Originally Posted by noisebeam
Interesting. The meetings I've been to have been dominated by parents concerned about their kids in their immediate neighborhood and college students fighting for non-motorized transport needs - all pushing hard for more residential and 'green' facilties. The outcome is the same - not a balanced view of options, just more, more, more bikelanes. Al
I haven't seen all that many people speaking specifically as parents or college students at our municipal open-house nights, but that may just be a function of what meetings I have attended. We typically have 3 or 4 meetings at various locations in the city to accommodate different people, I normally attend the one nearest home and/or the one at city hall itself, neither location having a lot of college students or families with young kids in the immediate area.
About the closest to a consensus I have seen here is "more bike facilities", but not necessarily bike lanes. Two of the biggest concerns being voiced are gaps in the cycling network and construction zones. In the first case we have overlapping roads, cycling routes, and pathways but they don't always connect to each other smoothly, so cyclists often pick the "second best" trip due to lack of connections. The second issue has to do with steel plates covering holes in pavement, gravel left on roads after construction, detours though very bike UNfriendly intersections, etc. Parking is sometimes an issue as well.