Matt Schickling, the Wire
Abington’s plan to create a network of bike lanes throughout the township is moving from conceptual to concrete, but that doesn’t mean it will be implemented any time soon.
Workers at Simone Collins Landscape Architecture, the project consultants for the plan, have inked some targeted bikeways on the township map and will present a draft of the plan during a Sept. 21 meeting, but there’s much to do before that date.
On June 8, the committee held its second public meeting to present some of these ideas to the public. That meeting followed the initial presentation in April, where the project committee highlighted the possibilities for Abington and took public opinion on where and how these possibilities could become realities.
Most projects of this scope come in phases that span years, even generations.
“It’s like building road systems — it’s going to take a number of years,” project consultant Peter Simone said.
He placed the total time for completion at about 20 years, but township cyclists do have some reason to get excited. Elements of the plan should be completed as funding becomes available, which could be as soon as the final plan is in place, ideally in January.
“It’s a pretty extensive network we’ve proposed thus far,” Jared Lowman of Simone Collins said. “It’s preliminary and will be constantly changing.”
Despite the changes, one thing is clear: the project aims to connect Abington residents with places of interest and get more people on bicycles.
“Commuter riders are going to ride wherever they want,” Abington Commissioner Steven Kline said. “We’re trying to get people from the neighborhoods into different areas of the township, whether it be a school or park or business area.”
His point was backed by those in attendance. One cyclist said he commutes to work on Easton Road, regardless of heavy traffic or lack of designated bike lane. Advanced riders feel comfortable riding among vehicles in traffic, even on Old York Road.
But these areas are not a focus of the plan and are hardly even included. Rather, it is designed so that people with less experience can access points throughout the township, like one rider who said he wants to safely bike to Trader Joe’s with his children. Others want to bike to local SEPTA stations.
Besides park trails, only two significant bikeways are established in Abington. One runs northwest toward Upper Dublin on Susquehanna Road, the other is on Valley Road, leading into Lower Moreland.
The proposed route is designed as a loop, with connections to Willow Grove Park Mall, Keswick Village, Pennypack Trail and various parks and schools. It’s aimed at two- to three-mile trips, but the plan is to connect the Abington routes with already established networks in surrounding communities.
Kline said Abington reached out to Jenkintown officials to coordinate this project, but there has been no contact with Lower Moreland, despite the Valley Road bike lane dead-ending there.
Most of the bikeways proposed are considered class 3. This means that the routes would not have special accommodations for cyclists, like separate or exclusive bike lanes.
Instead, the township would implement a series of shared lanes, where signage and striping would designate a shared roadway between cyclists and motorists.
But even before that happens, logistics have to be considered, like cost. Simone Collins designed a comparable plan for Radnor. The 27 miles of bikeways were projected to cost $9.5 million. In Abington, over 20 years, a project like that would amount to about $5 per year per resident, if it were financed by taxes.
“We don’t know what the number is yet because we’re not there,” Simone said. “We’ll know in September.”
Kline expects Abington’s estimate to be lower than Radnor’s, where much of the plan entailed creating separated bike lanes because there’s more space. Abington is more “built up,” Kline said, and much of the work would include striping and signage.
The committee plans on making a priority list of 10 or so trails to target as “low-hanging fruit.” These are based on availability of funding, ease of construction and importance to the overall plan.
The next step in the process is for the committee to evaluate insights brought up at the meeting and do a field test of some of the proposed routes. The draft plan presented in September will represent this effort.
“You build where there are opportunities,” Simone said. “It’s really a moving target as you go through this.”
For information and updates, visit www.abington.org.
