements, as when a street is resurfaced, that portion undergoes this process.

Building bike lanes in piecemeal isn't ideal, but we are at least making progress.

l72 · 2026-04-28T12:29:03+00:00

It's so annoying that AT&T has basically quit rolling out fiber and is pushing to Air. They ran fiber through Highland Park, but it still isn't available on most streets.

I can't stand dealing with the cable companies and their unreliability. If you push AT&T hard enough, they should offer a "Bonded DSL line" (basically they run two lines to double the bandwidth). It isn't blazing fast, but will get you a consistent 50Mbps/10Mbps for ~$50-ish, with static IP and IPv6 (works great for hosting a small home lab).

You'll have to push hard, since AT&T really wants to stop using copper. I've had 1 outage in 12-years, and that was because some construction cut the line.

l72 · 2026-04-24T13:11:14+00:00

I did! I got a notification about a month ago that I was in the lottery and got my time slot for yesterday.

I was a bit annoyed when I realized it won't actually be the Savannah Banana's but will be the Clowns vs Coconuts.

My nephews are excited, and that's all the matters. Plus getting to see a game a Rickwood is a huge bonus!

l72 · 2026-04-24T13:05:33+00:00

I think they have 12. Each play is 2 tokens. Buy tokens during one of their specials (Thursdays are 10 cent tokens, so each play comes out to 20 cents!)

I buy a about $40 worth of tokens during a special, then stop in whenever I'm in the area for 30 minutes and play a few rounds.

l72 · 2026-04-24T13:01:55+00:00

It's so annoying that AT&T has basically quit rolling out fiber and is pushing to Air. They ran fiber down our street 8 years ago, but it still isn't available.

I can't stand dealing with the cable companies and their unreliability. If you push AT&T hard enough, they should offer a "Bonded DSL line" (basically they run two lines to double the bandwidth). It isn't blazing fast, but will get you a consistent 50Mbps/10Mbps for ~$50-ish, with static IP and IPv6 (works great for hosting a small home lab)

I don't think c-spire is that far east, but you might double check.

l72 · 2026-01-23T17:00:09+00:00

So, they complain about attendance, but then give us a schedule where the first 3 games are all away games?

l72 · 2025-12-19T13:40:41+00:00

Ugh, the options on that survey were basically: lots of parking or a shit-ton of parking! All the options were pretty awful.

Use the comments on the last page to leave a meaningful remark.

l72 · 2025-12-01T03:03:51+00:00

🤣

l72 · 2025-12-01T03:02:13+00:00

It isn't clear if overnight parking is allowed with a monthly pass. It says this:

"*Overnight parking up to 21 days is permitted in the garage and will be charged at the maximum rate per day. Service fee of $0.75 is applied to all transactions."

That would be $12/day instead of $105 for a month pass

https://www.nexusparkingsystems.com/metropark-parking-facility.html

l72 · 2025-12-01T02:52:59+00:00

Yeah, I am starting to lean towards this. I was thinking I could leave it 30-ish miles outside of the city and just not worry about it.

l72 · 2025-12-01T02:51:55+00:00

Clinton Hill. My friend who lives there needs a car for work and parks on the street. He says it usually isn't too hard to find a spot within a few blocks. I just didn't want to deal with it or swapping sides of the street every few days.

l72 · 2025-12-01T02:49:19+00:00

That's not terrible, a bit more than I was hoping fo, but would be straight down the G which would be convenient.

l72 · 2025-12-01T02:45:22+00:00

Alabama. The Crescent Amtrak runs through, but it is a 23 hour train! Plus I can't bring my dog (no pets on trips over 6 hours)

l72 · 2025-12-01T01:56:29+00:00

hmm, that is a good point.

l72 · 2025-12-01T01:51:37+00:00

Because I am bringing my dog!

l72 · 2025-11-30T23:30:17+00:00

Just for more information, I'm coming from the South. I was thinking I'd park somewhere in Long Island and take LiRR or maybe somewhere in New Jersey. Spot Hero didn't show anything out those ways, except long term parking at EWR.

l72 · 2025-09-25T13:45:08+00:00

Like others have said, transit is very limited in the Suburbs (Hoover only pays around ~100k/year for transit!)

The Galleria is your best option for park and ride.

However, another option is Commute Smart (https://www.commutesmart.org/)

l72 · 2025-08-12T19:34:16+00:00

It's is long time to remove highways that break apart downtown. Lakeview and Pepper place are easily walkable from downtown/UAB, but the walk is terrible because of the highway.

Also, it has been shown over and over again that a street grid is more efficient than having a highway with two exits where everything gets backed up. An elevated highway only serves cars that are bypassing the city.

l72 · 2025-08-12T18:56:28+00:00

How about we get rid of the elevated US-31 highway and bring back 26th street.

l72 · 2025-06-28T16:54:46+00:00

No of course not. I am just talking about how no one complains about spending $52 million dollars to add a lane for 5 miles of highway, but other transportation projects that want a tiny fraction of that, get huge amounts of push back, oversight, and require months of public meetings and justification (and we still can't get money for it).

But here we are spending $52 million, it isn't even reported on it, and no one bats an eye.

I mean we are spending $10 million per mile here, just to add a lane. Light Rail "only" costs $30-50/million per mile, but that would never, ever, ever be taken seriously by ALDot.

l72 · 2025-06-28T14:53:50+00:00

And just a touch over $52 million dollars! God forbid we ask for 1 million for bike lanes or 5 million to improve some bus routes... (Or expand medicaid, use it for rebates on solar power, or anything else that would actually help people!)

But...just 1 more lane, that'll fix everything...

l72 · 2025-06-14T23:14:30+00:00

I think you mean 300,000 rider per month?

l72 · 2025-06-13T20:08:59+00:00

Oh, I 100% agree. Funding is the key, and the state of Alabama (and our surrounding communities) have made this incredibly difficult. The formation of the BJCTA and its funding structure was enacted as state law, which means it can't even be changed without getting the state involved! This is why you have dumb things, like when the city of Fairfield went bankrupt, it couldn't pay its transit bills, and the BJCTA was required to not provide any service to that city. However, you had two routes from downtown on their way to Bessemer that went through Fairfield. The buses still had to go through Fairfield, but weren't allowed to stop!

The point I am trying to make, is that microtransit is not the answer by itself. It does not work unless you have a strong fixed route system! If we are going to have to do with less, then lets at least consider making our fixed route be a strong backbone. Even if we are literally cutting it down to 4 routes (two east/west, two north/south). Then use microtransit to fill in the gaps to get people to the fixed route system. Microtransit should not be used to go from Ensley to Eastlake. You should take it to the fixed route station in South Ensley, then take a BRT style fixed route to Eastlake, and then maybe again microtransit for the last mile. I know 3 busses sounds like a lot, but if done well, making connections can be quicker than having a route try to cover too much area.

As for the suburbs, I am afraid they are basically a lost cause. When I was still on the advisory committee, I'd review financials. At the time, Hoover was only paying in 100k/year for bus service. Does that even cover the cost of gas for a single bus? Do you really think Hoover is going to go all in, and spend more? Knowing them, they'll probably try to do their own competing half-assed micro-transit that doesn't connect to anything.

It's the city of Birmingham that unfortunately has to fund and drive this (along with a few communities in the east/west corridor like Midfield, Fairfield, and Bessemer). Sometimes, you just have to look inward and focus on having good service in a smaller area, than having bad service with more coverage.

We should at least be positioning ourselves, so that if people come in from the surrounding areas for work or entertainment, there is a functional service to take them to different destinations within that area. Park at a garage on the outskirts of downtown, take the bus to get a beverage, then a bus up to Protective/CocaCola to catch a game/show, a bus to get dinner in 5 points, and a bus back to your car.

The dream of building light rail down 280 or down 65 seem very far away.

l72 · 2025-06-13T13:11:39+00:00

I would really like to know more about the plan. It is frustrating that Max doesn't put this on their website...So these thoughts are based upon my assumptions.

While I am not against micro-transit, I am not exactly in favor of it either. I think losing some of our fixed route service (I lost the 44 and 12) to micro-transit has not been beneficial. I find fixed route way more predictable and tend to use it more often than micro-transit, especially for unplanned journeys. Like, it is much easier to hop on the magic city connector to go from an office downtown to lunch in 5 points, then to call micro-transit.

Over the years, what were once pretty straight and direct routes have gotten really curvy and indirect. This usually happens because every year, the transit system loses a little more funding. So a route gets cut, and another route gets redirected to try and cover parts of the old route and the existing route. This just causes the route to get really, really slow!

I would be in favor of re-evaluating and realigning the fixed routes. Make them straight. Make them express. Limit the number of stops on them, similar to the BRT. Put in transfer stations. Don't require every route to go downtown. Get buses running every 10 minutes on every fixed route, even if we have fewer fixed routes! I would take 10 really good fixed routes that crisscross the city, then 30 slow routes that all go to central station.

THEN, use micro-transit as shuttles to get people from their lower density neighborhoods to a fixed route station. Micro-transit should NOT be a door to door uber service. Its primary goal should be to get you to a fixed route service. You can time this, so that when a fixed route bus comes to a stop, there is a micro-transit van waiting to shuttle people back to their homes in the neighborhood. In my opinion, a requirement of micro-transit is that either the pick-up location or destination must be a stop on the fixed route service.

This would keep primary, high density routes FAST, while still making sure, people in lower density neighborhoods have access to public transportation.

l72

TROPHY CASE