MyWHaT

Park It Here!

It’s been a week since Traverse City’s on street bicycle rack was installed in front of Cali’s Cottons; please use it and let others know about it. It’s an experiment and there are many of us who want to see more of these installed, as early as next year. There are even city staffers who want to see it continue–good people who need our support.

Many cities are realizing that bike parking is just as important as bike lanes and doing it really well, like this on-street rack in Chattanooga- That one is even in a back-in parking slot.

Weekly Chatter

• New cycling route from Michigan’s southwest to the UP will pass Traverse City. Input still sought for Route 35

• Suttons Bay is rolling out some improved designs for M-22. Fancy.

• Asking drivers to learn a new thing is good: Mt. Pleasant gets “back-in” Parking.
  

  Summer's Parting Shot (photog unknown)

• Mobilize for a Walkable America needs signatories. MyWHaT endorsed.

• Mapping roadkill through crowd-sourcing. Again, roads–>dangerous by design.

• An engineer asks: How and who should set speed limits? Can it be changed?

• Cambridge, MA is getting serious about Car Share!

• With about 3000 people expected next weekend for the Tour de Troit some are considering a name change for the Big-D: Motor City to Cycle City.

• USA Today graphic about road infrastructure and gas taxes/tolls misses the underlying message: we are just not into the way our transportation system has been built…build it right, or let it fail.

• Bike Momma Rant: “These ideas that people need to get the F*** out of the way of cars so cars can get through faster just makes my blood boil.“

• Building cities for people is gaining attention. Diane Rehm’s interview with Jan Gahl and others almost summed up an entire year of MyWHaT material.

• Meanwhile, some people are literally dying over traffic calming…and it’s not from the traffic: R-E-D-R-U-M! Good news elsewhere though, emergency response vehicles are seeing improved response times where traffic calming exists. Get out-of-the-way, get it done.

Twitterville:

• “Most transit users, before they are on transit, are pedestrians or cyclists. Have to find ways to integrate them into transit design.” (@STLTransit)
• Enlightening perspective from Montreal on automobility and class. (@pauldorn)
• Portland built entire 300-mile network of bike ways for cost of 1 mi of urban freeway. (@transportdata)
• Bike lanes reduce crashes by 30-40%. However, bike lanes are only available for 5% of bike trips. #bikewalk (@Maddz4planning) (Less than 4% in Traverse City)

To wrap, two films about bicycle commuters. One, from the acclaimed StreetFilms series how the increase in bicycle infrastructure and the institutional commitment of the bicycle as a solution has encouraged the indicator species, women, to ride more. The second, a similar short produced by a graduate student for his master’s thesis.

Women In Motion: New Lady Riders Reflect on NYC Cycling

Pedal Power Video

Have a Weekend!

Top MyWHaT Posts This Week:

• TC’s PARK(ing) Day Greeted with Mild Curiosity
• One-Way to Decrease Residential Livability
• How Fast Are You Really Going in that Motorized Transport Pod?

If you’re itching to get your civic participation walking shoes on, next week has three events to attend: 1)  Rail Plan workshop (Wed), 2) TC Parks and Recreation master plan workshop (Thurs), 3) a second MyWHat observational street walk (Fri).

1) Rail Plan: Step Aboard

The MDOT forum is a public workshop to present current rail lines and to gather comments on the future MDOT passenger/freight rail plan. This isn’t going to connect us by rail to Grand Rapids, but it is one of the first steps.

The meeting is Wednesday September 22 between 4-7:30PM at the Michigan Works! Center. (map)

If you can’t make the meeting, you can make public comments online

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2) Parks and Recreation: Let’s See some Intention

The parks commission will be presenting background on existing park planning efforts, reviewing a draft set of some new parks and recreation goals for our community, and looking for participants to offer new park ideas and improvements to existing parks.

Many of the ideas generated will go into the city’s 5-year master plan required by the DNRE. It’ll be held in the Governmental Center’s cafeteria (basement) so that there is plenty of room to get out maps and start drawing some ideas.

This meeting is Thursday September 23 at 7PM in the Governmental Center cafeteria.

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3) Community Observational Walk: State Street

In August a group of us walked Division St. to see what it was like at the walker’s level. It was revealing. Not only did I independently notice things never noticed, but walking with 9 more people provided more eyes, perspectives and, as our nerves got warped, support.

Less exciting noisy perhaps, but more central to many of our lives is Downtown’s part of State St. MyWHaT’s guest contributor Peter Spaulding has explored the disadvantages of one-way streets and hit on State Street as a possible re-conversion back to a two-way. The Downtown Development Board is discussing that topic this morning after receiving our letters.

Still, even if the city doesn’t move on changing State Street, that they will be putting in a new parking deck at West Front and Pine St. offers a clear opportunity to transform State Street into something more than a parking lot for Front St. and a place simply to pass through. Let’s walk it and see how the street works for people.

This walk will be Friday September 24th at 4PM starting at the Pine and Front intersection (you can RSVP at the link). We will walk to Boardman Ave. and then walk back. Possible discussion at a local watering hole to follow. If you can’t make 4pm, but want to take part, please RSVP and suggest another possible time.