Austin Bike Plan Petition calls for clear time lines for implementation, better bike facilities
The cycling community in Austin at a cross roads right now, and Marcus and I believe cyclists are in a unique position to ensure the City of Austin makes biking for transportation a priority and builds the necessary infrastructure to support this growing community.
Blessed with sun days, an absence of true winter, and natural beauty, Austin has always been well positioned to have a thriving cycling culture. While recreational cycling dominated the scene in the last decade, rising fuel costs, global warming, and an economic downturn have caused a record number of Austinites to turn to cycling to meet many of their transportation needs. Unfortunately, Austin’s infrastructure has not kept up with this demand forcing cars and bikes to share the same road space, at times in dangerous ways.
Indeed, the last Bicycle Plan was adopted by the City of Austin in 1996. A recent City of Austin Street Smarts Task Force found that only 1/3rd of the facilities proposed in the twelve year old plan have actually been completed. This lack of progress occurred at the same time the Austin area was growing at the breakneck speed of 4000 new residents/month.
In addition to the increasing numbers of transportation cyclists, Austin’s bike culture is on the rise. Visit the local award winning cycling blog ATXBS on any day, and you’ll find as many as a dozen non-racing cycling events in the upcoming week to attend. From Critical Mass to bike-in movies to moonlight cruises, Austin cycling is on the move in a very organic, self-organizing way.
Marcus and I find all of these developments to be very exciting and a great opportunity to build a great cycling city. In the coming months, the City of Austin will adopt a new Bicycle Plan. How that plan is written will determine whether we’ll get twelve more years of inaction and 1/2 efforts, I mean 1/3rd efforts, or if we’ll get a city government committed to making bicycle transportation a viable alternative for the population at-large.
In response to all of these developments, Marcus and I have create a petition to demand the City of Austin include several key measures in the new plan.
These include:
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Adopting of a Bike Plan with clear timelines for full implementation
- Establishing both an initial North-South and East-West cross town dedicated bike trail or bicycle boulevard.
- Prohibiting vehicle parking in marked bicycle lanes and establish these lanes as “tow away” zones.
- Committing to building bicycle facilities/infrastructure on all new roads and improvements to current arterial roads where these facilities/infrastructure do not already exist.
- Funding for full time staffing of the Bicycle Coordinator and a minimum of two paid positions charged with educational and promotional activities in accordance with best practices of other cities.
- Establish a permanent City Council appointed advisory Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission to make ongoing recommendations.
(We’ll be writing a full article on each of these points in the coming weeks, but you can also visit the Austin Bike Plan Petition website to read more on our reasoning for each part.)
We are calling on all cyclists who support these objectives to sign our petition at AustinBikePetition.org. We will be presenting the list of all the Austin residents who sign the petition to the City Council before they act on adopting the new Bike Plan to show the cycling community is serious about building a world class cycling city in a timely fashion.
Please join our campaign at AustinBikePetition.org. In addition to signing the petition, you can also help by visiting the site to download a printable petition, brochure, and poster, by sending an e-mail about the petition to a friend, putting up a web ad on your website, and making a donation.
This is our chance to create a bike friendly city with the infrastructure to match. There is no better time to support this low cost, low emission form of transportation that our citizens can use to meet most of their daily needs.
on Oct 23rd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Do we really need paid bicycle coordinators? This city has more than enough chiefs already. How about spending the money on guys with shovels and some hot tar, or maybe with some brooms and vacuums for the mess that exists? I don’t want advocates, educators or promoters; I want better streets, bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections, etc. Put a enough of that stuff out there, MAINTAIN IT, and it will fill up miraculously with bike riders, I promise.
on Oct 23rd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
JW,
We’ll discuss this more in upcoming articles, but yes we do need paid staff for coordination and education. The coordinator ensures that when new roads and developments are built they have the facilities called for in the plan. The coordinator also ensures the plan is actually being executed as adopted by the City Council. These things do not happen by themselves and part of the reason our plan is so behind has to do with the elimination of this job in the 90s.
Getting more people biking requires education in safe cycling thus the educator positions. If you go out on the street now, you’ll see countless cyclists breaking traffic laws. The City is starting to crack down on this with ticketing, but if there is no education this discourages cycling.
on Oct 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Trying to keep a close eye on city planning and policy can get a little headachy, especially with stuff like bike infrastructure that never seems to make the news until decisions have already been made. Thanks for keeping us all on top of the Street Smarts report, and giving us a little amplification with this petition. (And thanks for the blog-lovin,’ too!)