For the past several years, Salt Lake City has had an informal policy of not chip sealing bike lanes. Streets with bike lanes may be chip sealed, but the bike lanes have not been chip sealed. However, a January 2011 field examination of some streets that received this treatment four years prior revealed that the pavement in the bike lane had severely deteriorated compared to the regular (chip sealed) roadway surface. The chip sealed roadway is now a much better bicycling surface than the untreated bike lane. Further information and photographs are provided in an article in Cycling Utah, June 2011 issue, p. 26: https://www.cyclingwest.com/june/Cycling-Utah-June-2011-Issue.pdf
Since February 2011, the SLC Transportation Division has been gathering informal input from bicyclists on Salt Lake City’s chip seals. Preliminary input has been fairly positive about the City chip sealing bike lanes, with some bicyclists expressing that the temporary pain of chip-seal construction and the rougher riding surface are preferable to longer-term potholes and road deterioration.
Bicyclists interested in weighing in on chip seals are invited to go ride either or both of the following streets:
·1700 South (300 W to 900 W) – chip sealed in early July 2011 including the bike lane as a pilot. For contrast, the adjacent sections both east and west were slurry sealed in July 2011.
·Wiley Post Way (near Jimmy Doolittle, in the International Center just west of the airport) – chip sealed four years ago, but the bike lane was not sealed. For contrast, nearby Amelia Earhart was chip sealed last season (2010).
Please note that we do need input on Salt Lake City chip seals, in particular. Salt Lake County uses a different stone product, and so any experience you may have with Emigration Canyon or Wasatch Boulevard south of I-80 is a different type of riding surface – not relevant to this particular input request.
Submit comments to [email protected] by 5 pm on Friday, November 18, 2011. Comments in writing are preferred, and we would certainly appreciate if you would include information about your tire width and pressure! You may also call the Transportation Division at 801-535-7274 and we can log your comments over the phone.
