Commuting - Austin wants cycling like Portland

The Austin City Council is voting tonight(May21, 2009) on a proposal to transfor Austin into a truly cycling-friendly city. It would cost around $250 million dollars. The master plan recommends 900 miles of bicycle lanes, 9 miles of bicycle boulevards and 107 miles of multi-use paths. It also marks bicycle routes on paved shoulders, wide curb lanes and shared lanes. Read more from our local paper.

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/editorial/stories/05/21/0521bikes_edit.html

There's a surprising amount of similarity between Austin and Portland. I've been wonder which city was first to use the "Keep Austin/Portland Weird" slogan.

Maybe they'll have it all in place by the last week in June when I'm visiting. I'll need somewhere to ride to work off all the BBQ I'll be eating.

Columbus has been working for some of that same stuff. Prepare yourself for a rash of awful, uninformed rants in the local paper about how wasteful it is to spend money on things like that

I'm glad it's the smaller, second tier cities leading the way on this. It's the ideal place for these type of stuff.

It's great that more cities here are catching onto the bike-friendly formula. Go Austin!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3654/3548287324_eae58d04cb.jpg

I was hoping they'd go ahead with that big disc golf facility.

yeah go bike transport facilities!!!

Never in a million years would I have thought I would ever see a bicycle-friendly town in Texas. Way to go Austin! Prolly won't be easy in that state to get all the changes, tho.....

There's a surprising amount of similarity between Austin and Portland. I've been wonder which city was first to use the "Keep Austin/Portland Weird" slogan.

Don't forget Boulder also uses that slogan.

I have determined that Boulder, Portland ME, Portland OR, and Austin are a quartet of very similar cities, in some ways.

Man that's cool, I'm hoping that it will spread to the Northeast part of the state.

Awesome.

I'm hoping that will spread to other cities and keep the pressure on Portland, Minneapolis and other cycling friendly places to keep improving.

So how'd the vote go?

The city council chickened out and postponed the vote until June 11.

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/City_Council_tables_bicycle_plan

While Austin Texas already has a strong cycling community (I saw bike parking stands in downtown Austin on nearly every intersection)... Austin is also the first place I ever saw "Share the Road" on a freeway sign with motorcycles in mind... And back country 2 lane roads often have 70MPH speed limits.

Texas drivers can either be very friendly or very cruel. Hard to tell what the attitude of the driver is when "everyone" drives a pickup.