Now that we’ve had our first real snowfall — with more to come — I hope that everyone has figured out or remembered how to bike in the winter.
The city Bike Madison page (as opposed to this Madison Bikes page…. confusing…) had a nice set of suggestions about biking in winter. It’s really great to have supportive partners at the city, even if we sometimes want them to do more or go faster. We also had a nice call out from the City Traffic and Parking Facebook account that linked back to Harald’s end-of-year roundup. And they even suggested that people subscribe or follow us to keep up to date.
By the way, subscribing to the city Bike Madison page helps you stay up to date about construction, detours, and other official information. That’s why we try to put a link at the bottom of our update each week.
Unfortunately, we also saw two examples of “bike lash” in the paper this past week. First was an article in the Cap Times about the loss of urban trees, but also took aim at both the new wider sidewalk along Mineral Point Rd and the proposed multiuse path through the Sauk Creek Greenway. Then later in the week, a letter to the editor claimed that bicyclists don’t pay for the new infrastructure we are seeing. (This is untrue in multiple ways, but it’s a common misconception.)
This week
Things are still pretty quiet this week, with no big public meetings and not a lot of rides scheduled. Madison Bikes has been planning some exciting topics for our community meetings in the coming months, but those will be featured in future updates. There are a few items of interest coming up this week.
Wednesday
At 5:30 pm, Board of Public Works will be discussing two projects of interest to bicyclists, although there doesn’t seem to be much controversy around the projects, so no need to testify. (Unless you want to.) Agenda and Zoom link here.
The reconstruction of E Wilson St and E Doty St will add a two-way cycle track to E Wilson and new buffered bike lanes to E Doty St. This will complete the two-way bike facility on Wilson that Madison Bikes pushed for as one of its first projects.
The final piece of the Lake Mendota Dr project will be also before the board, but the plans were already approved last year. This stretch from Spring Harbor Dr to Epworth Ct will add sidewalks, some bumpouts, space for a rain garden, and a traffic circle.
The monthly Queer Bike Ride meets the second Wednesday of the month at 6:00 pm. You can follow on Instagram for more details. All bodies are welcome.
Thursday
Freecycle will hold another Zoom meeting about what may be in their future. It looks like they’ll be doing this monthly after they started the conversation before the holidays. If you would like to join the conversation at 6:00 pm, you can get more information and sign up here.
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.