A record number of bicyclists rode to Folk Festival. But can Newport make biking safer?

The Newport Folk Festival has one of the highest concentrations of bicycling attendees of any music festival in the United States. The only problem is there’s no safe, bike-friendly way to get there.

“When we have festivals and large numbers of cars and bikes, we want to separate them sooner, and we need to figure that out so everyone can get home safely at the end,” Bike Newport Executive Director Bari Freeman said.

Bike Newport is the city’s bicycling advocacy organization, and is one of the main reasons why biking to Folk Fest has become easier and more common each year, to the point where about 15% of attendees lock up a bike outside Fort Adams’ walls. The organization works with Newport Police and festival organizers to help bikers get to and from the fort safely and even has a Park ‘N Bike Program for people visiting out of town to ditch their cars and ride to the festival.

Why a bike path would help

Still, with the great success of getting people to bike to the festival, there is not really a dedicated bike path that gets festival attendees to and from their destination without putting them in line with vehicular traffic. The path BikeNewport recommends goes south down Bellevue Avenue for a little over a mile before turning west on Ruggles Avenue, snaking a path westward onto Wickham Road, Beacon Hill Road and Harrison Avenue until the bikers reach the entrance to Fort Adams.

Nowhere on this three mile journey is there a dedicated space for bicyclists, which means these bicyclists are directly in the street alongside cars and other motor vehicles. Bicyclists typically travel to the right of vehicles on the road, but the narrow streets and position of some vehicles make this challenging and unsafe for many bicyclists. This safety issue is even worse at nighttime, when most festival attendees are headed home. The Newport Police Department and the city have expressed concerns in the past of bicyclists riding the wrong way down Thames Street, which Freeman said is a symptom of the larger bike safety issue.

Infrastructure needed to encourage bike use

Freeman asked the Newport City Council on Wednesday to consider a resolution to create a plan that would give these bicyclists a safe path toward the festival which keeps them mostly away from cars. She said she isn’t envisioning a bike path, per se, but the city needs some type of permanent infrastructure to encourage more people who want to bike around the city to do so without fear for their safety.

Her suggestion at the meeting was supported by Councilor Mark Aramli, who, because his house is on Harrison Avenue and Brenton Road, has seen how cyclists and vehicles impact traffic on his street during the festivals year after year.

“I think it is a very good thing that we have people using personal transportation, bicycles, to get to and from that area, but having pulled in and out of that area for my own needs, it was clear that we probably as a city could have done a better job organizing the lanes and which way we’re directing traffic versus bicycles, so I’m wholly in support of taking another look at this to see how we might do better next year,” Aramli said.

What other options exist?

There are a couple solutions Freeman later told the Newport Daily News that the city could implement to solve this issue, including a separated bike lane like the one on JT Connell Highway or establishing a bike path on the road with flex roads for an added layer of separation between bikes and cars. She also pointed out the Transportation Master Plan’s suggested Ocean Loop bike path, which would create a path around the Fort Adams’ area However, the goal of Freeman’s request of the council is to figure out the best way to do this together in time for next year’s festival season.

“Everyone wants to make it safer, we just have to put out on the table what that would look like, what we would have to do to accomplish that and work through the different scenarios and different options to come up with what’s the best solution for Newport,” Freeman said.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Folk Festival set records; how to make Newport safer for bicyclists