Friday Funny, Transportation planning

3 foot law passed!

It is official!  The Common Council of the City of Fort Wayne voted unanimously to approve G-11-08-12, an ordinance amending Title 7, Chapters 70, 71, 72, and 74 of the City of Fort Wayne Code of Laws.  In short this ordinance codifies a number of traffic laws with regard to transportation. 

While there is a few big changes like: making it legal to ride your bike on a sidewalk as long as you yield to pedestrians many of us in the cycling community are excited about the section regarding passing a cyclist.

SECTION 4. That Chapter 71, Title 7 of the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana Code of ordinances be amended as follows to add:

§ 71.06 OPERATION OF VEHICLES IN ROADWAYS WHERE BICYCLES

ARE PRESENT

(D) PASSING OF BICYCLES

The operator of a motor vehicle passing a bicycle proceeding in the same direction on a highway, street, or road shall leave a safe distance, but not less than three (3) feet, when passing the bicycle, and shall maintain that distance until safely past the overtaken bicycle.

We in the advocacy community have been lobbying the Indiana State Legislature for years to create a Vulnerable Road Users Law.  They have not.  This last year the bill was not given a vote in the Committee.

I would like to thank Mayor Thomas Henry, Community Development Department, the Ordinance Committee and the Fort Wayne Common Council for helping to create an environment within our great community that is friendly toward Bicycles.  This is BIG.    

Why our roads are not good for bikes and pedestrians explained

I posted this a couple years ago but I felt that it needed some more playtime!
Enjoy.

Shareable: The Boom in Biking Benefits Everyone, Not Just Bicyclists

Shareable: The Boom in Biking Benefits Everyone, Not Just Bicyclists

Some:
The political forces that want to steer policies back to the 1950s—when cars and highways were seen as the only way to go—have consistently failed to muster enough votes to shift federal transportation funding into reverse.  There are several reason for this, but one of the most surprising is the emergence of bicycle advocates—and to a lesser extent pedestrian advocates—as a persuasive political lobby.

...and more
While Congressional critics belittle bicyclists as a marginal, almost silly special interest group, others herald them as self-reliant citizens who get around without the need of imported oil and mega-highway projects that cost taxpayers billions.  Instead of a boondoggle, continued funding to improve biking and walking conditions in the U.S. represents a sound investment that saves taxpayers money now and in the future.

If it isn't enforced is it against the law?

The Uncomfortable Relationship Between Bikes and Red Lights - Commute - The Atlantic Cities

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Bike counting

City of Fort Wayne will be conducting their first ever bike counts on Thursday, October 6th! It promises to be a gorgeous day. Staff will be counting bikes, logging direction of travel, identifying gender and whether or not the riders are wearing helmets at 3 locations between 6:30 am and 3 pm. Staff will be stationed at Wayne/Calhoun, Berry/Calhoun, and Anthony/Niagra (trail).
I'll be at Wayne/Calhoun from 9:30-12:30. Ride by and say hello!

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Janette Sadik-Khan, Transportation Geniousity at work

By FRANK BRUNI
Published: September 10, 2011
From the New York Times

SOMETHING lovely and all too rare happened to Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s frequently demonized transportation commissioner, as she and I rode our bikes down Park Avenue South one morning last month: Sadik-Khan got unsolicited, unfettered praise.

It came from a young cyclist who happened to pull up beside us, glanced over at her and suddenly beamed.

“Oh, it’s you!” he stammered, then mentioned that he owned a bicycle shop and had recently placed a newspaper ad publicly thanking her for her cycling advocacy. “You’re going to leave a legacy, you know.”

He’s right. Sadik-Khan and Mayor Bloomberg both. And it’s past time that more than just a passer-by trumpeted it.

Since the mayor appointed her in 2007 and she began to bring her agency’s work more closely in line with his vision of a greener New York, the city has roughly doubled its miles of bike lanes, to about 500. If you did any biking at all in Manhattan or Brooklyn this summer, you may well have noticed the improvements, including protected bike lanes (ones that separate cyclists entirely from street traffic) on such major arteries as Columbus and First Avenues in Manhattan.

The Rest of The Story

City Announces Bike Summit

Check out all the info on What's going Downtown!

http://www.whatsgoingdowntown.com/2009/02/19/city-announces-bike-summit-releases-survey-results/

Congressman Earl Blumenauer is on our side

Well, tonight was the first night this week that I was not honked at or yelled at on Columbia St as I rode home from work. I can't explain it except for maybe they are all getting used to me.

As you know it is cold here and this week has been particularly so. I am still biking everyday and it never ceases to amaze how many people comment to me at work how I am insane. It isn't bad at all though I gotta tell you. I'll take the extreme cold over extreme hot anyday.

It has been so cold that after leaving my bike out all day at work, my generator lights do not function properly. I had to run up to Summit Bikes to get some back up head light and tail light action for the ol' Breezer. O well. It is worth it for saving my life.

I came accross this article the other day and I think it is well worth sharing with all of you.
Check it. I know, of course he is from Oregon but we don't have advocates like this from Indiana so you gotta like him even though!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/earth/13profile.html?_r=1

It is stuff like this that gets me stoked!

Because Robert Moses Would Have a Coronary If He Were to See Our Streets Now

By Justin Davidson

New York Magazine
Published Dec 14, 2008
New York’s streets are getting new ownership. Lane by lane, curb cut by parking space, in steps so scattered and incremental that they hardly get noticed, people on foot are wresting control of the asphalt from those behind the wheel. Even on a chill winter day, you can take a sandwich and a book and sit in a sunlit patch on Broadway between Times and Herald Squares—not at a curb café but in a lane that once belonged to cars. A strip has been painted tan, flanked by planters, and sprinkled with metal chairs and tables. On one side of this oasis, cyclists speed down their own green lane. Vans and trucks park on the other side of the planters, barricading the new plaza from moving cars. Having lunch in the middle of Broadway can be disconcerting, but it sends a signal of pedestrian pride.

For decades, it was almost inconceivable that any American city would requisition turf from motorized vehicles and turn it over to people who would use it for such low-speed, inefficient activities as strolling or sitting around. Robert Moses, who didn’t drive, nevertheless believed that the well-made street should speed the car. That long-unchallenged assumption has found an opponent in Commissioner of Transportation Janette Sadik-Khan, who last year hired Jan Gehl, the Danish guru of pedestrianism, to help transform traffic arteries into more-textured public places.

In the twenty months since Sadik-Khan took office, she has swiftly refashioned miles of streets, using inexpensive materials and commando operations. The commissioner often commutes by bicycle, and she made sure her two-wheeled people got their very own slice of Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, delimited by the curb on one side and a landscaped median on the other. Where the avenue widens at 14th Street, a low-tech armory of heavy planters, paint, and metal chairs has secured a pleasant haven in the middle of southbound traffic. Two blocks farther downtown is Gansevoort Plaza, where blocks of salvaged granite arranged into funky seating and a phalanx of spherical, nippled bollards protect a new pedestrian habitat. Across town at Madison Square, another loiterer’s haven has sprouted at an intersection that once was clogged with traffic.
Behind such tinkering with blacktop and hardware is an attempt to change the way people see and use their city. Sadik-Kahn has been called a “guerrilla bureaucrat,” and her experiments do have a revolutionary cast. On Saturday mornings last summer, vehicles started to vanish from various streets—without being replaced by tired fairs. First, in local actions taken under the city’s approving eye, parts of Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg became temporarily pedestrian. Then, for three Saturdays in August, a seven-mile stretch of Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge up Park Avenue to 72nd Street was transformed into a motor-free allée. Children played in the street, a brass ensemble oompahed, adults scooted along on their kids’ Razors, and Pomeranians promenaded down the center lane.

Public space comes in a range of shades. In the sixties, its cultivation was effectively delegated to private developers, who were permitted to put up bigger office buildings if they provided sidewalk-level oases where workers could eat their lunch. In the eighties and nineties, New York began to rejuvenate its parks, restoring enclaves that offer a cushion from noise and congestion. Now the Department of Transportation has realized that its jurisdiction covers the basic unit of urban life: the street. There, lifestyles intersect and city dwellers co-exist with people different from themselves. It’s where we learn toleration, where leisure shares space with urgency, commerce with activism, baby carriages with handcarts. When it is narrowed by garbage or overwhelmed by traffic, then the street reverts to its most primitive use: as a corridor. But a truly public place allows people to move at many different paces, or not to move at all.

Best Cities For Cycling: Still The Greatest

So what can Fort Wayne learn from these cities?
1. That bike infrastructure will cost a lot of money (what doesn't?), but that other places have shown that it can be done. And today their communities and most importantly their citizens are reaping the benefits. Will Fort Wayne make the leap? Only time will tell.
2. That when we plan we need to have specific goals in mind. For example: Having 10% of all trips under two miles be by bicycle in 5 years, or having 100 miles of bike paths in 5 years, or increasing the number of cyclists at a rate of 5% per year for the next ten years, or encouraging kids to ride their bikes to school with a safe routes to school program (you get the idea).


Portland, Oregon
What perennially puts Portland atop our list is that you don't need to know anything about bike lanes or city planning to see that it is a haven for cyclists. Just hang out in a coffee shop and look out the window: Bikes and riders of all stripes are everywhere. City support is important, too. In response to six fatal car-bike crashes last year, Portland rushed approval of 14 bike boxes--painted areas in front of cars at red lights that give bikes priority--at high-risk intersections, among other safety measures.

Seattle
The city council has unabashedly stated that its goal is to unseat Portland as the best U.S. city for cycling. Its 10-year, $240 million bike master plan, passed by a unanimous council vote last fall, may just get it there. Among the objectives: tripling the number of journeys made by bike and adding 450 miles of bike paths.

Chicago
Richard Daley, the mayor for the past 19 years and a dedicated roadie, has ushered in a bicycle renaissance, with a growing network of bike lanes, a bike station (pictured) with valet bike parking, showers and indoor bike racks. Plus, the city council recently outlawed dooring. Next up: The new downtown Chicago Criterium debuts in July.

San Francisco
All bike infrastructure projects here have been halted since 2006, when two "concerned" groups sued the city for not putting plans through the environmental impact review process. A judge ruled that the review needed to happen, and the city may not get back on track until 2010. But here's why San Fran rules: The local bike culture has stood strong, and the number of cyclists increased by 15 percent last year alone.

Boulder, Colorado
The most physically fit city in the most physically fit state is an outdoor paradise. No surprise there. Fourteen percent of all trips here are now taken by bike--an almost European figure. Perhaps even more telling is that Boulder is raising the next generation of cyclists: The city's Safe Routes to School program has had such an impact locally that one school reports that 75 percent of its students now bike or walk to school.

South Bend has done it.....

As a former resident of South Bend I am just so proud of how far they have come in not only implementing portions of their Comprehensive Plan but that they have gone so far, so quickly, in creating a bicycle friendly City. (Actually, I am a little jealous)


Mayor Stephen J. Luecke in his 2007 State of the City address directed staff to:
Develop bike paths that share the road with vehicular traffic by establishing "one major north-south and one major east-west bike path each year during the first five years" of implementation. At 10 miles per year, this will establish a substantial 50-mile network of bike lanes in South Bend.
Complete our riverwalk system from Logan Street to Darden Road in the first five years of the City Plan implementation.

This is from a recent press release from the Mayor.

Expanding on Mayor Stephen J. Luecke’s commitment to develop a 50mile network of bicycle routes in five years, the City of South Bend has unveiled a map showing a proposed bicycle network of more than 88 miles.
“This map will serve as a longterm planning tool for my administration as it continues to add a minimum of 10 new miles of bicycle routes each year,” Luecke said. “It will also show the entire community our vision for a comprehensive network that provides safe routes for bicyclists to reach every segment of South Bend.”

Now in the second year of implementation, the emerging network is expected to have 32.8 miles completed by the end of this year (24.5 miles since the mayor’s 2007 State of the City 50mile pledge). The proposed new routes will feature a yettobe determined combination of:

Bicycle lanes – Painted fivefootwide lanes on each side of the road between traffic and parking lanes. (Example: Mishawaka Avenue)

Multipurpose paths – Offroad, paved pathways limited to bicycles and pedestrian traffic. (Example: Riverside Trail, Portage Avenue)

Designated routes – Streets marked by “Share the Road” signs that are recommended for bicycle and vehicular traffic. (Example: Ford Street)

The network map is now available on the City’s web site at www.SouthBendIN.gov/bike
It shows already completed routes, proposed routes to be added by the city by the end of 2011 and beyond as well as adjoining bicycle routes outside the city limits. Of the more
than 106 miles on the map, more than 34 miles will be in place by the end of 2008.
How amazing is that! When I lived there I can't remember there being any bike lanes, and now they are going to have 34 mile of lanes/paths! Hat's off to the Mayor and his entire staff proving that they can work together to acheive such great things!

In creating the proposed network, city officials identified routes that provide safe access to destinations, including employment centers, schools, libraries and parks as well as connect to existing routes in neighboring areas. The routes were selected in consultation with representatives of the Bike Michiana Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy organization representing eight local bicycle groups.

The City will determine priority routes to implement each year based on its desire to link key destinations, construction schedules, existing road conditions, funding and other factors. A street must be at least 48 feet wide to incorporate two 11foot travel lanes, two 8foot parking lanes and two 5foot bike lanes. With a limited number of City streets of that width, the City in some places would need to remove a parking lane on one side of a street to add painted bicycle lanes.
“With high gas prices and efforts by residents to keep in shape, more people are riding bicycles. They legally have the same access to roadways as cars, trucks and other vehicles,” said Gary Gilot, director of public works. “We’re trying to balance the interests of bicycles, motorists, and neighbors and businesses who rely on onstreet public parking.”
As the City implements new routes each year, planners will work in consultation with
adjacent property owners, neighborhood groups and the bicycling community for optimal
results.

This is near and dear to my heart because after looking at the map, they put a bike lane on the road that I used to ride to work on!
http://www.southbendin.gov/docs/IT_SouthBendBicycleNetwork_1.pdf

Now, Fort Wayne already had many many miles of paths with the Rivergreenway already in place so comparing the two is not apples to apples but still....

I beleive that Fort Wayne has the talent and ability to work together to accomplish this and more in the future.

Planning

It is exciting news that the Mayor has started the data collection phase of the Bike Planning process. Thanks to Ashley (Commentor on this blog) for reminding me that this is something that needs to be spoken about.

Currently, the City is asking members of the community to give input so that data can be compiled for the City's bike lane/route planning. If you ride a bike, thought about doing it, whatever, please follow this link and fill out the questionaire.

http://www.cityoffortwayne.org/forms/bicycle_survey.php

From what I have heard there have been literally, hundreds of responses sent in so far and it has only been a week or so since the thing was launched! (A hard copy survey is also in this month's City Utilities bill) That is great to hear.

Let it be known to all of you out there that this is the beginning of something that could be great for this City and all who choose to commute on a bike. But, this survey is just the very beginning. Planning can be a long process, and for good reason. To look at everything involved takes a while. Below is the definition of Planning according to the American Planning Association.

What Is Planning?

Planning, also called urban planning or city and regional planning, is a dynamic profession that works to improve the welfare of people and their communities by creating more convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, and attractive places for present and future generations.
Planning enables civic leaders, businesses, and citizens to play a meaningful role in creating communities that enrich people's lives.

Good planning helps create communities that offer better choices for where and how people live. Planning helps community members envision the direction their community grow and will help them find the right balance of new development and essential services, protection of the environment, and innovative change.

Planning is done in many arenas and involves professionals who are planners and those who are professionally certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). Planners work with elected and appointed officials, such as mayors and planning commissioners, to lead the planning process with the goal of creating communities of lasting value. Planners help civic leaders, businesses, and citizens envision new possibilities and solutions to community problems.

The American Planning Association and its professional institute, AICP, help planners, officials, and citizens better serve their communities by providing research, educational resources, practical advice and tools, and up-to-date information on planning. Planners working with community members help communities meet the challenges of growth and change.

You really start to understand what is involved, who is involved, and what the stakes are after reading the above. Don't you? Lines like, "that works to improve the welfare of people and their communities by creating more convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient, and attractive places for present and future generations. " I mean that's great stuff! This bike plan could do all of these things.

I will make a confession here that I was a professional Planner in a past life and I am a firm believer that Planning, when done right, can do a great deal to improve the quality of life of the residents of the community. To be honest, I am just so happy that the can of worms has been opened. What do I mean by that you ask? I think that by asking for public input on this subject, the Mayor and the City is now going to gain a much clearer understanding about how many people bike, where they live, where they want to be able to bike to safely, what specific roads they want to do all of this on, etc. (I really feel for the lowley planners that have the job of complilng all of that information!)

Where are you going? Planning takes a while. We need to be patient. I want bike lanes everywhere yesterday too. But chill. It will take months to even compile all of this data! It is okay. This is not going to be a quick win, but, I guarantee you that in 10 years when we all look back as to what happened to get Fort Wayne to be such a bike commuter friendly town, it started with Planning.