Attend this Wednesday’s Bike Boulevard Open House to bring back bikeable streets

If you pay much attention to rail history in this country, you’ll know the current move to build light rail and street cars system in the many American cities is a movement to restore rail that was widespread until the 1950s. Most American cities had well developed street car systems until a conglomerate of companies from the auto, oil and gas, and tire industries quietly bought out these systems and shut them down. So urban rail isn’t new. It’s just returning to what worked in the past.

Similarly, the move for more bicycle facilities has its heritage in the League of American Bicyclists who lobbied for the early paving of American roads to make bike riding easier and wide spread. Indeed, we can look at his great film from the Netherlands in the 1950s to see what the future could hold if the bicycle was a regular part of everyday transportation for a large portion of the population.

Perhaps our automotive dominated post-WWII society will become an aberration of the past, and we’ll restore the balance that makes room for people instead of cars.

In Austin, the first step in making those Dutch pictures from the 1950s a Texas reality is the creation of our first bike boulevard on Nueces Street. This film shows cars and bikes mixing on the road, but clearly the bike is the preferred method. Bike boulevards do the same thing: allow local automotive traffic while protecting and elevating cyclists and pedestrians through attractive traffic calming. This sort of place making has also been shown to be of economic benefit to businesses and property owners in the area adding a financial benefit to the broader social benefit these facilities provide our community.

Tomorrow night will be the second in a three part public open house series on the design of the Nueces Bike Boulevard. Austin on Two Wheels encourages you to attend this meeting and support the League of Bicycling Voters proposal for this new bike-way by contacting the Austin City Council and encouraging the adoption of the LOBV plan.

Nueces Street Bike Boulevard Open Houses
Wednesday, January 13, 6-8 PM:  Project Discussion and Public Design Exercise
Wednesday, January 27, 6-8 PM:  Design Presentation and Final Commenting

UPDATE: The Final Open House has been moved to Wednesday, February 24, 6- 8 PM

All of the open houses will be at Pease Elementary School, 1106 Rio Grande Street.