Annick Beaudet, Nathan Wilkes and Nadia Barrera from the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Program answer questions from the crowd, as a larger-than-life Lance Armstrong looms in the background.

Austin cyclists are engaged and excited about what’s coming. That was the message city staff heard loud and clear last night at the bicycle plan open house held at Mellow Johnny’s.

Political campaigns and local organizers are also paying attention to the increased excitement. Representatives from the Chris Riley Austin City Council campaign were there, along with the League of Bicycling Voters and the Austin Cycling Association.

An overflow crowd met to hear the city’s presentation on our city’s next bike plan. Here are some highlights of what was presented:

In the city’s last plan, bike lane mileage doubled from 1998 to 2008. At the time of the 2000 Census, approximately 3700 Austinites were daily cycling commuters. That number is expected to increase greatly for the 2010 Census, perhaps up to as high as 10,000 daily commuters.

A representative from Halff & Associates explains mapping the city's bicycle route segments.

The plan itself is VERY in-depth, and quite long. To see the draft 2020 plan divided into sections to make reading a little bit easier, click here. I give the city staff a lot of credit for holding a quite extended Q&A session about the plan after the presentation.

City staff have also been working very hard and have made progress towards a number of changes at the city itself to help cycling. Nathan Wilkes stated that one goal is to institutionalize thinking about taking cyclists into account across all city departments. One thing they have done is to change the city’s own defensive driving program to include education about sharing the road with bikes, something that hadn’t been done before. A federal grant has also been worked on that will allow perhaps five more city buildings to have showers to encourage more employees to be come bicycle commuters themselves.

What’s next?

The proposed new bicycle plan is a good one. Elliott and I were really excited to see everything that’s in it. The challenging parts ahead are going to be first getting the plan passed by the City Council and then seeing the implementation through. Funding will be an issue too.

Annick Beaudet, city Bicycle Program Manager, pointed out that the cost of funding the new plan fully would be approximately $250 million. This also includes costs of spending around $300,000 per year on education and promotion, which are incredibly important to getting more cyclists on the road. While there will be transportation bonds in the future that could partly fund these projects, that full amount is still going to be hard to come by.

Let’s be frank, though. Compared to the cost of building a highway, this is peanuts. Take SH 130 for example: the cost of building just the part of SH 130 that crosses Austin from north to south was well over $1.5 billion.

What would really help us is something like what Oregon has had since the 1970’s, where a certain percentage of transportation funding is slated for bicycle and pedestrian projects.

A strong showing of Austinites in support of the new bicycle plan would help. We’ll try to keep everyone informed of meetings and events to attend.

Know an Austin business that needs bike racks? Contact Nathan Wilkes, who is helping coordinate the distribution of the city’s standard “upside-down U” racks.

If you can volunteer, the city wants your help. Willing to speak and encourage people to bike for transportation in Austin? Contact Nadia Barrera at the Bicycle & Pedestrian Program.

Related posts:

1. Massive turnout by cycling community at Third Nueces Street Bike Boulevard Open House ...
2. First bike boulevard open house highlights tensions between cyclists and Nueces Street property owners ...
3. City open house on bike lanes on West 6th tonight! ...
4. Austin Master Bike Plan wins State Planning Project Award ...
5. BAC meeting allows venting over last minute Master Plan changes, introduction of new bike lane installation process ...