Retractable Bollards for Ongoing Ciclovias

Retractable bollards in Long Beach - they're the small circular things to the left of the nearside line of the crosswalk stripe. Photo by Joe Linton

The city of Long Beach has an ambitious agenda to become more bikeable and walkable. They’ve already implemented some excellent projects, and have more planned.

Here’s a project that has implications for hosting ciclovias. As part of a traffic calming and pedestrianization project in their downtown they’ve installed retractable bollards. The project is located at the corner of First and Linden. The bollards allow the city to exclude car traffic for that one-block area of the street for fairs, farmers markets, etc.

The bollard spend most of their time underground. There’s a little locking mechanism, so nobody can tamper with them unless they have a key. When the city wants to close the street to cars, it can extend the bollards. Traffic control officers may not like this next statement, but this allows for reduced cost street closures, because instead of paying officers to person these closures, the city can merely put up the bollards.

Imagine, if a city has a permanent route for regular ongoing weekly ciclovias, then it might keep event costs minimal by installing bollards like this at each intersection.