From the Courier Journal:

A concerted effort to convert Louisville’s one-way streets into two-ways has seen progress with new construction in the spring of 2025, and work is expected to continue over the next few years with a number of other projects to come.

Contractors have so far striped yellow lines down the center of multiple roads around Louisville, including: South Fifth Street between West Breckenridge and West St. Catherine streets; West Oak Street from 16th Street to Dixie Highway; East Jefferson Street from Baxter Avenue to Floyd Street; and Mellwood Avenue from Frankfort Avenue to Brownsboro Road.

Most of these projects are overseen by Louisville Metro Public Works, while other conversions are managed by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

Progress? Really?

We’ve made this observation before, but take a look at these photos:

This is a horrible design if you are a bicyclist. As we’ve noted on our podcast, if you’re designing a street for bicycles, you put the bike lane next to the sidewalk and you park cars between the bike lane and the road. You don’t pretend to have bike access by painting a bicycle emoji in the middle of the street. That’s stupid and lazy. The most absurd bike emojis are on the Second Street Bridge going to and from Indiana.

Here, the states should designate the bike lane on one of the walkways and make the other walkway for pedestrians only. That works in New York on the Manhattan Bridge and in San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge. You don’t say the “bike lane” is in the middle of a street that has cars going more than 40 miles an hour, even though the speed limit that everyone ignores is 25 mph.

And, in general, the Louisville streets that are being converted are too narrow to pretend automobiles are going to respect the safety of people on bicycles. I’ve actually heard people here talking about running bicyclists of the road, because they don’t move as fast as cars.

This is what they do in New York, a city that understands bicycling:

This is a one-way street. This is effective traffic management.

What’s being done in Louisville is just wrong. We can tell you, without any doubt, you’re going to see an increase in traffic fatalities because of a design that pretends to be “bike friendly” by spray painting a stencil in the middle of a street.

(And for the record, converting these streets to two-way is also ridiculous. Again, they’re too narrow. Has anyone ever heard of double parking? Police rarely address it, so if you’re stuck behind, let’s say a UPS truck or someone who “has to run into the house for a quick minute” while steady traffic is coming from the other direction, you’re just out of luck.)