Majority of respondents favor buffered bike lanes along Dumbarton Road

Buffered bike lanes may be coming to Dumbarton Road, after a majority of the nearly 350 people who responded to a recent Henrico County survey indicated their preference for them as part of a plan to increase mobility and improve safety along the 2.1-mile corridor.

County officials are considering ways to achieve a number of safety and mobility goals along the four-lane divided road, which runs from Staples Mill Road near I-64 to Brook Road near I-95; among them are improving bicycle facilities, increasing pedestrian flow, reducing points of conflict and crashes, and providing improved comfort for travelers.

Officials proposed three options to citizens: keeping the stretch unchanged; adding a two-way “cycle track” along the eastbound side of the road; or adding one buffered bike lane along both the eastbound and westbound sides. None of the plans would require the road to be widened.

About 52% of respondents favored the latter plan, which would shift the existing road from two dedicated travel lanes in each direction to one, with an additional shared or dedicated turning lanes in various sections.

If implemented, that option would create six-foot-wide bike lanes with six-foot buffers to vehicular lanes on each side of Dumbarton along most of the stretch in question, with the exception of the segment between Byrdhill Road and Gillespie Avenue, where the bike lanes and buffers would be five feet apiece instead.

From Staples Mill to Byrdhill and from Gillespie Avenue to the bridge over I-95, there would be just one vehicular travel lane in each direction, separated by a raised median. Between Byrdhill Road and Gillespie Avenue, the median would be replaced by a third vehicular turning lane, allowing vehicles traveling in either direction to turn left.

And along the short segment of Dumbarton between the I-95 bridge and Brook Road, there would be one westbound vehicular lane, one eastbound lane and a left-hand turn lane for eastbound traffic only (to turn onto Brook Road).

Dumbarton Road is busiest near Staples Mill Road (with an average of more than 16,200 vehicles per day) and less congested near Brook Road (where traffic levels average between 10,383 and 11,163 vehicles per day), according to traffic studies.

Roads that carry between 10,000 and 15,000 vehicles per days are considered “very good” candidates for road diet plans like the two proposed by Henrico Public Works officials, those officials said.

The other proposed concept would implement a so-called cycle track – side-by-side two-way cycling lanes, 5 to 6 feet apiece in width, with a two-foot buffer to vehicular traffic, that would run the entire length of Dumbarton Road on its eastbound side.

That plan would result in two dedicated lanes of vehicular traffic remaining in place along most of the westbound section of Dumbarton Road but the reduction of eastbound travel lanes to either one lane, one lane plus a joint turning lane or one lane and a dedicated turning lane in various sections of the road.

Only 19% of respondents selected that option, though, making it even less popular than the option of doing nothing (which 29% favored). Many respondents indicated that keeping bicycle travel in a separate lane but moving in the same direction as vehicular travel was more logical than placing two-way cycling lanes on one side of the road.

Asked whether they would be more inclined to bike along the stretch of Dumbarton in question if either of the two new concepts were constructed, nearly 68% of the 338 respondents indicated that they would.

The survey was conducted between Feb. 21 and March 13, and a total of 349 respondents answered at least one question. The survey garnered 373 comments, including a number urging a physical barrier as a way to further separate cyclists from drivers.

County officials now will work to refine the preferred design concept, they said.