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Entries tagged: Bike Lane

Last month, Livable Memphis, a recipient of a Fall 2010 Advocacy Advance Grant, completed its “Overton-Broad Connector” Innovation Grant proposal. The advocates used their $25,000 award to introduce two model innovations to the Memphis community.

The New Face for an Old Broad event in November 2010 took the Better Blocks concept to a new level by temporarily reprogramming a street to show how bicycle and pedestrian facilities can encourage economic development. Three blocks of the Broad Avenue commercial district were turned into a DIY weekend festival. Local schools painted crosswalks, vacant storefronts were cleaned out and turned into pop-up shops and cafes, local artists created murals. The temporary redesign of the streetscape, including painted protected bike lines, have remained untouched for more than a year because they follow code standards and the local community has been pleased with the increase of business.

The grant also supported Livable Memphis’s advocacy efforts to complete the Overton-Broad Connector. The park trail segment will serve as the only pedestrian entrance to Overton Park from the east and increase access to mixed-income communities. Livable Memphis completed the design concept and is working to raise additional funds needed to complete the cycle track.

Going above and beyond the matching grant requirement, Livable Memphis raised more than $100,000 in sponsorships, donations, grants, event proceeds, and membership dues for its efforts. The advocates’ work has received additional financial support from Bikes Belong, Tennessee Recreational Trails Program, and HUS Sustainable Communities grant program.

In addition, Livable Memphis introduced updates to Memphis pedestrian ordinances regarding ADA access and crosswalk right-of-ways, which passed City Council, and developed a new “fines and fees” ordinance that will bring violation charges regarding bicycles and pedestrians up to the standard of their peer cities.

We’ve added added materials to our Online Resource Library that Livable Memphis used in its advocacy and feel would be useful for other Alliance member organizations:

• Sample Request for Proposal for Professional Design Services and instructions for submitting a Letter of Interest
• Traffic Volume Count Study Methods

Livable Memphis joins the more than two dozen other organizations that have used Advocacy Advance grant funding to spur development and carry out successful bicycle and pedestrian campaigns. Check back in coming weeks for information about next year’s funding cycle.

By teaming up with a local conservation organization, advocates from Charleston Moves helped turned a monster road for automobiles into a safer street for people who walk and bike.

The project in question was Harborview Drive, a thoroughfare on James Island that backs up with cars and school buses during certain periods of the day. The City Council aimed to remedy the congestion by redesigning the road to funnel traffic even faster.

Because the new design would take down a number of live oaks, the first group to raise a red flag was Will You Remember Our Trees? Quickly, the conservation advocates turned to Charleston Moves to examine the design and get involved in the campaign to calm the new beast. The advocates took a particularly keen interest in the stretch of pavement as it represents a key portion of the group’s Battery2Beach corridor — a proposed 24-mile bicycle route that runs from the Isle of Palms to Folly Beach.

“We found [the redesign] to be a monster,” Charleston Moves’ advocates wrote on their blog, “almost 70 feet wide, with a two-way multi-use path on only one side of the road, speed limit increased from 40 to 45mph, a center (suicide) lane, and not a single crosswalk!”

Drawing on his professional background as an engineer, Charleston Moves’ Vice Chair Chris Tullmann took a closer look at the plans and found that the redesign would do more harm than good. “Instead of helping connect many lovely neighborhoods on that portion of James Island,” Charleston Moves noted on its blog, “the project would instead create a monstrous concrete and asphalt “gash” through it, very likely to diminish property values, cheapen commerce and tarnish the overall quality of life.”

So Charleston Moves kicked off a letter writing and publicity campaign that urged the city council to reconsider — and they did. Thanks to the advocates’ mobilization, officials revised their plans and put forward a vastly improved design for the road with bike lanes on both sides of the street, and a sidewalk running among the old live oaks on the south side of the roadway.

Of course, it’s not everything the advocates had asked for, but now that the discussion had been reopened there will be another round of public comments next year. Learn more on CHS Moves’ blog.

Frustrated by the slow pace of government action on pedestrian and bicycle safety issues, bicycle advocates in Mexico City took matters into their own hands this month. In early November, a group of activists painted a five-kilometer bike lane through the Federal District — straight to the doors of Congress.

According to event organizers: “We worked for eight hours. We painted five kilometers. We spent less than 1,000 dollars. How much would it cost to actually build the bicycle infrastructure the city needs?”

In 2007, the municipal government promised to build 300 km of bike lanes within five years. Due to lack of funding for non-motorized transportation, only 22.2 km have been built. The event in Mexico City this month was part of a nationwide campaign demanding that Mexico allocate at least 5 percent of its transportation budget to bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

Areli Carreón, president of the bicycle advocacy group (and Alliance member organization) Bicitekas, says event organizers got the word out using social media, including e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. They also posted a How-To guide on the web a few days in advance. Funding was raised through Fondeadora, a crowd-sourcing site that lets people donate money to causes or projects they care about.

Three of Mexico’s most influential newspapers — Reforma, El Universal and Milenio — ran stories on the event. “All the activity was covered live by Twitters on the spot, which also generated a lot of noise and support,” Areli says.

Weeks later, the so-called “wikilane” remains intact and advocates have drafted a letter to authorities asking that it be designated an official bike lane.

The creative action is just one example of how advocates’ efforts are starting to pay off at the national level. “The 2012 annual national budget included, for the first time, the concept of ‘non motorized mobility,’” Areli says. “It’s not the 5 percent we wanted, but it’s a very important step in the right direction. We’re happy with this first positive outcome!”

It’s already looking like a white Christmas for cyclists in the Steel City. Thanks to the efforts of Bike Pittsburgh, streets are being trimmed with fresh white paint, marking new bicycle facilities across the East End.

According to BikePGH: “Over the past year, we worked diligently with the City of Pittsburgh to plan for and design over 12 miles of new bike lanes that we have been waiting patiently to see installed.”

Well, Santa came a little early: The waiting is over.

In recent weeks, city officials have striped a number of new bike lanes and installed a slew of sharrows. The advocates at Bike Pittsburgh have been involved throughout the process, so the bicycling facilities create a viable two-wheeling network.

“The city continued the expansion of the East End bike network this weekend with the addition of bike lanes on Dallas Avenue and shared lane markings, or sharrows, on Hamilton Avenue,” Erok Boerer, the group’s advocacy director, wrote on the BikePGH blog last week. “This adds to the recently installed markings on Highland Avenue and Wilkins Avenue that now connect six neighborhoods and three parks with clearly marked on-street bicycle infrastructure.”

That’s not the only November victory, either. After years of advocacy from BikePGH, the Pittsburgh Port Authority announced last month that it will outfit the remaining 190 buses with racks by this time next year. With so much activity on the ground, it’s no wonder Pittsburgh bicycle mode share jumped 76 percent from 2008 to 2009. According to the latest American Community Survey, Pittsburgh now ranks 7th out of the 60 largest cities for the percentage of people who use active transportation (walking, biking or taking transit) as a means of commuting.

So it’s also no surprise that folks outside bicycling circles are taking notice of the BikePGH crew. Pittsburgh Magazine just released its “40 Under 40” list and guess who’s included? Scott Bricker, co-founder and CEO of Bike Pittsburgh (and esteemed board member for the Alliance).

The magazine raves: “Ten days of BikeFest annually, 100 donated bike racks, a map of the city now in its third edition and a ranking as one of the best cities for bikers. Pittsburgh owes these two-wheeled statistics to the efforts of BikePGH and its co-founder and CEO, Scott Bricker. From advocating for bike commuters to renting bikes to tourists, his work helps cyclists enjoy a smoother ride. ‘[We are] giving a voice to this community and … have begun transforming the city into a more livable, bike-friendly place,’ he says. ‘If I can make local leaders think of our streets as places meant for moving people, not just cars, I will have succeeded.’”

Click here to read more from BikePGH.

Photo: Scott Bricker cruises down one of the new bike lanes in the East End of Pittsburgh.

The Iowa Bicycle Coalition is celebrating brand-new bike lanes in downtown Des Moines.

This month, the city striped lanes for two-wheeling travelers on Ingersoll Avenue, a main strip for shopping and dining in Iowa’s capital. This transformation will turn a busy four-lane artery into an accessible two-lane road, with bike lanes on either side.

Cyclists are excited to ride the Avenue and residents are eager to see how the new transit option impacts the local businesses. One shop-owner on Ingersoll just happens to be Frank Cownie (pictured), the city’s mayor and an avid cyclist. “We’re very hopeful as business owners that this will be quite a helpful addition,” he told KCCI News.

Click here to watch a helmet video of the new lanes, shot by Des Moines advocate Carl Voss. For more information, visit http://www.iowabicyclecoalition.org/.

Blog contributed by Adam Levine

According to a press release issued by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, ” Hundreds of thousands of people, including members of the Board of Supervisors, community leaders, and other first- and long-time bike commuters, will pedal to work as part of the 16th Annual Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 13. This year’s event is a celebration of the city’s first fully-separated,  green bike lane on Market Street and other innovations and additions that are improving streets all across the city.

“Scores of people will be experiencing the comfort of bicycling in the newly separated and now green Market Street bike lane for the first time on Bike to Work Day,” says Renee Rivera, acting Executive Director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, a non-profit which promotes bicycling for everyday transportation and organizes Bike to Work Day in San Francisco. “We are thrilled to have Mayor Newsom leading these exciting biking innovations on Market Street, the city’s busiest biking street. This is a great first step towards a separated bikeway the full length of lower Market Street.”

San Francisco has seen a whopping 53% increase in the number of people bicycling in the city since 2006, according to counts by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). This number is expected to surge in the coming year with dozens of bicycling improvements planned for streets all across San Francisco.

“We are taking hold of an incredible opportunity to transform Market Street into one of the greatest streets in the world,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “San Francisco is an innovator and this newly separated, green bike lane is one example of how we can make Market Street safer and more bike friendly for the tens of thousands of people who use it everyday.”

The SF Bicycle Coalition is organizing “Commuter Convoys” which will escort VIPs on tours of Market Street to show them firsthand the positive changes transforming the city’s most important biking, walking and transit street. These tours will converge on the steps of City Hall at 8:30am for a press conference celebrate and build support for the fully separated and continuous bikeway on Market Street from Van Ness all the way to the Embarcadero.

San Francisco-based companies also understand that a Market Street bikeway will be good for business, good for employee health and safety, and key to a vibrant future for our city’s main street.

“We support a fully separated, continuous bikeway on Market Street as a way to improve the safety of our employees that bicycle regularly to our office as well as to meetings at other companies in the area,” says Christopher Sacca, Managing Partner of Lowercase Capital. “I also anticipate that this improvement will be just the encouragement needed to get more of our employees and the founders of our portfolio companies choosing this healthy form of transportation.”

Market Street is just one of many streets that has improved in the last few months. California’s first colored bike box (an advance stop line for cyclists) was added to Scott Street at Oak on the busy ‘wiggle’ bike route, new bike lanes have been striped on numerous streets and hundreds of new bike parking racks installed all over the city. These additions are making it easier and more inviting for people to choose to bicycle every day.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will host 27 morning and afternoon Energizer Stations in neighborhoods across the city to fuel up commuters with free snacks, fair trade certified coffee and distribute bicycling information. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will end the day in style with the Bike Away from Work Party and Fashion Show (6-10pm, Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street) where dozens of models will pedal the runway in functional finery.

Bike to Work Day 2010 is presented by Kaiser Permanente, the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and hundreds of local volunteers. For more information on San Francisco’s Bike to Work Day, visit http://www.sfbike.org/btwd.”

According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “We cheered at Thursday’s decision by Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch to reject the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) proposal to remove a bike lane and protective barrier at the notoriously dangerous Market and Octavia intersection. Thanks to the more than 200 bicyclists, as well as state and local officials, who came out to rally with the SFBC to save the Market and Octavia Bike Lane—the bike voice was heard!”

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