FYI:

Dear Friends,

As you know, City Council requested that the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) develop a public parking plan. We have begun a series of outreach methods to inform this plan, and as part of this, we will be holding several focus group meetings to hear from community representatives.

All are welcome to attend. We have scheduled two meetings at different times, in an effort to meet a variety of schedules.

When: Monday, March 8th

4:30pm – 6:00pm
7:00pm-8:30pm

Where: DDA Board Room, 150 S. Fifth Ave Suite 301, Ann Arbor MI, 48104

At these sessions, I will give a brief overview of our assignment and what we’ve done so far. Most of the meeting will be designed to hear your thoughts, ideas, concerns, and recommendations.

To give us a sense of how many we can expect, please RSVP by clicking this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ParkingPlanRSVP. We greatly appreciate you taking the time.

Many thanks,

Susan Pollay

Executive Director | Ann Arbor DDA

(734) 994-6697

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:

In June 2010, the second US Social Forum (USSF) will take place in Detroit MI. The purpose of this forum is to have an open space where folks who believe another world is possible can come together for political dialogue and relationship building – and to see the transformation of that alternative world in action.

I don’t have a lot of time to comment on these survey results right now, but I wanted folks to be able to check out the results from this survey (conducted late last year) that assess the interest of Washtenaw County voters countywide transit.

You can download the Executive Summary here.

To get a taste of some of the results, here’s the final conclusion of the report:

At the time of the survey (October, 2009) support for a transit tax issue, though nominally at a majority of 51%, was insufficient for it to pass. Too much of the support was half-hearted, and opposition, though in the minority, was firm. However, exposure to various arguments for and against a transit tax during the survey resulted in a gain of 10% for the issue, a fact that indicates the ability of a campaign to motivate a positive vote, not by trying to change the minds of those clearly opposed to a levy, but primarily by strengthening the interest and support of those who at the present time are only weakly committed to a positive vote on the issue.

Although households with at least one transit user are heavily in favor of a transit tax issue, and are an important constituency, they are insufficient in number to pass a transit issue. Thus the issue will turn on the broader community benefit to all, transit users and non-users alike.

The promise of improvements to existing services such as extended weekend hours and more frequent service, while probably appealing to riders, and perhaps important, do not attract voters in general. On the other hand service which broaden the usefulness of transit throughout the county have some appeal. The prospects, however, of WALLY receives a very mixed response and is not advantageous to a transit tax issue. Ann Arbor – Detroit service receives better response, but neither rail issue is, at present, a significant new plus for a transit issue, and funding for WALLY may pose a serious risk for a transit issue.

The fate of the transit tax vote will depend not on a promise of any specific service or service package, but rather on the ability of a campaign and its allies to move and solidify the positive and positive-leaning voters by informing them of AATA’s existing accomplishments, its careful and productive use of public money, the county-wide nature of its future services, the need for public transit to attract jobs, and the need to expand services for seniors and those with disabilities.

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.

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.

Just in case you might want to attend The AATA is having a Special Board Meeting Tonight to discuss becoming a Countywide Authority (Public Act 196)

Here are the details:

Board of Directors Special Meeting to Discuss Public Act 196
Dec. 8 at 5:30 pm
Washtenaw Community College
Morris Lawrence Bldg.
Room 101
4800 E. Huron River Dr.
734.677.5033

Recently the Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition organized a discussion on pedstrian issues in Ann Arbor.

While it is true that it’s much safer to be a pedestrian in Ann Arbor than in other Michigan Cities, this video created as part of the presentation also shows how much further we have to go.

If you are interested in knowing how many Michigan metro areas rank when it comes to pedestrian safety, check out Transportation for America’s facts heet on this issue. Among some of the facts:

• The Flint area is the most dangerous area for pedestrians in the state and is way more dangerous than the national average.  The Ann Arbor area is the safest and is way less dangerous than the national average.

Read the report here.