Craddock Ave. bike lane project in San Marcos will reduce vehicle traffic lanes, create 'buffered' bike lanes

The city of San Marcos began work on a pilot bicycle lane project along Craddock Avenue in mid-March as part of the city’s master transportation plan concerning bicycle transit.

Car lanes were reduced from four to two lanes on a portion of Craddock Avenue from Old RR 12 to North Bishop Street as part of the six-month pilot project with buffered bike lanes in each direction. Repaving of the road began in March.

A second stretch of buffered bike lanes was approved by City Council on Jan. 4 on Sessom Drive from Holland Street to North LBJ Drive, but that project does not have a scheduled timeline.

“One of the advantages of what we're trying to do is that we're working within our existing pavement limits. And so it's basically just striping that we're using to implement this,” said Richard Reynosa, assistant director of engineering for the city, during the Jan. 4 council meeting.

The city plans to use that six-month period to study traffic issues, such as congestion, speeding and crashes. The findings of the study are anticipated to be sent to City Council by the end of October.

Reynosa said the city’s traffic count studies show the reduction in traffic caused by reducing lanes would be manageable with current traffic flow and patterns. City Council could ultimately opt to revert the road back to four car lanes.

“If we find that it's not working, it's just striping to revert it back,” Reynosa said.