AnnArbor.Com has two articles on cycling in the Ann Arbor Community that might interest you:

• Plans in the works for a new Saline to Ann Arbor Bike Path: If you live in Saline and would bike to work if it didn’t feel so dangerous, you may be in luck.  There are plans to build a pedestrian and bike path that would span Textile and Lohr roads from Saline to Ann Arbor, “nearly” connecting the two cities.  Read more here.
• Bicyclists and Drivers sharing the road: In many parts of Ann Arbor, bikes and cars share the road together.  As the weather warms up, expect to see a lot more cyclists out there.  Semper Cop Rich Kinsey lays out some rules of the road that both parties should follow.  Read more here.

Treehugger recently posted an interesting set of ideas for how to make your City more bike and ped friendly.

Their suggestions (in sum):

1. Take away right on red turns for cars
2. Install more red light enforcement cameras
3. Have more parties (e.g. excuses to close the roads)
4. Rein in distracted driving (e.g. drivers with cell phones)
5. Support limited speed limits to 20 mph
6. Go on a Tweed Ride (you’ll have to read the post to see what this is)
7. Look to New York City for inspiration

The interesting part about many of these ideas is that Ann Arbor is already doing many of them.  The idea of no turn on red was suggested in the Ann Arbor Non-motorized plan.  We have lots of parties downtown (Art Fair, Green Fair, the Car Show, etc), which I think definitely makes it more pedestrian friendly.  Downtown people can’t really go more than 20 mph and I know the City as a whole has struggled with speed limits.  We might not have a Tweed Ride but we do have the Ride Around Town (RAT–thanks WBWC!).  Especially downtown, I think we are moving in the right direction on many of these items.

What do you think is missing from this list?  What else could we do downtown and elsewhere to create a better environment for peds and cyclists in Ann Arbor?

FYI:

Want to get together with like minded folks to talk about issues related to biking and walking?  The WBWC is planning to have periodic social gatherings in various places and times to let people get together to talk about issues that concern them and help them find ways to work to improve those conditions if so inclined.

Or just show up to talk about issues of the day, such as sidewalk snow clearing, street maintenance, best routes for commuting from point A to B, recommendations for equipment, the list of possibilities is endless!  We will have at least one WBWC board member in attendance to help answer questions or provide information on projects we are working on.

To start off these meetings, we will have an informal gathering this Friday afternoon at 6pm at the Full Moon bar.  It is a smoke free location with inexpensive food, lots of beer selections, and quiet enough in the early evening to have decent conversations without yelling.  Look for the bike helmets and reflective vests.
Some of us should be there until at least 7:30pm, longer if good discussion is happening!

Full Moon is on Main Street between Liberty and Washington, used to be called the Monkey Bar.

We will try to give more notice before future get-togethers, we would like to have these happen every few weeks if people enjoy them.

Pete (WBWC Board Member)

FYI from the DDA:

Dear Friend,

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) is undertaking a comprehensive public parking plan following a request from City Council. The DDA seeks to understand the parking needs, priorities and preferences of community members so it can shape this plan.

Would you please take five minutes to complete this survey? It will help the DDA planning team understand more about your parking patterns, values and priorities in order to inform the parking plan.

• Survey Link: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22A8683SDVB
• Survey link for the visually impaired: www.surveymonkey.com/s/ParkingPlan2010

We appreciate the time you will spend completing this survey and would like to express our thanks with the chance to win a $25 gift certificate for 2 respondents drawn from this survey. Please continue to check your local news source and our website www.a2dda.org for project updates. This survey is open to all members of the public and we welcome a variety of input – please feel free to forward it along.

Again, thank you for your time and thoughts.

Susan Pollay

Executive Director | Ann Arbor DDA
734-994-6697 | www.a2dda.org

I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but I hope to see it soon.  On Monday, PBS aired a documentary on Detroit that looked at how to bring the city back by investing in transit, biking, etc.

The preview gave me chills.

Watch the entire video here.

Transit Riders United (TRU) is  “seeking a passionate motivated people-person to join our staff as the Organizer / Assistant Director, leading public engagement and organizing efforts.”

Learn more about this position by clicking here.

AnnArbor.com recently noted that Major Hieftje is considering a proposal to ban bikes on downtown Ann Arbor sidewalks.   The 70 some comments after the article show that this truly a topic worthy of discussion.

This is an interesting issue–no one wants to be run over by bikes when walking down the street, and there are quite a few places in downtown where you can’t see around corners, making bike and pedestrian crashes more likely (heck, I was walking around a corner at Main and Huron the other day and crashed into a pedestrian!).

Of course, the issue of banning bikes on sidewalks brings up the perpetual question of how best to solve social problems.  I think the Mayor is doing the right thing bringing a lot of people together to talk about this, including the DDA and the City’s Alternative Transportation Committee.

The question I have is, why are people biking on sidewalks to begin with?  Some of the reasons I have heard is that people don’t feel comfortable biking on the street and think the sidewalk is safer.  For others, it’s just faster to use the sidewalk than the street because you don’t have to deal with cars and traffic lights (I am not immune to this temptation–there have been times when I have ridden my bike on a one way street rather than taking the time to ride on the street to get going in the right direction).

Why else might people ride on sidewalks?  Because bike parking is located there?  Because they won’t get in trouble?  Because they want to do what is easiest for them rather than what is best for everyone?  The answers to these questions require different approaches–some punitive, some cultural.

Again, this brings up the issue of where bikes belong in Ann Arbor.  Where is their place and how do we show people where it is ok to ride your bike and where it isn’t?  And how do you deal with the fact that we have so much turnover of students?  A ban on riding bikes on the sidewalks could solve some of these issues, but what about the others?

As you can see, I have a lot more questions that I do answers.  I applaud the Mayor for bringing this issue up and will be interested to see where it goes.

A New York Times Blog recently posted that public transit ridership declined by 3.8% during the first nine months of 2009.  Not surprising given the lower gas prices and unemployment stats for 2009.   The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority experienced similar declines during that time.   Also of note is that transit ridership in San Francisco actually increased during this time.

One thing the blog post doesn’t consider is the change in automobile use during this time.  Were people also driving less because they didn’t have the money to go shopping etc?  Or maybe people were driving more because gas is cheap.  I am sure this stat is out there somewhere.

It would also be interesting to consider who stopped taking the bus.  Did people who always take the bus simply take the bus less?  Or did people who could choose between driving or busing choose to drive?  It’s not as if all transit riders are the same.  It would be very interesting to delve into this data as well.

For a somewhat basic breakdown of this concept, in the APTA report, it appears that ridership on Commuter Rail and Buses declined about 5% while ridership on Heavy Rail and Light Rail declined to a lesser degree (about 3% and 1% respectively) .  Trolley ridership actually increased by .6%   It would be interesting to see why the declines are different.  Any thoughts?

So I guess the take home lesson in all of this (which we’ve known here at the getDowntown Program for a while now) is that cost matters when it comes to transportation choices.  Most people will be more likely to change their commuting behavior when it starts to hit their pocketbook.  People are also more likely to change their commuting behavior when they live closer to where they work (within 4 miles or so).

As we enter a New Year and continue to have debates surrounding healthcare and global warming, how does transportation (and commuting in particular) fit into this picture?  What would our world look like if more people in Ann Arbor (and the US) used sustainable transportation?  What problems would this solve (or create)?

From Frank S., RAT organizer:

To all you die-hards who ride through the winter and only occasionally
complain,  Friday is another opportunity to gather with other
winter bicycle commuters and Ride Around Town!  Gather at Liberty
Plaza Park, corner of Division and Liberty, for a ride of relatively
short duration through the city of A2’s business districts as we
establish that, indeed, Bikes Belong!

Lights are a definite requirement as the ride will start and end in
the dark.  If you haven’t seen my MagicShine 900 Lumen Chinese-made
headlamp this is your chance!  I’ll demonstrate the SOS mode and you
can decide if it’s SOS or OSO.  And if we are lucky Pete will be on
duty with his bike of many lights, although I don’t think the
Christmas tree will be gracing his rack in January.

The after ride gathering (RAT! hole) will be at Tios where you can get
a Dos Equis or similar libation.  I highly recommend a hit of their
extra-hot salsa before riding home … who needs toe-warmers?!?!

As always, please consider joining us at the RAT! hole about 7 even if
you don’t ride.  Hope to see you all there!

In a recent post, I discussed some cool new transportation apps that might make your commute easier.  Now there is a site that tries to aggregate those apps in one place.  It’s called City-Go-Round and you can use it to search for transportation apps in your community.  It’s from the makers of Walkscore.  The goal of City-G0-Round is to “help make public transit more convenient” by doing three different things as noted by T4America:

. . . cataloging the hundreds of smartphone/web applications people have created to make riding public transit easier, putting pressure on agencies across the country that have not released their public data, and raising awareness of the need for government agencies to open up their data.

Check out City-Go-Round here.