James Fisher

The News Journal

Rehoboth Beach’s comprehensive plan from 2009 talks a good game about making the resort an easier place in which to bike.

“The car, the bus and the truck must be accommodated, but the balance must be ‘tilted’ to the pedestrian, the bicyclist and other non-auto users,” the plan declares. “Rehoboth will accept more people, it will not accept more cars.”

But some proposed traffic flow changes in the resort have cycling advocates worrying the policies aren’t aligning with the plan.

The town has considered ending its allowance of bicycles on the boardwalk before 10 a.m. in the summer months, an idea brought up by Police Chief Keith Banks.

Banks, in discussing the idea at a Nov. 10 town meeting, said officers noticed more bicyclists on the Boardwalk, some of them at dangerously fast speeds, this summer.

“We did have two injuries from bicyclists hitting children this past summer,” Banks said. He attributed the increased traffic to a new trail connection linking Rehoboth to Lewes with a continuous path, an accomplishment recreation officials and biking groups hailed.

In a separate proposal, business leaders in Rehoboth have asked the city to consider making some streets one-way to help ease the flow of delivery trucks that bring supplies to back entrances of restaurants and stores on Rehoboth Avenue.

The proposed change, discussed at a recent Rehoboth Main Street meeting, would make Baltimore Avenue – which runs parallel to Rehoboth Avenue one block to the north – an eastbound-only street. Wilmington Avenue, a block south of Rehoboth Avenue, would funnel traffic back west, in the direction of Del. 1.

To Frank Cole, owner of Atlantic Cycle, both ideas represent an erosion of Rehoboth’s bike-friendly ethos. “Other municipalities are going in other directions. All the progressive cities, Portland, Austin, they’re going the opposite way,” Cole said. “It offends me to use banning and bikes in the same sentence.”

The one-way streets plan, Cole said, would have the unintended consequence of hindering bike travel, forcing bikers to either go several blocks out of their way or bike against traffic.

“It will create a dangerous combination of increased speed and increased traffic flow,” Cole said of the plan, which has not yet been discussed at a Rehoboth council meeting. “It’s going to be awfully hard to get around downtown on a bicycle and not violate any laws.”

Some Rehoboth visitors partial to bicycling say the proposals, especially the possible summer boardwalk biking ban, would hurt the resort’s character and appeal.

“We rent, like, 15 bikes each summer,” said Felice Friedman, a New Yorker who said her extended family regularly takes summer vacations in Rehoboth. “Not having bike freedom down there would change everything for us. That’s part of the charm of Rehoboth. The idea that it’s becoming more hostile to cyclists, or moving them into designated spots, has really upset our family.”

Rehoboth’s comprehensive plan certainly envisions accommodations made for pedestrians and bikers taking higher priority than changes to help car flow. “Increasing traffic should not be an invariable truth,” an executive summary of the plan, posted on the town’s website, states. “We should not facilitate the automobile.”

Still, Mayor Sam Cooper said in the Nov. 10 meeting, the town has to balance transportation needs of all kinds.

“We have more and more people, and more and more everything,” Cooper said. “Something's got to yield.”

Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com. Delmarva Media Group staff writer Rachel Pacella contributed to this story.