e-biking in Kansas City

Grab your dramamine, we’ve got some craaazy new bike lanes between Linwood Boulevard and Westport Road on Broadway.

Is any new bike infrastructure a good thing? I have got to keep believing that. But we’re putting that to the test right now on Broadway.

On the plus side: the lanes are protected and by beefy concrete barriers. And they exist.

On the minus side: it’s like a slalom run, zigging and zagging around concrete planters and sidewalk bulb-outs. It’s sliced a million times by parking lot entrances and street intersections. Its southbound lanes are on the wrong side of the street, placing cyclists where motorists don’t expect them to be.

Broadway is the widest street in Midtown. Many options were considered for adding bike lanes to it, including creating a wide center median for cyclists, which would have transformed the street into more than just a boulevard in name only. But instead we got this. Better than before? Yes. Good? No.

When it comes to Broadway, the city keeps coming to the plate and fouling off the ball.

For a safe and pleasant alternative to getting from Westport to Downtown, take e-bikekc.com’s Midtowner route, which parallels Broadway a few blocks east on Wyandotte Street.