Path Clearing under Verona Road. (Photo by City of Madison Engineering.)

At Tuesday’s Common Council meeting, the Council adopted an Operating Budget that funds snow and ice clearing for Madison’s arterial shared use paths within 12 hours of a winter weather event! Previously there were only funds to keep the paths cleared on weekdays and non-holidays. This is a major victory for biking and walking in Madison. It will prevent some of the major issues with clearing paths on Monday after a Friday snow where a weekend’s worth of walking and biking compacts snow and creates dangerous, icy patches that cannot easily be removed. This will also help keep the paths clear for commuters whose job schedules don’t revolve around a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday schedule.

Also in the budget: $350K towards the implementation of Vision Zero/Traffic Safety. Introduced as an amendment by Alder Grant Foster, all council members signed on as co-sponsors and the amendment passed unanimously. The money will be available to do safety enhancements to some of our city's most dangerous intersections and corridors in the coming year. Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate all traffic deaths and serious injuries, will be a larger process, but it's great that we have some money available to kickstart it.

Thanks to everyone who emailed their alder in support of this vital path maintenance!

The Monona Terrace Bike Elevator is down! @MononaTerrace reported on Tuesday that the Bike Elevator has suffered a breakdown. At this time it is believed the bike elevator will be operational some time this week after substantial repairs are made.

This Week

 Monday, November 18,

The monthly Madison Bikes Board Meeting will be held at 6:00 PM in the first floor conference room of Madison’s Central Library.

Tuesday, November 19,

At 7:00 PM in the Discovery Building on the corner of Randall and University, the Crossroads of Ideas: How Can We Move Forward on Wisconsin Transportation? lecture will discuss the future of transportation in Wisconsin. The lecture will be in the H. F. Deluca Forum. The lecture will be held by several local transportation officials including Madison Bikes Board Member Robbie Webber and City of Madison Traffic Engineer Yang Tao. This event is free to attend, but registration is requested. Learn more about this event on the Facebook Events page.

Wednesday, November 20,

The Transportation Commission is meeting at 5:00 PM in Room 215 of the Madison Municipal Building at 215 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. The Transportation Commission will be reviewing the Third Quarter Traffic Safety Report by Madison Police and the City Engineering’s 2020 Projects among other items. You can read the full agenda here.

At 6:45 PM Slow Roll Cycles at 4118 Monona Drive, near the intersection with Buckeye Road, will be hosting a Suspension 101 class. The class will cover basic suspension theory and basic set up and maintenance. You can read more about this class on their Facebook Events page.

Saturday, November 23,

Join Revolution Cycles and Trek at the Trek HQ in Waterloo at 9:00 AM for the 2019 Wisconsin State Cyclocross Championships! Learn more about the event on their Facebook Events page.

Sunday, November 24,

At 10:00 AM join Bombay Bicycle Club for the Bombay Freezaroo Ride. The ride is 26 miles round trip with a coffee stop at the half-way point in Cross Plains. The ride starts at Garner Park on Madison’s west side. The event has a Facebook Events page you can follow..

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city's Bike Madison page.

Just before it got really, really cold, the 9th edition of the Winter Bike Fashion Show took place on November 2. With record attendance of 125 people, we had a successful event. An edutainment event in the best sense, twelve people from the community who already bike in the winter, shared their knowledge and showed off their outfits to those who aren't yet riding in the winter. Our awesome photography crew -- Dan Stout and Mark Renner -- produced these great shots of the event. Still to come: video of the Q&A for those who couldn't make it.

Thanks to our models, event volunteers, Natalie Kuehn for designing the flyer, the High Noon Saloon for hosting us, Teddywedgers for feeding us pasties, and the local businesses who donated door prizes: Bloom Bake Shop, Cafe Domestique, The Cargo Bike Shop, EVP Coffee, Fitchburg Cycles, Planet Bike, Slow Roll Cycles, and Saris.

For lots more pictures, check out Dan's or Mark's full albums.

Brittingham Boats and Planet Bike let us borrow their bike racks. Subtle hint to the High Noon Saloon: You need more racks! (Photo: Dan Stout)

Gina, one of our great volunteers at the event (Photo: Dan Stout)

Our board member Baltazar introducing the MC. He had also led a group ride to the Show from Monona Terrace.

Our MC for the night, Luis LuckyVoy Martinez, and our board member Liz (Photo: Dan Stout)

Our first model, Eric, who works at Freewheel Community Bike Shop and will soon hold his own winter biking workshop there. When it's really cold, he resorts to wearing a motorcycle helmet (Photo: Dan Stout)

Terry is in her 60s and has been car-free for many years. She bikes year-round. (Photo: Dan Stout)

We were super excited to have Yang Tao as a model. When he's not on stage as a model, he's Madison City Traffic Engineer. He's been winter-biking in Madison for 16 years! (Photo: Dan Stout)

Our board member Elysha and her daughter Abby are veterans of the Winter Bike Fashion Show. Watch out for them when they ride around all winter in their family cargo bike or on their own single bikes.

Tim--uh, I mean "Yukon Cornelius" riding in on his sled! (Photo: Mark Renner)

Alder Grant Foster (District 15) and our board member Pete informing attendees about a city budget amendment that would expand snow and ice clearing from 5 to 7 days a week. (Photo: Dan Stout)

Our photo booth had great accessories: Snotcicles, ice beard, foggy glasses (Photo: Dan Stout)

Photo: Dan Stout

Beth and her winter commuter bike. She bikes from the east side to her job on the west side, and she "refuses to let weather determine my happiness" (Photo: Dan Stout)

Caleb's secret weapon for winter biking: Electric gloves! (Photo: Dan Stout)

One model, Nick, failed to wear his winter biking outfit! Or did he? No, in his velomobile he is protected from the elements and can get away with just wearing a sweater. (Photo: Dan Stout)

Winter biking can (but doesn't have to be) expensive. Carlton talks about how as a grad student on a limited budget he slowly accumulated and refined his gear over time.

Heather and her three kids (who were slightly distracted by the velomobile...)

When Andy isn't busy running his bike shop in Lake Mills or Free Bikes 4 Kidz Madison, he does recreational rides, no matter the season.

Michael has been doing the winter bike thing since the 1990s. Not only does he ride for transportation; he also has participated in exploits like the Triple-D, a 70-mile offroad bike race in Iowa in the depths of winter.

Q&A with the models. I believe the question was how to deal with snot...

Renowned local artists Jenn and Nicole had painted bike-themed winter scenes that helped us raise over $300 in the silent auction.

Let's end with some pics of the audience and more volunteers:

Happy Winter Biking!

The Common Council is going to finalize the city's operating and capital budgets this week, starting on Tuesday. That means it's time again to make your voice heard for biking, walking, and traffic safety. There are two items below that could use your voice.

1. Thanks in no small part to your response to our previous action alert, a budget amendment to clear our arterial shared use paths such as the Cap City and SW Path clear of ice and snow 7 days a week passed at the Finance Committee. However, now Alders Moreland (District 7) and Tierney (District 16) have proposed an amendment that would eliminate that funding (among other things such as funding for bus rapid transit positions and more staffing at Pinney Library). Please contact your district's Alder and the whole Common Council to oppose cutting the funding for path clearance.

2. In the capital budget, there is an amendment to allocate $350,000 to "advance the implementation of Vision Zero, which seeks to eliminate all severe injury and fatal crashes on City streets." Vision Zero is an approach to traffic safety that views every crash as preventable, that looks at the problem from a systemic perspective, and that acknowledges that humans will make errors, but builds a "forgiving" system that means those errors don't lead to people getting killed or injured. Many US cities such as Milwaukee, Chicago, and New York have adopted Vision Zero, and this funding would help us jumpstart Vision Zero in Madison as well.

How to contact your alder? The easiest way is to email to allalders@cityofmadison.com. This will distribute your email to all members of the Council. Alternatively you can use this contact form. If you don't know who your Alder is, you can find out here. We recommend sending your email to all Alders. Please also include your full name and your address so that Alders know you actually live in their district. Please send your email before noon on Tuesday, November 12.

The emails don't have to be long--the alders will thank your for being brief--but it helps to put them in your own words and say why this is important to you. Below is sample language, but we suggest you add a sentence or two of your own.

"I oppose the removal of funding from the operating budget for snow and ice control on arterial shared use paths adopted by Finance Committee amendment #21: $65,000, as proposed as part of operating budget amendment 1b."

"I support the capital budget amendment 19, which would allocate funding "to advance the implementation of Vision Zero, which seeks to eliminate all severe injury and fatal crashes on City streets."

Last Week

The Capital City Trail paving wrapped up but the bridge at Longford Terrace is still out. 

Winter Bike Fashion Show was a success! We are very thankful to everyone who helped make it happen, the volunteers, models, and everyone who came to watch. Check out the wonderful coverage we were given by Channel 3. 

This Week

Monday

Blair Street Public Information Meeting - Blair Street is scheduled for reconstruction from John Nolen Drive to East Washington in 2022. The City of Madison is working jointly with the State Department of Transportation on design and construction of the project. The project will include safety improvements at the Wilson Street/Williamson Street intersection as well as pavement replacement of Blair St from Wilson/Williamson to East Washington and E Washington from Blair Street to Blount Street. The public is invited a public information meeting scheduled for 6:30-8:30 p.m., Nov. 4, Madison Municipal Building Room 153, 215 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Madison. At this meeting, engineers and project managers will talk about the details and plans for the intersection and pavement replacement projects. A more specific timeline of work will also be shared. There will be an opportunity to ask the project managers and engineers questions about the project, and the public is encouraged to attend.

Wednesday

Yoga for Cyclists will be at Trek on the West side from 6 pm to 7 pm. If you can pedal, you can Padmasana. Join yoga instructor Hope Henley for an evening focused on cycling-specific stretches and mind/body wellness. There will be a $10 fee to join the class, and they’ll cap the class at 40 people, so be sure to sign up in advance. This class is BYOM, so bring your own mat. Namaste!

Madison Area Transportation Planning Board Meeting 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. There will be a discussion of Transportation Alternatives Program Priorities and Downtown BRT Routing Introduction . An overview of the options is available here. The whole agenda can be found here. 

Saturday

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city's Bike Madison page.

Our board member Pepe and two of our volunteer models for the Winter Bike Fashion made an appearance on local radio station WORT this morning. If you missed it, you can listen to the segment here (if the embedded player doesn't appear, try this link:

We hope to see you and your friends this Saturday at the High Noon Saloon! You can get a preview of some of our models on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadisonBikes/posts/

This past week

The county has been repaving the Cap City Trail from Seminole Highway to Fish Hatchery Rd, and one of the more dramatic changes will be smoothing out the S-curve just west of Fish Hatchery. The steep hill and S-curve at the bottom has caught more than one bicyclist off guard. There is a lot of tree loss, but the path should be safer for everyone. 

In case you missed our post on Saturday, we went through some of the frequently asked questions about the wheel tax. Check it out here.

Even though the Council will not formally take up the city budget until Nov 12, there are other meetings and decisions that precede the Council meeting(s). The Finance Committee met this past week to decide which alder amendments to the budget should be forwarded to the full council. There were three besides the wheel tax that we were watching. Funding for weekend maintenance of the paths during the winter passed. Additional funding for crosswalk painting also passed. However, funding to make improvements at several intersections with high crash rates did not get the OK from the Finance Committee.

The week ahead

Plenty of detours to keep track of. The Campus Dr Path east of the Vet School is supposed to close soon and stay closed until March, although it was still open as of Friday. A part of the SW Path northeast of Midvale is supposed to be closed starting Monday morning. Also, work on the Yahara River Path under Johnson is supposed to start on Oct 30. East Mifflin by Lapham school is closed, but should be open on Tuesday. There are more outside of downtown. 

The good news on campus is that the work near Limnology -- between the Lakeshore Path and Memorial Union is done! Less conflict with pedestrians now. 

The best way to keep up with what’s going on is to subscribe to the city’s Friday update from Bike Madison. 

Monday

Madison Bikes Community Meeting for all committees at 6:00 pm at Bendy Works, 106 E Doty St, 2nd floor. In case you haven’t noticed, we are no longer posting individual committee meetings. Instead, we are having a “community board meeting” on the fourth Monday of each month. Everyone is welcome, and this is where we will talk about what we need to do in the areas of advocacy, communications, events, and volunteer opportunities. If you want to be involved, but don’t know exactly what area you want to help, this is a great opportunity to find out where you can fit in. 

This Monday, we will probably be talking about all the things we need to do -- and for which we need help -- to out on the Winter Bike Fashion Show on Saturday, Nov 2. If you can help out on Saturday, we still need some volunteers, from demonstrating the bike racks on the bus parked outside to greeting people at the door. Email Liz if you can help out.  

Also on Monday is the monthly Bike Fitchburg meeting, 6:30-8:30 pm at the Fitchburg library, 5530 Lacy Rd, Fitchburg. 

Tuesday

The city council will hold a special meeting to discuss and vote on the above-mentioned wheel tax. The meeting will be early -- 4:30 pm in Room 201 of the City County Building -- to allow alders to also attend other committee meetings that evening. A reminder that your voice is important, and you can contact the entire council or just your alder to voice your opinion. Don’t know who your alder is or need contact information? Go to the Council webpage to find that information. You can also attend any council or committee meeting in person to speak or just to fill out a comment card (if you don’t want to stay.) Yes, they do pay attention to constituent comments!

If you are interested in what’s going on with BRT, you can hear about the options for the downtown portion of the routes. City staff are trying to decide whether the BRT should go around the Square, the outer loop, or some other route. The BRT public information session is 6:30-8:00 pm at the Madison Senior Center, 330 W Mifflin.  

Thursday

Although there aren’t any big issues of interest to bicyclists on the Transportation Commission agenda, it’s always a good idea to keep track of what is up with the overall transportation discussion. You can watch the meeting or check out the agenda here. Or attend in person: 5:00 pm in Room 215 of the Madison Municipal Bldg.

Saturday

As you must know by now, if you’ve been reading any of our communication, is the Winter Bike Fashion Show at the High Noon Saloon from 1:00-4:00 pm. It’s free, family-friendly, very fun, and very informative. 

Before the WBFS, you can also drop by the Mayor’s Neighborhood Roundtable at the Central Library from 9:00 am-Noon. This is a great place to find out what’s going on across the city, meet up with neighborhood organizers, and find out more about what resources are available to improve your part of the city.

Sunday

Bombay Bicycle Club Fall Meeting and Potluck at the Lussier Center at 5:00 pm. You must be a member of Bombay and RSVP to attend. More information can be found here.

2019 Battle of Waterloo cyclocross races at Waterloo Fireman's Park 9:00 am - 3:00 pm. Bring your bike and join in on the fun, or come out to cheer on the riders as they compete in the fast and furious sport known as cyclocross!  Food and beverage available for purchase - Cowbells encouraged!

There has been a lot of discussion, as well as confusion, about the “Wheel Tax” that the mayor has proposed as part of the upcoming budget. So we thought we’d try to answer some of the questions that have popped up as well as explain why we think that bicyclists should care about it. 

What is a wheel tax?

Simply put, it is a local registration fee for your car. Each year you have to renew the registration on your car with the state of Wisconsin, and this is just the same as that registration fee, except this additional fee goes to the city of Madison if your car is registered to an address in the city. You will pay it at the same time as you pay for state registration, and the state will send the money back to the city.

Why is the city doing this now?

The city has a deficit for the upcoming budget year. This means that we either have to reduce spending or raise more revenue.

The state legislature has made it very difficult for cities to raise additional funds for their budgets. There is a cap on how much they can raise property taxes each year. But Madison is growing, and many people would like to have a better transit system. This money will allow the city to both fund basic services (police, fire, parks, garbage pick-up, social services) as well as maintain or expand transit. 

Without additional revenue or cuts in other areas, current Metro service would need to be cut. This would mean less frequent buses, shorter service hours, or the elimination of whole routes. Part of the wheel tax revenue would also be used to provide more summer bus passes to youth or bus passes for people with low incomes. 

One big project the city wants to undertake is bus rapid transit (BRT), which has been discussed extensively for the last couple of years. BRT is a special type of transit that is faster than regular buses, but cheaper than rail. There’s a lot of details that we can’t cover here, but suffice it to say that transportation planners, elected officials, and other decision makers in the city have decided that this is the best way to improve transit in Madison. You may or may not agree, but if you want more information, go to http://www.madisonbrt.com/

Having a dedicated source of funding to support transit will also help the city get federal funding. We’ve applied for federal funding before, but haven’t gotten it. The federal government likes to see some assurance that a project will go through, and one way to show that is to have a pot of money. We have to compete with other communities that have dedicated funding for transit from a regional transit authority (RTA), a local sales tax, or other dedicated funding. 

So, I’ve heard that a wheel tax has to be used only for transportation. But I’ve also heard the mayor and others talk about how this new fee will be used for other city services. 

Yes, that is a bit confusing. By state law, local registration fees or wheel taxes can only be used for transportation costs. But right now, we are using property taxes to support transit, walking, biking, as well as driving operations and infrastructure -- everything from snow plowing to patching roads and paths, as well as actually running Metro, buying gas for the buses, and paying the drivers. So what we are really doing is moving some of those expenses off the property taxes and moving them to the wheel tax. But ultimately all the money ends up in the same pot, so now we have additional property taxes to pay for those non-transportation things. If we don’t pass the wheel tax, we are going to have to make cuts somewhere else. 

So for people that like transit, you can think of this as taxes car owners to pay for transit. If you think transit is not useful to you or the city shouldn’t be spending more money on it -- and there are plenty of people out there who feel that way -- it’s easier to swallow that the wheel tax will fund things they want to fund.

Isn’t a wheel tax regressive? If you have a junker car you pay the same as someone with a new luxury car. 

Yes, that is true. No matter your income or wealth, no matter what car you drive: If you have a car, you will pay the same fee. But we don’t have many choices, given the constraints that the state has put on cities. We can’t use many of the tools that are used in other states, like local gas taxes, an RTA, local sales taxes, or other revenue sources (many of which are regressive as well). This is pretty much all we have. And low-income residents are less likely to have a car or multiple cars in their family than those with more money. And low-income residents are also more likely to be dependent on transit. Improvements to transit will benefit low-income residents (and cuts in Metro service would hit them especially hard). The city is also planning on using some of the revenue to provide support to low-income residents to offset the cost of the fee. We are prohibited by state law from refunding the fee or prorating it by income.  

I ride my bike almost everywhere. Why should I care about transit?

Madison needs to move away from depending on cars and get more people using other modes. Fewer cars on the road both directly benefits bicyclists by making the roads safer and more pleasant, and it will free up space for better bike infrastructure, bike parking corrals, and other things we want. But that is only going to happen if we give people alternatives to driving their private cars. Transit is a key piece of that.

And a lot of people who bike also use transit, when they don’t want to ride because of weather, illness, carrying a bunch of stuff, traveling with people who don’t bike, or even just because they are tired. Transit allows us to throw our bike on the bus if we have a flat tire or the weather turns nasty. Transit lets less committed bicyclists or new bike commuters know that they have a back up. It allows more people to bike because they know they won’t be stuck if something happens. Bicyclists should all be out there pushing for more and better transit, because it just makes it easier to bike, even if you never use it. 

Madison Bikes had a great time at the Science Fair on the Square last Friday.

First things first: If you missed our action alert yesterday: There still a little bit of time to send an email to the City's finance committee and support a budget amendment that would expand winter path maintenance. Find all the details in yesterday's post.

Some construction updates (for a complete list of updates go to the Bike Madison newsletter linked at the bottom of the post):

• Many of you have been wondering when the traffic signals at the new Willy/Blount diagonal crossing would be turned out. Well, there's been small progress, and at this point the lights are flashing. According to the Bike Madison newsletter, they should be fully functional by the end of this week.
• Starting next week, there will be a detour on the SW Path. Reconstruction of a culvert will close the path east of Midvale until the end of the year. The detour will be via a temporary protected bike lane on Midvale, Yuma, and Council Crest.

On Monday and Wednesday, there will be Open Houses about the proposed Wisconsin River Recreation Bridge in Sauk City. The Monday one is from 6:30 - 8:30pm at Wisconsin Heights High School in Mazomanie. The Wednesday meeting is also from 6:30 - 8:30pm at River Arts Center (Sauk Prairie School District), 105 9th St., Prairie Du Sac. More info on the project on Facebook.

On Wednesday, it's your last change to attend the Cyclocross Practice series organized by Madison Parks, Capitol Off Road Pathfinders, L5 and Neff Cycling. Starts at 5pm in Marshall Park.

This Friday is the last Friday of the month, which around the world is the day for Critical Mass. After a successful Critical Mass as part of the Climate Strike, there has been interest in making it a regular event. Meets at 6pm at the beer garden in Olbrich Park.

On Saturday, there's another cyclocross race. Come to Angell Park in Sun Prairie for this year's CrossFire race. Includes costumes, a kid's race, and free entries for first-time cyclocross racers.

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city's Bike Madison page.

It’s city budget season in Madison, and we want to alert you of a budget amendment that would greatly improve winter maintenance on our major shared use paths.

What’s the current situation? On primary paths, such as the Cap City or the Southwest Path, snow will usually be cleared by 7am from Monday on Friday. Smaller paths and trails will be cleared by 4:30pm, also only Monday to Friday. On the weekend and on holidays, snow and ice clearing depend on staff availability, which often means no clearing happens.

Why is this a problem? Those of us walk, roll, and bike on the paths during the winter know all too well what the consequence of not clearing the path 7 days a week can be. The immediate impact is that if you have to rely on paths on the weekend to get to work, run errands, or reach your nearest Metro stop, you’re often out of luck. What’s worse: Not clearing the snow for more than 48 hours (or 72 hours if it’s a long holiday weekend) means that snow will be compacted, rutted, or have turned into ice by the time the plows and sweepers come around. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of the clearing operations and can have negative impacts for many days or even weeks to come. If we want bicycles to be a viable transportation option in Madison, we can't focus only on weekday 9-5 commuters.

What is proposed? The amendment to the city’s operating budget, sponsored by Alder Kemble and co-sponsored by Alder Foster, would allocate additional funding for snow clearing. This would allow Engineering and Parks staff to increase service on weekends and holidays so that clearing on arterial paths can occur within 12 hours after a winter event, weekday, weekend and holiday alike.

What you can do? If you think clearing the path 7 days a week is a good idea, consider sending an email to the Finance Committee, supporting budget amendment 4 (“Snow & Ice Control on Arterial Shared Use Paths”). The Committee meets tomorrow (Monday, 10/21), and so submit your comments ASAP. To help members of the committee understand the importance of keeping the paths clear and accessible 7 days a week, it can be helpful to share your own experience, whether you’re walking or riding on the paths in winter. Do you rely on biking and walking as your primary means of transportation? Have you had a crash because of  snow and ice on our paths? Is it difficult for you to get to your job because have to work on weekends? Are there specific problem spots that you regularly encounter on the primary and secondary paths? After all, if you own a home in Madison, you are expected to keep your sidewalks clear of snow and ice all week. It’s hard to argue that different rules should apply to the City.

Who to send your email to? Below are the members of the Finance Committee. It’s also a good idea to include your district’s alder, as ultimately the whole Common Council will vote on the budget. You can find out who your alder is here.

district1@cityofmadison.com,

district7@cityofmadison.com,

district19@cityofmadison.com,

district4@cityofmadison.com,

district18@cityofmadison.com,

mayor@cityofmadison.com,

district5@cityofmadison.com

We had some warm weather for the first part of the week, but as of Friday colder weather has moved into the area. Winter is coming. If you didn’t know, Madison Bikes hosts an annual Winter Bike Fashion Show to show people just how easy it is to keep biking throughout the winter! This year’s Winter Bike Fashion Show will be hosted at the High Noon Saloon on Saturday November 2nd from 1 to 4 PM! More info here.

If you want to join the Madison Bikes Board of Directors, you have until October 20 to throw your cycling cap into the ring. More info in last week's blog post.

This Week

Wednesday, October 16

At 5:00 PM the Transportation Commission (TC) will meet in Room 215 of the Madison Municipal Building at 215 Martin Luther King Boulevard. One agenda item is on a toolkit for traffic safety. Hopefully that toolkit includes all options to improve the safety of all non-motorists, including pedestrians and bicyclists. Read the full agenda here.

From 5:30 PM to 6:45 PM at Badger Prairie County Park there is a free Cyclocross Practice opportunity. Badger Prairie County Park is located at 4654 Maple Grove Drive in Verona. The free cyclocross practice is sponsored by the Capital Off-Road Pathfinders, L5, Neff Cycling, and Madison Parks.

At 6:00 PM, there will be a Basic Brakes Class at the University Bicycle Resource Center in the Helen C. White Garage (Lot 6) across from the Memorial Union. Bring your bike and learn from India Viola how to identify and use your barrel adjusters and how to clean braking surfaces! Free Planet Bike Blinky lights to the first five (5) attendees! No registration is required and anyone is free to join! Classes are first come, first serve, limit twenty (20) people.

Saturday, October 19

If you head out to Trek's headquarters in Waterloo, you can put your cyclocross skills to the test. "GPJO 2019: a cyclocross celebration" will host races all day starting at 9 am. More info here, or you can go straight to the registration here.

If you're more interested in road biking, join the Trek Store West for the El Diablo Gran Fondo, a supported 92 miles to Devil's Lake and back. It seems like registration is free. More info here; starts with a breakfast at 7:30 am; departs 8:30 am.

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city's Bike Madison page.