Author: Robbie Webber

The Madison Bike Week 2024 webpage is up! Events are starting to come in, and soon the calendar will start filling in as groups, businesses, neighborhood associations, non-profits, and individuals start submitting their plans. Do you want to host an event? The form to let us know what you’d like to do is on that page as well. There are some pre-approved locations from the city in public parks and rights of way (streets), but you can also add events on private property or get city permission for additional locations. Let us know if you have questions.

Updates from the past week

The nasty, cold weather cleared away for a great Bike Wash and Safety Check on Sunday, thanks to board member Pete Taglia. We saw familiar faces – and many new ones too – and got a chance to wash off the road grime or salt, check to be sure our bikes are ready for warm weather riding, and talk about Madison Bikes and our plans for the coming months. We had a some people drop in because they saw chalked announcements on the Brittingham Path and signs near the closed street. Thanks to Freecycle for helping us out. WMTV channel 15 had a nice piece on the evening news.

Coming up this week

North-South BRT public meetings starting Monday. Just a reminder from last week’s newsletter that the city is hosting a barrage of public meetings about the proposed North-South BRT Line. On Monday April 22, you can go virtual, on Tuesday it’s at the Urban League on S Park (South Side), on Thursday it’s at the Warner Park Community Center (North Side) and on Monday April 29 it’ll be in Fitchburg.

On South Park St, there will probably be some changes that affect bicycle infrastructure – some good, some not so great. There will be fewer changes on the north side, but there might be opportunities to improve connection. 

Wednesday

The Transportation Commission agenda has several items that may be of interest. You can watch and/or comment on any agenda item at 5:00 pm online

The Safe Streets Madison project list contains relatively small projects that are meant to make streets, paths, crossings, and other infrastructure safer for all users: pavement markings, flashing beacons, small sidewalk and path connections, and signal changes. Safe Streets Madison replaced the previous neighborhood traffic calming program. For this year, Traffic Engineering is proposing 29 projects for a total cost estimate of $1,108,000. 

The Traffic Signal Priority list reports on locations where changes were considered to lights and stop signs. If you have a [least] favorite location for crossing, you may be interested to see why things are or are not changing. 

Thursday

The Joint Campus Area Committee – a committee that coordinates projects between the UW, the city, and adjacent neighborhoods – will be discussing a possible bypass of the Limnology Building.

If you are one of the 15,000 pedestrians or bicyclists that uses the UW Lakeshore Path every day, you know how frustrating it can be to negotiate the tight quarters at the eastern end of the path where we have to pass between the Limnology Building and Bascom Hill. It is narrow, people are entering and exiting the building, sightlines are very bad, and sometimes equipment and vehicles are stored close to the path, making it even narrower. No one is happy with the situation, but a new project will make it much more comfortable. You can see the slides to be presented at the meeting, but the short version is that the entire area south of the building will be widened by cutting into the hillside and building a retaining wall. This will create a better/safer entrance to the building, a dedicated delivery area, and a wider path for bicyclists. Pedestrians will still use a path on the north side of the building. This one is in person at 4:45 pm in room 132 in the WARF building on campus

Saturday

Blackhawk Trail Spring Work Day. If you use this mtb trail, or would like to meet others, come out and help get the trail into shape. Meet at the east chalet on 10118 Blackhawk Road, Middleton at 9:00 am for instructions and to enter your name in the raffle.

Celebrate Trails Day! with Bike Fitchburg 10 am-1 pm at the Velo UnderRound (where the Military Ridge, Cannonball, and Cap City Trails all meet.) Enjoy non-alcoholic drinks from national sponsor Athletic Brewing and snacks, pick up bike maps, and learn how we advocate for biking and walking that’s safer, easier, more fun, and more equitable in Fitchburg.

Sunday

Capital Bike Club 2024 Membership Party, 3-5 pm at Capital Brewery in Middleton. Come say hi to your cycling friends new & old. Snacks and beverages will be provided to paid members of the bike club. And if you aren’t a member, but would like to join, head over to their webpage.

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.

I hope everyone has been able to get out and enjoy the (weirdly) warm weather recently. Although the riding has been very pleasant, it’s a bit unnerving that we have weather this warm in February.

The week ahead is somewhat slow, but we have a great community meeting coming up Monday (today, if you are receiving this by email.) In the fall, we invited our members and friends to brainstorm about what they would like to see as event, talks, rides, activities, and information in the future. This Monday’s topic came out of that meeting. See below for more details.

Monday

Our Community Meeting at 6:00 pm at the Central Library will be on the topic of “Know Your Rights: Biking and the Law” with Clayton Griessmeyer, Bicycle Injury Lawyer. If you have questions about what to do if you have a crash, or important aspects about biking on paths or roads, this will be an event you don’t want to miss. 

Also Monday, Fitchburg Bikes will meet at the Fitchburg Senior Center, 5510 Lacy Rd at 7:00 pm.

Wednesday

Transportation Commission will meet virtually at 5:00 pm. On the agenda are a number of projects scheduled for both this year and planned for in the future. (See items on 5, 6, and 9 on the agenda. Under item 9, items marked TAP are pedestrian/bicycle improvements.)

Also on the agenda is an item about safety, crowding, and speed concerns on the paths. There is a good presentation from city staff that lays out the issues with both crowding and any conflicts. We’ve had a discussion about this recently on our Facebook Community, and it comes up every couple of years, including in a recent letter to the media. Basically, we rely on everyone to be polite and aware of other path users, but that’s often a big ask.

Ongoing opportunities to comment:

The UW has a new master plan for the Lakeshore Natural Area. There was quite a bit of publicity about a new visitors center to be built near the entrance to Picnic Point. This would involve some changes to both University Bay Dr and the parallel Lakeshore Path, but mostly just relocating them closer to the marsh.

Much of the master plan involves landscaping, prairie and woodland restoration, and changes to some pedestrian paths within the area near Picnic Point, but the Lakeshore Natural Area also includes the Lakeshore Path all the way down to the Limnology Building near Memorial Union. There isn’t much information in the current master plan about the path in this area, but we have the chance to weigh in on future needs for this critical connector.

The intrepid may be able to navigate the path in all conditions, but winter makes the path quite treacherous, with rutted ice, repeated freezing and thawing, and most of the path completely dark during our short days. Thaws in the spring just mean huge puddles — with ice still present underneath — mud, sand, more ruts, and all users trying to navigate the dry areas, so moving side to side on the path to find dry ground.

If you would like to see changes to the path in the future (lighting, surface, width, improved maintenance, stabilizing areas near the path, etc.) you can comment by contacting the UW via the contact information here.

Dane County is accepting comments until March 15 about a proposed bridge across the Wisconsin River near Sauk City and a trail to Walking Iron County Park near Mazomanie. Information – including slides and a recording from a January public meeting – and a link to comment can be found 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.

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.

It was quite a week for events involving Madison Bikes. I hope everyone had a chance to attend one or more of them.

Week in review

First up was our Car-Free Holiday Fantasy in Lights on Tuesday (check out the link for a great video from the evening.) The weather couldn’t have been better, and we ended up with about 900 people walking, biking, running, and strolling through. It seems that people spread the word via bike groups and clubs, neighbors, print and TV media, word of mouth, as well as our Facebook group and event. There were tons of families with little kids, a few dogs, friends chatting, bike and running groups going through together, and lots of smiles and laughter. 

After our two-hour car-free time slot, we headed over to the Sheraton on John Nolen Dr for socializing, special drinks, and even VIP indoor bike parking. Thanks to everyone who helped out, and to Wonderstate Coffee for hot beverages in Olin Park and the Sheraton for rolling out the red carpet and providing hot chocolate.

Wednesday evening was Be Bright with the UW Police Dept. and the City of Madison on W. Dayton St near Union South. At this event, the UWPD stops bicyclists without lights, but instead of a $150 ticket, they are escorted over to tables where volunteers provide them with a free set of lights and attach the lights to their bikes. Thanks to our volunteers for stepping up at the last minute the day after our big Olin Park event.

Tour of Atwood facilities. I also had an opportunity on Wednesday to join a tour with city staff to the new Atwood path. We learned about some of the innovative path, intersection, and signal treatments that the city has installed. I wish I had recorded the explanations each time we stopped, because there was just too much to remember. But Atwood should be much easier to cross — at least north of Walter Street — as there is only one lane southbound, the intersections are much narrower than before, encouraging slower speeds. Several intersections have green paint to draw drivers’ attention to where pedestrians and bicyclists are likely to be crossing. 

Thanks for for inviting me to ride along. It’s great that about a dozen city staff all traveled by bike to learn about how Madison is making this corridor safer and more intuitive for bicyclists.

Thursday I spoke at the World Day of Remembrance press conference at the top of State St. Shoes were painted white and hung up next to the Veterans Museum to honor the 68 people who died in traffic crashes in Madison over the last five years. You can watch the entire press conference online.

Unfortunately, if we have one more fatality in 2023, this will be the deadliest year in the last 15. Traffic fatalities have been up across the country since the COVID shut down. Fewer people may be driving to work, but with emptier streets, speeds are up, which has led to more dangerous roads. Over 46,000 people died as a result of traffic violence last year! In most years, between 30,000 and 40,000 people die on our streets due to motor vehicle crashes. As I’ve said before, any other consumer product with that kind of safety record would be pulled from the market in a week.

City budget. Among all the events last week, the city also passed a budget in one evening, which is highly unusual. Alder Isadore Knox introduced a last minute amendment to cut funding for the important Autumn Ridge Path project that will allow pedestrians and bicyclists to travel from Milwaukee St to Commercial Ave and provide a bridge over Hwy 30 east of Stoughton Rd. Presently, making that journey requires negotiating two roundabouts on Thompson Dr at Hwy 30 that tend to be very high-speed and unfriendly to all not driving. Fortunately, the motion failed. Thanks to those who wrote to support this project that has already received federal funding.

The week ahead

The week ahead will be fairly quiet because of a short week for Thanksgiving. 

Monday

The Board of Public Works will be discussing the Mineral Point Rd project. Although the Transportation Commission recommended that an 8-10 foot path be built the entire length of the project, the BPW could recommend something else before it goes to Council. It would be great if a few people drop them a note or testify via Zoom about why we need at least an adequate path along Mineral Point Rd. This is already a compromise over what was promised when BRT and changes to Mineral Point Rd was first discussed. The option that was proposed before the Transportation Commission meeting would have narrowed the sidewalk/path to only five feet in sections.

Reminders and announcements

Monday, Nov 27

Bikes and N/S BRT. This is just a save-the-date reminder that we will be hosting a focus group on the north-south BRT line and bicyclists’ needs for the corridor. More information and a registration link can be found here.

Cooperative Carshare Survey

A local group is trying to reduce car dependency in Madison by expanding access to carshare. Their goal is to help others make the leap to being car-free or car-light households, paving the way for the city to become an even more biking- and pedestrian-friendly place to live. They are interested in knowing how people might use car-sharing and what you do/don’t like about this option. You can take their survey and let them know a few things about your driving habits and needs for carshare.

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.

Welcome to summer part 2!

Wow. The weather has been really spectacular for fall riding. I hope everyone is enjoying the opportunity to get out , whether for a ride, whether it’s commuting, doing errands, longer rides after work and weekends, or just bopping around seeing friends on the street. Soon we’ll be talking about tips for dealing with snow, ice, and cold, so let’s enjoy these last days.

Two rides this last week were blessed with perfect conditions. We had a good-sized group for the second social ride in partnership with Madison Is For People, starting at Machinery Row and ending at Garver Feed Mill after a ¾ loop of Lake Monona.

Then on Sunday, around 700 people joined the Ride For Your Life on a slow roll through the near west side and ending at the Capitol to honor Sarah Langenkamp – killed in Bethesda, MD, two years ago, and whose sister lives in Madison – and Tom Heninger – musician and teacher who was killed crossing John Nolen Drive. The ride also honors and remembers all the other people who have died from traffic violence. We ride to bring attention to the need for safer conditions for those walking, biking, and rolling on our street. Thanks to Bike Fed, Trek, and the City of Madison for helping make the ride happen. 

The week ahead

The upcoming week is pretty quiet as far as city meetings. Budget season is upon us at the city, but there aren’t any budget meetings this week.

However, we got some good news recently when it was announced that money to design an underpass of John Nolen Drive was added to the budget by Alder Mike Verveer. This is a big win, and we can thank the people that both pushed for the city to look at this possibility and then testified about how much it was needed. This underpass is an example of the power of your voice.

The design of John Nolen Drive from North Shore Drive to Broom Street – the area where this underpass will be located – will be coming before the Transportation Commission on October 11. We’ll have more on that meeting in next week’s Monday Update.

Wednesday, the October Ride for Joe will be leaving the Fitchburg Senior Center at 10 am. These rides are geared to seniors, but anyone is welcome. The rides are in honor of Joe Imilkowski, long-time Fitchburg resident and avid bicyclist and senior center patron. Each month there is a little bike education along with the ride. This month the topic is Wisconsin Bike Laws.

Sunday, the biweekly Ride for Trans Rights will leave the Law Park boat launch at 9:00 am. 

In the news

On Thursday, two local TV stations ran stories about bike theft in Madison, and then the Wisconsin State Journal ran an article on Friday morning. We’ve seen a huge uptick in theft, as anyone who has followed our Facebook community discussion has seen. If you want to check out the news stories, as well as tips for keeping your bike safe, here are the links:

• Channel 3000
• NBC15
• Wisconsin State Journal

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.