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Bike News

Madison Bikes Calendar Highlights (4/24/17)

Editorial note: This edition of the Calendar Highlights is brought to you by Harald. Your usual host Grant will return next week.

Last week

What diverter can look like: People walking and biking can pass; people driving cannot. Image: LADOT Bike Blog.

The Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association met last week to discuss the future of the East Mifflin bike boulevard. Many in the community perceive this important corridor to be a bike boulevard in-name-only, with no measures to divert or slow down motor vehicle traffic, for instance by installing diverters that allow local traffic while keeping out through-traffic. As discussed in this Facebook thread, the meeting also raised larger questions about how our transportation network is being planned and decided on.

Rendering of an improved sidewalk/cycle track in front of Machinery Row Bicycles

On the same night there was an open house about the John Nolen Drive/Blair Street Corridor. While we are still far away from any final decision let alone actual construction, things have moved forward since the previous meeting. For instance, an overpass connecting Law Park to Wilson Street for people walking and biking now is a real option, with the Common Council taking on a resolution that would establish an easement on the Wilson Street side for that connection. For the intersection of John Nolen/Blair/Williamson many of the initially proposed solutions, such as a tunnel, are off the table at this point. You can find more details in the State Journal, the City’s page for the project, or this discussion on Facebook.

The Common Council met on Tuesday. We had initially expected for this to be the meeting where a decision about the West Wilson Street reconstruction would be made. Thanks to those who responded to our action alert and wrote to the Board of Public Works and their Alders to ask for better accommodation for people on bikes, the process has slowed down and no final decision has been made yet. Stay tuned for a more detailed update on the status of the project.

This week

On Monday, the Madison Bikes Events Committee meets at 7pm at Cafe Domestique. Everybody is welcome to attend! Earlier tonight, our friends from Bike Fitchburg have their monthly meeting at the Fitchburg Public Library.

The Pedestrian/Bicycle/Motor Vehicle Commission will meet on Tuesday, in a joint meeting with the Long Range Transportation Planning Committee. On the agenda are a pilot project for the West Wilson Street reconstruction, the ongoing process of reorganizating Madison’s city agencies around transportation planning, a new ordinance that will legalize “sandwich boards” on sidewalks, and the new policy around moped parking downtown. In addition, a draft of the latest “Transportation Improvement Plan” will be discussed. This is one of the main documents that outlines funded transportation projects in the near future. You can find the full agenda and related documents here.

On Wednesday, the Madison Bike Advocacy Committee meets to talk about Wilson Street and a project to map and measure the connectivity of Madison’s “low-stress bike network.” If you’d like to attend, email Harald.

For details on any of these events, head to the Madison Bikes calendar. If you have an event that youā€™d like added, send the details to info@madisonbikes.org.

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Bike News

Five-minute action alert: Wilson Street

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Do you have five minutes to spare and want to improve the situation for people walking and biking on West Wilson Street? Here’s how:

The Board of Public Works will discuss the design proposed by City Engineering in their meeting on Wednesday. If you haven’t been following the project, you can catch up on a lot of background here, here, and here. Writing a quick email in opposition to putting people on bike bike onto the sidewalk and in favor of real bike accommodations on the street is going to be important. I know several of you already sent emails when the item was on the agenda for the Pedestrian/Bicycle/Motor Vehicle Commission last week, and you can just re-use that email. One new development is that doing a pilot study, where one side of on-street parking will be removed for a while is now on the table. If done well, we think that this is a good option, and we encourage you to mention the pilot.

Email addresses for the Board of Public Works members:

claudia.haack@yahoo.com; btrades@sbcglobal.net; pdahl@fpm.wisc.edu; jaclyn.lawton@charter.net; jclausius@charter.net; debkenjohnson@charter.net; district12@cityofmadison.com; district9@cityofmadison.com; szwalling@charter.net

I recommend also included these folks in the cc line, as well as your district’s alder:

MHacker@cityofmadison.com; RPhillips@cityofmadison.com; CPetykowski@cityofmadison.com; YTao@cityofmadison.com; district4@cityofmadison.com

Here’s what I’m going to write; you’re welcome to reuse the text:

Dear Members of the Board of Public Works, dear Alders:

Regarding the planned reconstruction of West Wilson street, please move forward with a street design that takes into account the needs of people biking and walking on this important connection to downtown, both going west to east, and east to west. I strongly oppose an option that mixes people walking and cycling on the sidewalk, as that is neither safe nor convenient for anyone. I support doing a well-designed and evaluated pilot project that would close one of the on-street parking lanes to put in a protected one-way or two-way bike lane.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thanks for helping out! The final decision on this will be made at City Council. We’ll send out another update before that.

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Bike News

Wilson Street: Update and next steps

Last week a public input took place to discuss the reconstruction of West Wilson Street. Robbie’s previous post has more background about what is planned and why this is an important project for bike advocates. Here is a quick update on how the meeting went, what the next steps in the decision making process are, and how you can speak out in favor of a Wilson Street that works for people biking and walking.

To recap, the public input meeting was the second one about the project. But the first meeting had been only announced to immediate neighbors. This second meeting was scheduled at the request of the Pedestrian/Bicycle/Vehicle Commission, after they were presented with only one option for the project from Engineering, an 8′ widened sidewalk on the south side of the street that was supposed to mix travel on foot and bike. The Commission asked Engineering to develop additional concepts that would provide better accommodations for people travelling by bike and to present them at a new, publicly-noticed meeting for input.

The meeting was well attended, and I spotted many Madison Bikes stickers, t-shirts, or other other accessories that identified attendants as supporters of safe and convenient bike facilities. Alder Verveer also attended. A video recording of the whole meeting is available on Facebook. Engineering proposed three different designs:

  1. Keep all general travel lanes and both parking lanes. Narrow the terrace (the space between sidewalk and curb) to install a contra-flow bike lane (a bike lane going the opposite direction of the one-way traffic in the general travel lanes) right next to the sidewalk.
  2. Keep all general travel lanes and the current terraces. Convert one parking lane into a contra-flow bike lane, separated from oncoming traffic with a painted buffer but without physical protection.
  3. Keep travel lanes, parking, terraces. Widen the sidewalk on the south side to 8 ft. This was the recommendation of Engineering.

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

Two of the proposed options. Apologies for the image quality — the slides from the meeting haven’t been made available yet by the city

An option for a two-way protected bike lane was not even on the table. A lively but civil discussion ensued about the impacts of each of the proposed solutions, such as on street trees, for people with reduced mobility, and of course for those who currently bike on Wilson or would do so if there were safe and convenient options available. One issue raised both by bike advocates and local residents was that putting people on bike and people walking together on the sidewalk seemed like a really bad idea. Residents pointed out that even just walking on the sidewalk right now at times felt dangerous, especially for those with impaired mobility. Adding more bikes to that mix was a no-go for many, widened sidewalk or not. If you want to see what riding on the sidewalk looks like right now, watch this video:

Another issue pointed out by bike advocates was the lack of bike accommodations for people going east to west in all of the proposed plans. Currently–and in the foreseeable future, if the proposed design goes forward–people biking have to ride in the general travel lane, next to parked cars. And at the bottom of the hill, at the intersection with Henry and Hamilton, people on bikes find themselves in a right-turn-only lane or have to merge to the left lane at high speed.

The point at which the meeting started to unravel was when the question of next steps came up. One would think that the point of a public input meeting would be to gather input and then use that input to modify your plans. That didn’t seem to be the case: City engineers were planning to just go forward with the same design that they came to the meeting with, the widened sidewalk option. City engineers rightly pointed out that there was no consensus in the audience that clearly favored one design over the other. But it was just as clear that a large majority of the audience (and not just people who regularly bike) did not like the idea of mixing people walking, biking, or using mobility devices on the sidewalk. I was probably not the only one leaving the meeting disheartened by what appeared to be a flawed process.

What are the next steps? What can you do?

The proposed design is going to be on the agenda of the Ped/Bicycle/Motor Vehicle Commission this coming Tuesday. I encourage you to submit a brief public comment to the commission members, Alder Verveer, and your own alder. It can be as easy as pasting these recipients (plus your Alder’s email address) into an email and writing something like:

aaron.crandall@yahoo.com,
eclewandow@aol.com,
grantxyz@gmail.com,
district2@cityofmadison.com,
mail.markbennett@gmail.com,
hiwayman@chorus.net,
district9@cityofmadison.com,
district18@cityofmadison.com,
sa_lehner@hotmail.com,
kolarsmmj@gmail.com,
devos@ssc.wisc.edu,
district4@cityofmadison.com

Dear Members of the Pedestrian, Bicycle, and Motor Vehicle Commission, dear Alders:

Regarding the planned reconstruction of West Wilson street, please move forward with a street design that takes into account the needs of people biking and walking, both going west to east, and east to west. I oppose an option that mixes people walking and cycling on the sidewalk, as that is neither safe nor convenient for anyone.

Thank you for your consideration.

After that, the proposed design will go to the Common Council, which is the ultimate decision making body. We’ll keep you updated on when that’s going to happen and what the most effective way to advocate is going to be for that.

Categories
Bike News

#MBWinterChallenge 2017 Recap: Stories, Photos, Winners

When we planned Winter Bike Week, Elly and Eleanor, two members of our Events Committee, suggested having a winter biking challenge. But it would be a challenge with a twist, focused not on cranking out as many miles as possible or having to ride every day. This challenge was more about getting out and about, exploring your snowy city by bike on days when otherwise you maybe wouldn’t have done so.

Before we announce the winner, show some of our favorite pictures, and tell you how you can get your finisher badge, let’s hear from two participants of the challenge, Elly and Kevin:

Elly’s take

Most days I’m not conscious of the decision to swing my leg over the frame to get from Point A to Point B. The winter bike challenge – a photo scavenger hunt on bike – made my routines feel less, well, like routines. I didn’t wait for an intersection to look to my left and right, and the possibility of finding something on the list of photo categories was exciting in a simple I’m-a-kid-and-just-found-an-amazing-puddle-to-jump-in sort of way. I slowed down. I stopped more often. And I noticed signs, murals, people, and bridges that I had either completely missed before or didn’t give more than a two-second glance. I started to take different routes in search of artwork and paths found in pictures shared by other Madison bike challenge participants. For me, the true bear of winter isn’t so much the cold temperatures, it’s the danger of how easy it is to get lost in a routine. The winter bike challenge cracked open the predictability of my commute, and lifted intentionality back into my ride. Plus, I get a cool new and elusive finisher badge!

Kevin’s perspective

Look, I hate to admit it, but I am ā€¦ a fair weather biker. I see others out there, taking on the beard-icing temps, curse-worthy wind, and more curse-worthy treacherous surfaces. I have no problem running through the relentless Wisconsin winter, but, until recently, my tenacity whilst in running shoes did not transfer to my pedals. It only took two or three bike trips to realize what my problem was. Logistics. Or, more accurately, perceived logistics. I donā€™t have the right clothes. I canā€™t possibly carry all of my stuff. I canā€™t show up to work looking like a crazy person. Iā€™ve got too many groceries to get. It looks pretty slick out there, I donā€™t want to get hurt. I donā€™t think itā€™s good for my bike. It took the winter bike challenge (and my lovely, yet persistent) wife Elly for me to call BS on myself. I do have the right clothes – it just takes a few moments to layer right. I can carry all my stuff if I take two minutes to figure out what I actually need to take. I teach middle school, so everyone knows Iā€™m already a crazy person. If I only get whatā€™s on my list, Iā€™ve got plenty of room in my panniers and my backpack to fit the weekā€™s groceries. Itā€™s never as bad as it looks outside if you actually get close enough to see the conditions. Itā€™s as good for my bike to be out and about as it is for me. Yes, it took the bike challenge to get my butt in the saddle – but simply being out on the bike in the winter for a week was my gateway activity to bike-commuting my errands and discovering the joy of defying societyā€™s expectations. Oh, it feels so good.

So without further ado, here are some of our favorite pictures:

1. “Friends with Frosty” by Kevin Leigeb

Whatever the weather, itā€™s always better biking with friends! Kevin was also the overall winner of the challenge, with a whopping 29 submissions! Awesome job, Kevin!

2. “Out of this World” by Healthy Kids Collaborative

Despite the chilly temperatures, Healthy Kids Collaborative made it all the way out to Jupiter on the Southwest Path. Maybe appropriate, given that the average temperature on Jupiter is a frigid -234 degrees Fahrenheitā€¦

3. “Round and round” by Grant Foster

Madison Bikes prez Grant chose a beautiful winter day to head out to the Fitchburg bike path crossing. So many winter paths, so little time.

4. “Queen of the Mountain” by Eleanor Conrad

Making a mountain out of a snow hill.

5. “Forward Wisconsin” by Ben Sandee

Sometimes the snow can disguise the Capitol dome, but Ben found it all the same!

Feel free to link to your personal favorite in the comments, or explore more of the submissions on Instagram.

How to get your finisher badge

If you’ve participated in the challenge and think you’ve earned a finisher badge (bike scout honor system!), please send an email to winterbike@madisonbikes.org with your name and mailing address. We will mail you the badge once it is ready (please be patient; it’ll take a bit to produce them).

And rest assured: The challenge is going to return!

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Bike News

Best of 2016 Blog Posts

Year One for Madison Bikes is coming to a close (don’t forget about our fundraising drive!). Here is our top ten of blog posts from 2016, in chronological order.

1. Madison Bikes Launches

Our organization officially launched during Bike Week in May! This was a big moment for us.

2. Biking with Out-of-Towners

We met Elysha at a Cap Times talk on biking in Madison. She told us how she loved her family’s car-light life in Madison and how she spread that love when they had friends visiting from out of town.

See the rest of the list after the break.

3. Ride the Drive

Ride the Drive is a highlight on Madison’s bike calendar. See the many pictures of happy people on bike that we took during the event.

4. Bike commuting in Madison: More stagnation

A less happy post: According to the annual Census numbers, the stagnation in bike commuting in Madison continues.

5. Little Victories: Improving Bike Parking, Two Racks at a Time

There are many ways in which citizens can make a difference and improve biking conditions in Madison. This posts showcases one such way.

6. Biking in Middleton – Turning Something Bad Into Something Good

Here’s another example of one person organizing the community and making a difference for people riding bikes in Middleton.

7. Urban Bike Adventures with Kids

Our board member Emily takes her family on urban (and sometimes rural) bike adventures year round. Read her tips and suggestions.

8. Winter Bike Photo Submissions

Leading up to the Winter Bike Fashion Show, we asked you to submit your favorite winter biking pictures. See some of the highlights in this post.

9. How to dress for winter

Jacob shares his tips for how to stay comfortable riding your bike during the cold season.

10. Winter Bike Fashion Show

The Fashion Show itself was a great success! Between Rob’s photos and Emily’s write-up, this blog post does a terrific job of documenting the event.

Special Category: Grant’s Calendar Round-ups

PBMVC, LRTPC, Open House, Master Plan, ā€¦. Keeping track of what’s going on with bike advocacy in any given week is hard. But thanks to Grant’s tireless efforts, every Monday since August we have published a concise digest of important events. The Calendar Review is on winter break but will return to the blog in January.

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Bike News

Badger Herald reporting on Madison Bikes

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Yesterdays’s Badger Herald, the UW-Madison student daily, had a niece piece about Madison Bikes, as well as about Madison in Motion and the UW campus master plan. Here are some snippets:

[Grant Foster] said the group was created for people who bike around Madison and noticed opportunities for improvement in the city’s bike infrastructure. Many of those people felt like there was not a good way to organize and work towards fixing the problems that they saw.

“We decided to come together and create a space for that to happen,” Foster said. “Our vision is for a city where anyone can ride to and from any place in the city comfortably.”

Madison Bikes hopes to build out a network in Madison that will make cyclists feel more comfortable riding bicycles on the same roads as cars, Foster said. Many people are interesting in riding, but nervous to intermingling with cars.

“We don’t really envision Madison Bikes being the one that brings change on its own, more so a catalyst,” Foster said. “It really takes individual citizens to speak up, to share their input at city meetings.”

Read the whole article, or check out previous press coverage of Madison Bikes.

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Bike News

Bike commuting in Madison 2015: More stagnation

September is the time of the year when the US Census publishes data from the American Community Survey, one of the few large-scale data sources that can tell us something about long-term trends in biking in the US. How is Madison doing? We had a first look at the data.

So what are the numbers for bike commuting in Madison? They’re pretty much exactly the same as in the previous year. Whereas between 2013 and 2014 there was a minor increase in bike commuting from 4.8 to 5.3% (well within the margins of error of the data), in 2015 it is still 5.3% of people who report that biking was their main means of getting to work. So for the seventh year in a row bike commuting in Madison has stagnated.

In some ways this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Nationwide bike commuting has also stagnated for several years. So at a time when spending on road expansions continues while gas price hover barely above $2 per gallon, maybe we should be happy that commuting by bike hasn’t decreased. Some advocates in other cities have taken this position. For us at Madison Bikes that’s not an acceptable stance to take. The Bicycle Transportation Plan for the Madison metro area has an increase in the number of people cycling as one of its stated goal, and the city takes great pride in having received “Platinum” status as a bicycle-friendly community. Stagnating bike commuting rates for multiple years in a row therefore should be cause for alarm: What has been done and is being done to improve biking either isn’t working or isn’t enough.

Getting to a mode share of five percent is relatively easy, especially in a college town. Research originally done in Portland divides the population into four categories: “Strong and fearless” riders are those who will ride under almost any circumstances. This is a very small segment of the population. A slightly larger percentage can be characterized as “enthused and confident,” people who are willing to ride on unprotected on-street bike lanes, in mixed traffic on side streets with few cars, or Madison’s disjointed network of off-street bike paths. Taken together, these two groups make up about five to eight percent of the population. To get a bike mode share that goes beyond that, we need to tap in the group of “interested but concerned”–people who may ride a bike for recreation on a trail or during Ride the Drive, or someone who currently is not biking at all but is in principle interested.

To tap into this group real investments in infrastructure, along with incentives to active transportation and disincentives to driving need to happen. In Madison we do not see those major steps. Changes to biking infrastructure are incremental and piecemeal. Green paint on an intersection here, a widened but still unprotected bike lane there. But no protected bike lanes, no rebuild of horrible intersections such as the one at Machinery Row, and major street reconstruction projects, such as the one on Monroe Street, still prioritize on-street parking and car traffic throughput over safer and more convenient bike and pedestrian infrastructure. At the same time, driving and parking continue to be cheap and convenient. Let’s work together to make this change!

Stay tuned for a more in-depth look at the data. And please stop by our Kickoff Party this Monday and tell us what you think needs to happen to make cycling grow again in Madison.

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Bike News

Little Victories: Improving Bike Parking, Two Racks at a Time

Good bike parking is an important but often overlooked component of bike infrastructure, despite its relatively low cost. By and large, the situation in Madison isn’t too bad. The zoning code requires a modest number of bike parking spots to be installed in new developments, and many developers and businesses have come to acknowledge the benefits of providing bike parking.

But sometimes a little citizen activism is needed.

In the summer of 2015, 5th Element Coffee, a high-end coffee shop, opened in the mixed-use building at the corner of University and Highland. I’m a bit of a coffee geek, and so I was excited to bike over there and check out their offerings. The coffee did not disappoint, but the bike parking did: There were no racks in front of the shop, nor even in the general vicinity. One other biking customer had dealt with that by locking to a young tree, and I locked up to a traffic sign nearby. When I mentioned the lack of bike racks to one of the baristas, he acknowledged the problem. To move things forward, a couple days later I emailed the shop:

Hi,
I love your shop and I love your coffee – and now it’s even better with the outdoor seating. What is missing, though, is a place for your customers to park their bikes. Just today I noticed three cyclists having to use traffic signs, streetlamps, and even a tree to lock up. You may already know this, but you can send a request to the city to install bike parking in front of your business, at no cost to you: https://www.cityofmadison.com/bikeMadison/programs/bikeParking.cfm
Thanks for looking into this!

A response followed quickly, and it was very positive:

Thank you so much for your business, but also for your concern and suggestion. I’ve taken your advice and submitted the request on the link you provided. I’ve also spoken with our City Alder, and she’s supportive of the idea.

We’ll do our best to get bike parking asap. In the meantime, thanks again for being our guest. If there’s ever anything I can do to make your visits more enjoyable, please let me know.

So far, so good. However, for the next ten months nothing more happened. I would get my coffee fix elsewhere, where bike parking was easier, and I was too busy with other things to follow up with the shop or the city. A couple weeks ago, though, I bike past 5th Element and spotted newly installed racks on the sidewalk! And not only were there racks in front of 5th Element, but also right next to the entrance of Oliver’s Public House, located in the same building.

One can argue that eight bike parking spots busy a coffee shop and pub is not a whole lot, and waiting almost a year for those to be installed is a long time. But hey, little victories still are victories. Have you successfully convinced a business to install bike parking? Do you know of locations that desperately need more bike parking? Share your stories in the comments.

Image: Current bike parking situation. Green are the newly installed racks. The rack in the back of Lombardino’s is wall-mounted and not very useful. Map: OpenStreetMap contributors, Harald Kliems

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Bike News

Ride the Drive 2016: Our Favorite Moments

Ride the Drive is my favorite Madison bike event. For a few hours each year, what is usually a busy thoroughfare full of cars gets transformed into a quiet, peaceful space full of smiling people. Media reports and roadside signs before the event reported that “John Nolen Drive is closed to traffic,” but what those signs should have said is “John Nolen Drive is opened up to people.” This year I was unable to ride the drive myself because of a broken wrist. Instead I took pictures of happy people on bikes, unicycles, inline skates, … Enjoy and let us know what your favorite Ride the Drive moment was!

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Bike News

Madison Bikes Needs You: Volunteer with Us!

Michael, one of our directors, volunteering during Bike Week

Madison Bikes is a young organization, and we’re run almost entirely by the volunteers on our board of directors. To become a sustainable and effective organization that can achieveĀ our vision, we need your help. A bike advocacy organization requires many skills and people who are willing to contribute those skills and their time. If you would like to volunteer with us (or have questions about volunteering), please go to ourĀ volunteer sign-up form. We really appreciate your help, no matter whether it’s helping out for a single event or signing on as a longterm volunteer. We look forward to hearing back from you and already say thanks for your contribution. Please share this post with others who may be interested in working with Madison Bikes.