Type 2 Diabetic. Cyclist Flâneur.   Coffeeneur.    Errandoneur
A bike / map geek with a gadget obsession and a high-viz fetish.

Monday, August 29, 2016

RIP Dennis Flanigan

8.30.2016
2m
Aug mtd: 365 ytd:1519
Rode errands around Regent Square. Nice day for a ride.

At about the same time, cyclist Dennis Flanigan, 49 years old, was killed on West Carson Street at the intersection with the Busway. He was not killed by a bus, but rather in a collision with a red pickup.



This road was closed for two years for a major overhaul, the kind a road only gets once every 50 years. A lot of people wrote to PennDOT saying, there needs to be a protected bike lane. PennDOT ignored all the input. Eight days after the road re-opened, there's a cyclist fatality.

It appears that the cyclist was using the road exactly as the design called for. There's a sidewalk along the "river side" of the street which ends. There's a crosswalk across the road, and the sidewalk continues on the "hill side" of the roadway. Photographs indicate the cyclist was T-boned while using the crosswalk.

The relatively-inexperienced cyclist was using the road as the new design intended. A more experience cyclist would have been in the lane, not crossing at the crosswalk to get to a sidewalk. Major design fail.

This is the fourth cyclist fatality in three years on Route 51.

  • Dennis Flanagan, April 27, 1969 ~ August 30, 2016 (age 47),
  • Arthur Bell, May 4, 1961 ~ August 6, 2015 (age 54),
    Taylor Lee Banks, March 24, 1991 ~ October 31, 2014 (age 23),
  • Emily Jancart, September 7, 1995 ~ July 21, 2013 (age 17)

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