Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - i need your help.....

i attended the Nashville Area MPO meeting last night. it was very informative they are looking for public opinion on how and what needs to happen over the next 30 years in planning bike/walk community and how to get more people interested in using their bikes and feet more.


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i need everyone from middle tn to go take the survey. i have a link to the southeast forums if there is any discussion. i have provided links to Nashville MPO and links to the Survey and Blog.

if we want our passion for riding to be expressed to the fullest we all need to participate feel free to send this info to all your friends and family.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=513390

I used to live in Nashville; now live in Ohio. We have an amazing bicycle trail system in this part of the state (Xenia area) that I immediately fell in love with. This system helped me get over leaving Nashville, where I was big into hiking (my favorite was the long trail at Percy-Warner). It is good to hear Nashville will be adding bike trails.

I am now completely addicted to my bike trails (we have well over 300 miles of paved bike path). The hook is into me so deep that I moved into a house which sits adjacent to the bikeway. Recently I have even turned down a couple job offers in places which did not have a trail nearby. I now begin to look forward to retiring here, only because of these trails.

Adding these trails will provide much benefit to your community. I remember trying to ride around town when I lived there. Traffic made it rather difficult to enjoy and impossible to take the little ones out for a ride. Having bike paths will give you a huge leg up when recruiting people and businesses during the coming decades.

Here are a few random ideas, in no particular order:

1) Public education. Bicyclists have a right to use the road, look before making a right turn in front of a bicyclist, etc.

2) Bike lanes or shoulders wide enough to ride on. I'm not a big fan of getting buzzed by cars, so having a little room at the edge of the road is very nice. I think it goes a long way toward preventing problems between bikes and cars.

3) "Bike Boulevards". I've only seen this in California: streets that encourage bicycle usage. In my area, these are mostly less-traveled neighborhood streets. Cross traffic generally has stop signs, but there are few in the direction of travel. Cars are allowed, but traffic is generally light. On some of these streets, there are barriers every mile or so that cars can't pass; the cyclists sail through the barriers, while cars are encouraged to pick an alternate route. Traffic lights often have a button cyclists can push to make the light change for them.

4) Bike racks. I'm surprised at how many places want to encourage bike usage, but don't provide any way to lock your bike up! In one local downtown area, I regularly see 5-10 bikes locked to each street sign because they're the only immovable objects around. I'm not going to leave my expensive bike unlocked, so when I get to my destination there better be somewhere I can lock it.

5) Bike Lockers. Racks are fine, but even then you have to worry about having your wheels, seatpost, or components stolen. Bike lockers are even better, since they secure the whole bike. In my area, they're typically only found at transportation hubs (e.g. train stations). You have to reserve them in advance and pay a monthly fee, so they're really only practical for people who commute regularly. I'd love to see a system that combined reserved lockers (used by regular commuters) along with some first-come, first-served lockers. Be really nice to be able to show up, insert some coins or a credit card, and lock your entire bike up for a few hours so you don't have to carry a heavy lock with you.

6) Bike racks on public transit. Around here, most buses and trains have bicycle racks. A great idea for people who want to commute to work on public transit, but use their bike for errands/lunch/exercise in the middle of the day.

7) Showers and Locker Rooms. If you want to encourage people to commute to work by bike, these are essential.

a lot of the above is what we talked about they devided us in to 4 groups and when we looked at all the ideas from each group you could see a trend. we all wanted better bike lanes or routes also maintenance of these routes and enforcement to keep the parked cars out of the lanes and routes. also more places to lock up with racks and lockers and places to shower. we have several miles of routes and lanes and greenways now but they are not connected in any way. most of the roads to get from one bike lane/route to another barely have enough shoulder for road paint and nothing to walk or bike on you have no choice but to ride the road and that is not safe over most of Nashville.

a lot of the above is what we talked about they devided us in to 4 groups and when we looked at all the ideas from each group you could see a trend. we all wanted better bike lanes or routes also maintenance of these routes and enforcement to keep the parked cars out of the lanes and routes. also more places to lock up with racks and lockers and places to shower. we have several miles of routes and lanes and greenways now but they are not connected in any way. most of the roads to get from one bike lane/route to another barely have enough shoulder for road paint and nothing to walk or bike on you have no choice but to ride the road and that is not safe over most of Nashville.

The walkable city is the best for cyclists, a walkable city is one where the most of the businesses and services one needs are within walking distance of ones home, and the remaining are reachable by transit with a less then walking distance walk at either end. Most cities developed before 1920 are walkable, because the majority of their populations did not have access to a personal motor vehicle, contrary to popular belief and Hollywood, the number of people who had access to a horse was also quite small. Parts of New York, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Boston, Philadelphia are walkable because these areas were developed before 1920. Unfortunately the "growth" areas of those cities is mostly like newer cities, car oriented, which puts resource strains on the older sections, strangely enough, the highest property values tend to be in the walkable areas. One trait of such areas is that of mixed zoning where homes, businesses and light industrial are found together, only heavy industry was segregated Up until 1900 it was not uncommon for a person to be raised and to live their entire life within a 5km radius of where they were born. These areas are also have much more dense populations.

Most North American cities, that were developed after 1930 are not walkable, because the idea of everyone having a car led to absolute strict zoning, where one area of the city was commercial, one area was residential, one was industrial, with major arterial roads and later expressways connecting the zones. Since the 1950's many cities didn't even build sidewalks because they expected people to get in the car and drive wherever they needed to go.

The problem for the cyclist now, is that those major arterials are not suited for bicycles, and few if any have bicycle lanes, so the cyclist is often trapped within a single zone, transit vehicles with bicycle racks are nice, but most racks accommodate less then 3 bicycles, so if your the fourth one, you either have to take your chances with the cars or wait sometimes a long time for the next bus, which may also have a full rack, a driver that doesn't want to wait while you use the rack, or it may be an older bus that doesn't have a rack.

These fears mean that the majority of people who would bicycle around, don't, which means they are driving, and that means that the problem is even worse for those who remain, so the majority of those bicycle for recreational reasons only, which leaves only a few die hards, too few to make the sea change that is needed to move from car culture to human culture. To fix this, they really need to have bicycle connections between the zones, along those arterials. In the next 91 years cheap energy from oil will end, whether it's sooner or later is still up for debate, even the most optimistic of experts say that within 50 years we will hit the peak on oil. Then cities need to get denser and return to mixed development, really though, the time to start getting off oil is now.
I actually expect the city in 2100 to look more like the city of 1900 then the city of 2000.

IMHO, Rails to trails is the greatest US achievement during my lifetime. Up here in the "Rust Belt" we had lots of old rail lines that sat idle. The people who decided to pave these eyesores for the benefit of recreational cyclists deserve a freaking medal.

Where I live, there is almost no area that is not accessible by one of these trails. My commute is almost 100% by trail (in fact, after I complete my upcomming job transfer, it will be 100%). That's 27 miles of pure trail riding, door to door, using three different interconnected paved bike paths. The only cars I deal with are at crossings.

The layout is so completely amazing, I swear, there are some days that I think I've died and gone to heaven. Of course, the next day it will rain or a strong wind will blow which brings me back down to earth.

IMHO, Rails to trails is the greatest US achievement during my lifetime. Up here in the "Rust Belt" we had lots of old rail lines that sat idle. The people who decided to pave these eyesores for the benefit of recreational cyclists deserve a freaking medal.

Where I live, there is almost no area that is not accessible by one of these trails. My commute is almost 100% by trail (in fact, after I complete my upcomming job transfer, it will be 100%). That's 27 miles of pure trail riding, door to door, using three different interconnected paved bike paths. The only cars I deal with are at crossings.

The layout is so completely amazing, I swear, there are some days that I think I've died and gone to heaven. Of course, the next day it will rain or a strong wind will blow which brings me back down to earth.


That sounds like the greatest thing ever. I wish it was that way for more people. I would like to go car free for work, but I am not a lover of riding on ice.