Ngchen

Considering how the incoming adminsitration has said that it is proposing a massive stimulus package that would hopefully include much infrastructure rehabilitation and construction, let's hear suggestions for effectively steering some of that money toward cycling infrastructre improvements. Which people and agencies should we be contacting and keeping in touch with?

Speaking of which, does anyone know of studies on bike lanes/WOLs and their effect on increasing the number of cycling trips? What are the current guidelines on where they are warranted (vehicles/day, current speed limits, etc.)? I'm sure there is a "network" effect of some sort where linear expansion of the network causes more than linear expansion of the usage, at least until some saturation point, especially as the facilities actually lead to places that people are going to.

cudak888 

Why just BL's and WOL's? What happened to sharrows?

I'm still ticked off that the system has effectively bull****ted most cyclists into believing that sharrows are somehow inferior to BL's, and therefore irrellivant, or entirely non-existent.

-Kurt

unterhausen

what is a sharrow other than some paint. A decent infrastructure project would involve building something of substance. I would really love to see the main road in our town get wol because the bike path next to it has too many road cuts.

The Human Car

Around here if we try to get a landscape panel removed for some extra road width we are met with "it can't be done." But if some neighborhood wants to remove extra road width for a landscape panel it gets a "no problem."

cyclezealot

Bike lanes.. How can urban settings encourage biking to work, if we're interfaced with fast moving traffic... That should be popular with the asphalt and paint lobby.. Let's all be hopeful. The new secretary of Transportation has a great relationship with the cycling community.

hotbike

Is that what those freaking things are called..."Landscape Panels"?
I never heard that term before. But I hate them.

bjjoondo 

I'd just be happy if the city, (Colorado Springs, CO.) could get enough funds to "FINISH" the bike paths here. We have several nice bike paths that just "end", they've never connected with another path or even bike lanes so you can truely get North/South or East/West. Why not design, build and finsh a trail before you make more that end in nowhere?? The bike lanes are a lot like that too and some roads marked with "Bike Lane" signs have been totally taken over by cars and the sign's should be removed as riding a bicycle in that traffic with no or broken up edging is not safe. Ya that intersection seems kinda stupid, if they do that, there should have been a "bike only" lane within the "straight/left turn" lane so you don't interfere with traffic. I prefer bike lanes and paths, I don't ride with much bravdo and we have a zillion idiots that for the life of me I can't figure out HOW they passed a drivers lic. test!

JusticeZero

Sharrows also involve some engineering work to fin the location for them and tune intersections to not have the worst bike hazards.

RTC_Kartik

Ngchen, to the first part of your question re: stimulus... my organization, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, ran a petition encouraging the incoming administration and Congress to explicitly fund bike/ped. We also collected ready-to-go bike/pedestrian projects from communities nationally to demonstrate to Congress that there's demand for these projects (more than $3 billion that we collected in a very short time frame). More here.

I encourage everyone to sign the petition; this also serves to keep you in the loop about upcoming actions on this in the next few weeks. It's possible that the authority of how to spend stimulus funds may fall solely on states, which forces the advocacy world into a difficult place by decentralizing our efforts.

Ngchen

Decentralizing our efforts can have a plus and minus to it though. I believe often local officials are much more receptive to ideas than national ones, simply because they have smaller constituencies, so every individual voter (us) matters more, relatively speaking. They also tend to be more approachable. Sure, coordination of the results will be more difficult, and we'll probably end up with a hodgepodge of varying improvements that don't make the most sense network-wise. For instance, I am willing to bet that city mayors would have much more of an interest in making the Bike-Friendly Community list, than say U.S. Senators of the state in question.

Speaking from a P&R perspective, having the stimulus funds distributed locally would perhaps be a good compromise proposal that can bring Republicans (who are all for local control, argument being that locals know what's best in their communities) aboard if the proposal otherwise gets bogged down.

buzzman

good questions.

Hopefully, not too many people will immediately polarize this discussion into the usual black and white, either/or arguments of sharrows over bike lanes, WOL's over bike lanes or even infrastructure over no infrastructure. Those debates go nowhere. The realistic view is that all possibilities need to be considered and applied dependent on location. There are certainly times when bike lanes should be considered and times when wide outside lanes should be considered (and certainly times when other solutions might suffice- like simply enforcing existing speed limits and traffic laws with some consistency). The needed info, IMO, is when and where each of these have been applied successfully and when they failed to improve the situation.

As Tip O'Neill wisely said, "All politics is local."

or in populist bumper stickerese- "Think Globally act locally."

JohnBrooking

I've seen a matrix of when to use what types of facilities based on a variety of factors such as traffic speed and volume, lane width, landscape features, etc. Can't recall where off the top of my head, but maybe somewhere in the US federal government guidelines, or maybe a bicycle facility guidebook such as those from California or Chicago. Try googling bicycle facility matrix or some such terms. It's out there somewhere. I'll try to look through my print and online resources this week and see if I can find it again.

JohnBrooking

Something like this?

chipcom 

I'd be happy if they could just maintain the roadways, paths, etc. that we already have before we start spending money on building new stuff that won't get maintained.

If you build it they might come, but if you don't take care of it, they ain't gonna stay.

unterhausen

there is a proposed bike path between State College and Bellefonte PA that would be great for this. the only problem is that part of the land belongs to the state prison system. I never was a big fan of bike paths that are nothing more than glorified sidewalks, and this winter's experience reinforces that. But I do like separate bike paths.

AndrewP

I would like the potholes to be filled, and storm drains to be moved from the edge of the road to under the edge of the sidewalk. 20 mph speed limit on city streets, except those with WOL and no parking. No on-street parking on busy streets.

Roughstuff

Dollar for dollar, the best return is on widening and improving road shoulders. They needn't be that wide, though I have cycled on many roads where the shoulder is the widest lane on the roadway (the icefields parkway in Canada is an example).

I know this is not a realistic alternative in densely populated urban areas. Other innovations to make our roadways more cycling friendly would be needed there.

roughstuff

Ngchen

True. I'm sure people will be pushing for maintainence of what's currently available as part of the package. After all, we don't need any more I-35 bridge collaspes.

The Human Car

When the government wants the States to spend lots of money, maintenance is the last thing on their mind. I wish it wasn't so but so far I have not seen any indicators for the push of maintenance projects.

chipcom 

Which is the point. What good is a road, bike lane, path, etc. if it ends up full of debris, potholes, roadkill, snow, ice, dirt and muck? Building something that will be used for a short time, then pretty much abandoned due to lack of maintenance, is wasting our money. If you ain't gonna be able to keep it in good working order for the long-term, don't build it in the first place.

kendall

I'd love top see them spend more money on bike trails and lanes.

Sharrows are fine, no argument against them. But in my opinion if you want to get more people out on bikes, you'll get more people riding if they have quiet trails to ride and don't have to duke it out with cars. I don't have a problem riding with traffic, but know it can be intimidating to many riders, More so for new guys.

Sharrows are fine for experienced riders, but trails are more enjoyable for newbies, so building trails and paths will get more people on bikes, which will get more bike aware drivers on the road, which will make biking safer in general.

If you don't ride bikes they're easy to overlook, but if you ride a bike you actually SEE them, even if it's just to say 'hey, what's he riding?'

ken.

dwilbur3

I just wish Sacramento would connect some of those miles of trails they've got. What's the point of a thousand miles of trails if you can't get out of your neighborhood?

The Human Car

+1000 What good is a trail if kids, older adults/ a half mile from the trail don't feel comfortable biking to the trail?

waldowales

I'm with Chipcom on the maintenance thing. We have a nice trail running most of the length of Salt Lake Valley. The northern 3 miles is pretty much unusable after May, because of the goat head thorns which are permitted to grow until late summer every year. When they are finally sprayed, after they extend half way across the trail, they are left there to harden up and puncture tires. I hope the new administration will show more interest in keeping this trail usable.

Road Fan

Guess I'm just too much of a newb, but I'm haveing trouble with the terminology. I think BL = bike lane, but what are WOLs and sharrows, and are there any illustrations? Maybe sharrow = share the road arrow?

Also, what's a landscape panel?

Road Fan