Coppell Citizens Against Parkway Boulevard Bike Lane Proposal

On October 18,2016, the City of Coppell Parks and Engineering Departments presented a proposal for Parkway Boulevard Bike Lanes from McArthur Boulevard to Heartz Road in a Citizen Input Meeting at Town Center. The concept is to configure, in both directions, a bike lane, a buffer, a parking lane, and then a driving lane. Changes would include a large expense to excavate green space (the grass strip) between sidewalk and street; pave the bike lane; move water meters, utilities, and drainage; reposition postal boxes and street lights; and add signage. An estimated cost for this work was not provided at the meeting.

Most, if not all, of the Parkway residents in attendance at the meeting provided feedback opposing the plan or raising serious concerns about the proposal. This proposal for an urban-like bike lane is not sensitive to the context of our residential suburban neighborhood and is out of place with the single family homes that define the character of our street.

We think the homeowner input that resonated with most attending was this:
We don’t want the curb appeal of our homes to differ from the others in the neighborhood. Anything that differs from the current configuration negatively impacts the curb appeal and therefore lowers the value of our property. In our neighborhood, curb appeal is associated with the existing parking adjacent to the curb on the street, a strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk, a sidewalk, then the front yard.

As Coppell residents, our observations of car, bike, and pedestrian mobility on the street leads us to conclude that this project as presented October 18, 2016 is not needed, negatively impacts the neighborhood, would lower property values, and would be an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars that should be used for maintenance of our expanded park facilities, existing road repair, and other amenities that benefit all citizens.