Larry Nelson wrote < Frankly, one of the challenges of constructing biking infrastructure is that veteran bikers often want to compete with cars on roadways and the people we want to offer an alternative to the SOV are not aware of the potential. >
Madison has always taken a multi-faceted approach to bicycling infrastructure. To have a truly bicycle (and pedestrian) friendly community you need all of the following - - Complete Neighborhoods. It has to be possible and easy to move about within and between neighborhoods by foot and by bike. This means having a strong local street grid. If the local street grid is planned to be broken (eg cul-de-sacs) than these breaks need to be connected for walkers and bikers with paths. Bicycle Boulevards are a part of complete neighborhoods. - - Barriers that divide neighborhoods (eg highways, rivers, etc.) need to be bridged. Grade separations (overpasses and underpasses) are needed to ensure connectivity exists across these barriers other than just the major (arterial) streets that typically cross these barriers. - - Complete Streets. All streets need to be designed to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists. This means sidewalks for pedestrians and on busier streets space for bicyclists, typically in the form of bike lanes. Many destinations (shopping, work sites, doctor's and other offices, etc.) tend be accessible only from arterial streets. - - Bike paths in separate rights of way where these exist, for example, lake, river, creek shores,; railroad corridors, etc. - - Other facilities such as bicycle parking at destinations; bikes on buses and other mass transit vehicles; etc. All of these are needed, none are mutually exclusive. That is, having a bike path in a neighborhood does not preclude the need for bike lanes along the nearby arterial street or vice versa. Incidental projects (bike lanes on an arterial street) have been easier to accomplish since budget wise they are a small part of a larger project. Independent projects (bike paths in separate rights of way from roadways, ped/bike grade separations of highways) have been more difficult to acquire funding for. Arthur Ross, Pedestrian-Bicycle Coordinator City of Madison Traffic Engineering Division 215 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Suite 100 PO Box 2986 Madison, WI 53701-2986 608/266-6225 _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
