David Byrne, Rob D'Amico, Annick Beaudet, Jana McCann
Last night, musician, author, and urban cyclist David Byrne lead a round table discussion called Cities, Bicycles and the Future of Getting Around about urban cycling and how to plan for a city that puts people on bikes, transit, and on foot ahead of cars. Joining Byrne was League of Bicycling Voters President Rob D’Amico, City of Austin’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Director Annick Beaudet, and ROMA architect and planner Jana McCann.
Byrne began with some less than flattering pictures of Austin highways bisecting various neighborhoods and making an environment inhospitable and then did a brief overview of the development of urban planning from the car focused 50s and 60s to the New Urbanist started by Jane Jacobs. He also presented some interesting and humorous pictures of things he encountered on his bike around the world much like his book, Bicycle Dairies.
Finally, an event with sufficient bike parking.
Byrne was followed by Rob D’Amico who gave everyone a history of bicycle advocacy in Austin including the creation of the League of Bicycling Voters. It really is impressive what have been accomplished with so few people in such little time and Rob ended by asking those in the audience to plug in to the various parts of the cycling community.
Annick Beaudet continued the presentation with information on the newly adopted Master Bicycle Plan. She shared some of the current commuter cycling numbers (1.5% of Austinites, 3.5% of Central City) and the ambitious plan to do much better (5% citywide by 2020 and 10% of Central City by then.) Part of the plan is to support and promote transportation cycling. The City just finished a PSA with Lance Armstrong that will be airing this fall, and there will be a program on the Pfluger Bridge during morning rush hour from October to December with rewards for bike commuters plus free basic maintenance and info on theft prevention. She also shared some of the recent bicycle infrastructure improvements. This included bike lanes added to Steck, Dean Keaton, and East 12th Street. For the future, the City staff are working on implementing the first bike boxes as well as the first bicycle boulevard on Nueces Street from 3rd to MLK.
Dean Keaton at I-35 before improvements
Dean Keaton with 1st improvements. Green paint will be added where bike lane crosses off ramp.
Roma’s Jana McCann finished up with a quick history of Austin’s urban planning which started off well with a grid system and street car network, but diverged after WWII with car centric planning. She is working with the City on the Master Downtown plan at creating a massive network of bicycle lanes, paths, and boulevard to make cycling a center piece of downtown mobility.
The discussion finished up with questions from the audience including a bizarre exchange about whether President Obama is mandating all of these pro-cycling changes (I was having health care town forum flashbacks.) Several people touched on the one weakness of the evening: how to get involved. The discussion was an excellent education in planning and understanding how to make our city more people friendly (as opposed to car friendly.) Unfortunately, other than a vague get involved pitch, there was no specific call to action or way for people to directly plug into cycling advocacy. With approximately 1400 people in attendance it seemed like a missed opportunity.
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on Oct 1st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
If I recall, there was a very specific invitation for cyclists to get involved in all of the local planning efforts that are going on right now. Not only the Downtown Plan, but the Comprehensive Plan and the Waller Creek Plan.