East 17th Street is a busy and heavily used roadway especially during campus athletic events. The multi-use path adjacent to 17th Street connects the Bypass MUP to Walnut Street, with future modifications to be done by the city farther west. Bikers can conveniently head south on the Level 2 roads Eagleson Avenue or Woodlawn Avenue; Indiana Avenue (Level 3) and Walnut Street (Level 4) are additional options.
Status: Complete. East of Fee Lane the MUP has lots of driveways and is very steep, so experienced bikers may end up out on the road anyway.
The 13th Street -Law Lane multi-use path provides an alternative to the 10th Street route with much different character. This route completes a connection from Indiana Avenue to Union Street through campus. In addition, the location of the Student Recreational Sports Center along this route will make it an important connector for many students, faculty, and staff looking for additional recreational opportunities.
Status: Probably on hold pending Law Lane modifications. Law Lane is planned to be extended from Fee Lane to Walnut Grove at 13th, and I expect that path will become a major driving thoroughfare. Hopefully it will be a complete street, with multi-use paths and bike lanes, but at the minimum it should have a MUP.
This is not a reasonable biking route currently - biking south on Indiana, you would have to make unprotected left turns onto 13th and then Law to get to the MUP that starts near Union.
10th Street is currently lacking distinct bicycle facilities, but while the corridor is one of the busiest on campus, it’s also one of the slowest moving. This allows for bicycles to also travel as vehicles in the relatively slow traffic environment within the street. Currently, design improvements for the Woodlawn/10th Street intersection include bike lanes on a short section of 10th Street from Park Avenue to North Forrest Avenue. For this 10 year campus Bicycle Master Plan, there are also a few short segments that bike lanes may be striped in, but primarily shared use lane markings are suggested for helping accommodate bicyclists through this highly congested and constrained section of 10th Street.
Status: 10th Street is dangerous from Walnut to Woodlawn, unbikable from Woodlawn to Eagleson, and not too bad east of Eagleson. Best avoided altogether though. When traffic is diverted to Law Lane the elements mentioned in the IU Master Plan may be able to be implemented:
Status: With the 7-Line and the Greenway, 7th Street is now the ideal east-west corridor for biking between the B-Line trail and the bypass. It would be nice if the four-way stop at Eagleson could be changed to stop north-south traffic only, but a good rule of thumb for planning a bike trip is to get to 7th as quickly as possible and stay on it for as long as possible.
3rd Street provides a decent bike lane for westbound traffic, but there is no way to travel eastbound the same way. This would be a useful route to go eastbound, but it's incoherent at the moment.
The Plan: Create a bikeway from the Bicycle Hub up to Rose Avenue in front of Wilkie. Eastbound, travel down University, through the bike gate, and up to a path in front of the Education building that leads to a crosswalk across Eagleson. From there, Jones Avenue is one-way with sharrows, with a contraflow bike lane for westbound bikes.
Status: No bike markings anywhere, and almost the entire route has parking on both sides so cars backing out from either side are potential dangers. The path in front of Education is just a sidewalk, so you have to contend with pedestrians there. It's low traffic but you wouldn't go out of your way to use it instead of salmoning down 3rd.
The Jordan River Greenway proposed in this Bicycle Master Plan thus would follow the Jordan River from the location that it leaves campus near Indiana Avenue through Dunn Meadow north of the IU Memorial Union. The greenway then continues east through the proposed bike hub where it continues east, following existing sidewalks south of Woodburn Hall and the Auditorium where it crosses Jordan Avenue and runs to the north of the Jordan Avenue parking garage. After passing the parking garage the greenway turns to the north following the Jordan River as it crosses over 7th Street and then turns east again to the south of Cypress Hall where it ends at Union Street.
Status: No bike markings anywhere. The Dunn Meadow path isn't wide enough for bikes and pedestrians together, and Woodlawn to the guard house is terrible.
The proposed path circles south around the parking lot to connect with a sidewalk behind Woodburn, which is a pretty nice design although it would be all new construction. From Woodburn the path is nice and wide and goes straight to Cypress Hall, skirting the river, so it could be very pretty. There are two paths crossing Eagleson, one which is probably the intended bike path and one a few yards south for pedestrians. The pedestrian path is the only one that has a crosswalk, so crossing Eagleson is a big problem. (Crossing 7th farther on is a smaller problem, involving much less and slower traffic.)
The existing east-west corridor just north of Dunn’s Woods is a flow corridor for bicyclists traveling from the Ballantine Hall area through the Sample Gates to Kirkwood Avenue. The current bicycle demand is handled sufficiently with minimal bike/ pedestrian conflicts. However, as the campus bicycle infrastructure is developed, the bicycle volume on campus will increase, simultaneously increasing the bicycle flow through the Dunn’s Woods corridor. As this increases, the infrastructure will need to be re-assessed.
The extension of Woodlawn Avenue is providing a new and complete north-south corridor through campus. As such, this corridor has been planned as a complete street. Bike lanes are planned along the street on each side of the roadway along with an off-road multi-use path on each side. Providing both on-road and off-road facilities gives options for bicyclists of different skill levels. The Woodlawn Avenue corridor provides a direct connection between the southern portion of campus and the athletic facilities including the Stadium and Assembly Hall.
Status: Complete. Decorative brickwork around the railroad tracks make the bike lanes unusable in that area, but it's easy enough to hop onto the off-road path for a few yards.
Southbound from 17th is a hard climb up the hill, followed by a slowdown across the railroad tracks, a major intersection at 10th street, and a lot of traffic in the way if you try to turn east on 7th. Turning right on 7th is much easier, but I tend to prefer Fee or Indiana, depending on my final destination.
Northbound all the delays come as you climb the hill so they don't matter so much, and going back down the hill is blazing fast.
Putting these all together makes a nice north-south bikeway from the bicycle hub to 10th and Fee. Add lane markings to Forrest and continue across 7th up towards the arboretum. Create a a multi-use path between the arboretum and the HPER fields. Create a bike path from this path through the arboretum to 10th and Fee.
Status: No bike markings. A tunnel under Forrest Avenue is being rebuilt and the road could be up for repaving eventually, so perhaps markings will be added then. The multi-use path is complete and the path that was probably intended to be a bike lane is complete as well. Pedestrians are everywhere in what the plan calls the "Ticket Booth" area, the south side of the 10th and Fee Lane intersection, so a good way to get from the Fee Lane bike lane onto that path is lacking. As it is, that path simply functions as an additional pedestrian path.
This route is a steep incline from Campus River all the way up to McNutt. Northbound, I much prefer going up the multi-use path, crossing 10th at the Psychology crosswalk, and heading over to Woodlawn to break up the climb. Southbound, the route is very fast and fun.
Completing this north-south corridor includes shared lane markings on Forrest Drive adjacent to the Union parking lot then traveling slightly east on a multi-use path to connect with another shared lane route on South Hawthorne Drive. This connects the north-south route to bike lanes along 3rd Street and to the neighborhoods adjacent to the campus on the south side.
Status: The Ballantine rebuild changed this plan a bit. There's a more-or-less direct route from the Bicycle Hub to Hawthorne and 3rd, which is blocked for cars by a gate. (I'd like a little extra space to get through though. Miscalculate by a few inches and you bang your handlebar on the gate pretty hard!) No bike markings though. The city plans Hawthorne to be an important bike route.
The bike plan actually lays out a rather brilliant concept, which it does a terrible job of explaining. Combined with city plans, we have a roughly three mile, south-to-north route that goes from Hillside Street, through the Bicycle Hub, to Fee Lane at the bypass. We have another three mile, west-to-east route that goes from Adams Street through the hub, and on to 7th Street at the bypass. The Bicycle Hub sits at the center of a citywide cross that will allow you to go by bike to get close to just about anywhere.
Indiana Avenue is a one-way, two lane street with on-street parking generally on one side of the street. The majority of it is a 30 foot wide cross-section. It is marked with shared lane markings. Its intersections adjoining the main portion of campus are stop controlled and traffic (posted) speed is approximately 30 mph. The City has proposed bike lane(s) from Hunter (south of 3rd) northward to 17th Street. This campus Bicycle Master Plan’s proposed facilities (e.g., Jordan River Greenway) will connect with the City’s future bike lane on Indiana.
This would be great, especially if they could be protected bike lanes. I don't know where or when the city proposed this and I haven't seen any motion towards making it happen.