Advocacy & Safety - Interesting reading.

Take a look. This will certainly affect the Siouxland Trails Foundation. As an trails advocacy group we will no doubt in some way be involved in this. Does anyone know if their state is going to do or has done anything like this?

http://www.dot.state.ia.us/draft_bike_ped_plan/index.htm

that was a dead link

You sure it's a dead link? I click on it and have no problems. How about the others that have opened it? Any problems?

It's not a dead link... it works perfectly for me too.

Koffee

On a quick scan, we have something like that. We have the Grand Illinois Trail, which loops around the state and is connected by a series of streets and trails. We also have the initiative they're working on to add the bike lanes in next to the highways and freeways too. I think they're calling it the 2010 initiative or something like that.

I just want to be more mobile. I'm not so sure if I would trust the highways and freeways. Drivers are bad enough already.

Koffee

I actually find highways and freeways to be the best places to ride, particularly if you're going to work. Generally the drivers are too busy to abuse/throw things at cyclists, so the worst you might get is a little honk or some dropkick shaking their little fist (which does not bother me at all). The extra traffic (and consequently extra witnesses) seems to scare off the punch throwing yobbos who seem to be increasing in numbers around here lately. Additionally, one tends not to spend as much time stuck at traffic lights, which is the real danger with the abovemetioned yobbos.

Compare this to the side streets, where a 10-20 minute traffic light delay means you're every chance of encountering one of the yobbos, and you get dole-bludging surfies with nothing better to do than harass cyclists. I say give me the highway everytime.

The experience in California indicates that the stretches of state or interstate freeway shoulder on which bicycles are permitted have exemplary safety records. The only problems occur at interchanges, but the two links I routinely use eliminate weaves or merges for bicyclists -- we enter at one onramp and exit at the next offramp, without crossing anyone's path. However, we have a tough battle convincing the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans, or as we prefer to call it, "Car Trance") to open up additional freeway shoulders. Because of San Diego's mesa-and-canyon topography, freeways often provide the shortest, safest, flattest, and sometimes ONLY reasonable connection between Point A and Point B. (If bicyclists were not permitted to traverse the 1-mile/1.5km Lake Hodges bridge portion of the I-15 shoulder, they would have to ride an additional 10 miles/15km over hilly, narrow, winding country roads.)