MyWHaT

Just beautiful:

Charge Bikes_Lazy Susan via Austin on two Wheels

Sign the Michigan Complete Streets Petition

Traverse City’s new infrastructure policy (PDF) received some praise from Michigan Complete Streets yesterday in the press release by Rory Neuner titled: Traverse City Makes Complete Streets a Top Priority.

Indeed, Traverse City is saying the right things regarding the Complete Street philosophy and the recent election of Mayor Chris Bzdok presents an amazing opportunity for supporters of using a values based process to infrastructure design. He is an avid bike commuter and advocate of the least represented in the city. A very welcome change, and part of the impulse for this online publication.

He will need citizen assistance and persistence, because it is going to take a lot of work for this policy to actually be implemented. The real danger will be a piece-meal adaption of policy instead of a holistic approach to the network. In addition, a reluctant staff may try to wait out the current supportive commission & Mayor.

We have hope though. More importantly, the community has energy.

The article quotes a longer statement from the mayor, but this portion is encouraging:

In part, this is an equity issue.  Not everyone has a car, or is in a position to drive.  They deserve a way to get around town, too.  In part, this is a plan for reducing traffic in our city.  If we don’t make it safe and convenient for people to travel on foot or bicycle, how can we ever expect them to get out of their cars?

Looking forward to things to come. Ready to work.

A year-round possibility

Going through the archives and found this video linked in an email from last winter.  Winter biking: just part of the year-round commute Produced by Troy Melhus for Star Tribune on Jan 05, 2008.

A great mix of people of all ages and all of them a little euphoric from the cold. Cold people say the darndest things.

Like “It’s terrifyingly exhilarating.”

Do you ride all year-round? I’m looking for walkers and riders to profile.

This week’s discussion over at Plan for TC is focusing in on street infrastructure in regard to safety for Pedestrians and Bikers.

The question of safety is fairly myopic. It implies that the only reason to provide something like Complete Street infrastructure is to fix a safety issue. As if, the possibility of an extra expense (or shifting of expenses) needs to be justified by that marker alone.

A redesign of the street network is about applying equity to multiple-modal transportation options. That’s first and foremost. It’s a decision by a city to not only serve the basic needs of all its citizens, but to actually promote a different means of transporting oneself a half-mile down the street to get  milk.

We need incentives to change habits. A transportation network that is leading-edge in terms of placing walkers & bikers as priorities is one incentive.

Hence, Safety in design leads to safety in numbers leads to….(one thing it leads to is increased social interactions which have proven to increase economic activity)

That all said, there are several parts of Traverse City that are unsafe, or perceived unsafe, to either fully utilize or to simply cross. A note about safety, when you’re exposed as a walker or biker, the perception of safety is often the deciding factor.

A quick list:

• South Entrance of NMC on Front St.
• Munson Ave.
• Garfield & Front Intersection
• The entire route of Garfield (Agave is .5 miles away from my house, difficult to reach)
• Woodmere (nice Blvd, but is unconnected. TART crossing has blind spot)
• 8th St.  (Suicidal)
• Front St. (different stretches have different issues)
• Cass St. & Union St. South of Old Town
• 7th St. crossing of Division
• 14th St.
• Division
• Grandview and Division

If it’s in the city and there are businesses and homes, I’m calling it a neighborhood.

The interesting realization looking at this list is that most of these are also trouble spots for automobile traffic.  Take the 8th Street speedway for example: It’s a 25 mph zone that most people use to go 35-45mph. It’s difficult not to. It’s counter-intuitive, but if we reduced lanes and cut the speed-limit to 20 mph (or left it at 25mph) we would actually see increased flow of traffic. One reason being is that you can fit more cars closer together in the same amount of space at slower speeds.

We could talk about similar schemes on Division St.

Fascinating stuff.

Do you have examples of neighborhood roads that are dangerous to bikers & pedestrians as they are currently designed?

What is the rationale for implementing a Complete Streets plan?