Bicycle City

Plans are afoot for a new community development, but one with a difference, it'll be car-free. Check out the plans
at Bicycle City.

D.C. Launches Bike-Sharing Program

Public Bicycle Systems

Wed1415.Systems.Curran.pdf

From: TCC08, 1 month ago

Wed1415.Systems.Curran.pdf

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tcc08 safety)

Public Bicycle Systems in the North American Context

* Andrew Curran and Gavin Davidson, TransLink, Vancouver, BC


SlideShare Link

Building Streets as Places

Thurs0900.Places.Espiau

From: TCC08, 2 months ago

Thurs0900.Places.Espiau

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: building community)

Streets as Places: Building Better Communities Through Transportation

* Renee Espiau, Senior Associate, Project for Public Spaces, New York City


SlideShare Link

What If We Built Our Streets as Places?

The Project for Public Spaces gave an exciting presentation (see post above)at the CarFree Cities Conference this summer.  Pages 58 and 59 of the presentation point out how bad cul-de-sac neighborhoods are for getting from A to B and the loss of capacity with the same amount of road money.  The "Sprawl Factor" positive feedback loop that brings more traffic and wider roads and more traffic and wider roads can be found on page 72.  This is happening locally.  Look at the Williamson expansion to 4 lanes: wider roads, but no bike paths to get people out of their cars, just more lanes for cars.  As the cars speed up, no need to treat the area along the road as places, why bother when you see it at 45 mph.  Why can't cars take I-95 north-south, while slowing traffic on Williamson and adding bike lanes?

Avoid cul-de-sacs, look for gridded streets, low traffic volume

Getting from A to B in the city on a bicycle isn't always easy, especially through newly developed sprawl the that lacks throughways. An article in today's print addition of the News Journal describes realtors in Portland, OR helping homebuyers find bicycle friendly communities. Gridded streets allow bicyclists to travel on low traffic volume streets which parallel busy streets. In well-developed bicycling cities, these low traffic volume streets are called bicycle boulevards.

The best local example I know of is along S Pametto Ave which parallels Ridgewood Ave (US 1) to the east between roughly Big Tree Rd and Bethune Blvd. For east-west travel, the two-lane Bellevue road should serve the same purpose, keeping bicycle commuters off the very busy Beville Rd and International Speedway Blvd. Unfortunately, even through Bellevue was just repaved, no bike lanes.

Another problem is heading north from Daytona Beach (mainland side) up to Ormond beach west of Nova Road. After some route finding, you can make your way up the street grid has far as Hand Ave. After this, you are forced onto Nova Road or Cylde Morris Blvd as you enter the land of cul-de-sacs. Hand Ave is two-lanes, ready for expansion to four, and there is no shoulder for bicyclists heading west. In an effort to keep out all through traffic, the cul-de-sac communities force their bicycle commuting neighbors on to streets with high traffic volume and frequently no bike lanes or shoulders.

Gas Prices Got You Back on Your Bike?

Today I learned about the League of American Bicyclists.  They have a nice page on bicycle commuting basics here.