… before Madison Bike Week 2024 starts! Yesterday, our VP Christo and I took our respective bike trailers and distributed 40 yard signs advertising Madison Bike Week around the city. And maybe you’ve seen one of our Bike Week ads on a Metro bus. Anyways, I’ll return to Bike Week below, as there a few other things going before we get rolling on Saturday.
Good and not so good bike infrastructure news
Let’s start with the good news: Olin-Turville Court will soon no longer be bumpy. Currently the pavement on this busy bike connector has a pavement rating of 3 out of 10. For that reason, the city will repave the road this fall. Other than repaving, there won’t be major changes to the road’s layout. Except that the city will add a bike ramp on the southern end of the road! There’s a very clear desire path here, and soon it will be paved. Hooray!
You may be wondering what happens to biking and walking access during the construction. More good news: The city plans to repurpose one of the lanes on John Nolen Drive and create a temporary jersey-barrier-protected two-way multi-use path. Phew, that’s a lot of hyphens.
Now to the less good news: Two large bike infrastructure projects are experiencing delays. The Tancho Drive Path on the Northeast Side won’t be constructed this year as planned. Apparently the city discovered some grade and alignment issues with the already approved plans. Also running behind is the Autum Ridge Path and overpass. Because of manufacturing delays, the overpass itself will only go in January 2025.
West Area Plan meetings on Sauk Creek Greenway and housing/land use
The city is holding a final(?) set of public meetings to discuss the latest round of revisions to the West Area Plan. In case you missed it, in early May, the city released a new draft plan that had several changes from the previous draft, including the removal of a N/S bike connection through the Sauk Creek Greenway. Many of those changes were controversial, and so there is another set of virtual and in-person meetings to gather more feedback. Next week the virtual meetings are taking place. The first one is on land use, zoning, and housing on Tuesday, May 28 (registration link), followed by a meeting on transportation and the Sauk Creek Greenway on Thursday, May 30 (registration link). If you need a refresher on what’s happening with the Sauk Creek Greenway, read Craig’s in-depth post on the topic. The in-person meetings will take place during Bike Week.
In addition to meetings you can also provide written feedback on the plan here.
Transportation Commission: East Madison Bikeways and Stoughton Road
On the Transportation Commission’s agenda on Wednesday are a few bike-relevant items. City staff will be presenting an update on the “East Madison Bikeways Enhancement Projects.” You may remember that as part of the East-West BRT project, 24/7 bike lanes were removed along some stretches of E Washington Ave. This was because BRT needed a dedicated bus lane and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) refused to let the city reduce the number of general travel lanes. To make up for this, the city promised improvements to parallel routes to E Wash, such as the Mifflin and Main St bike boulevards or Hoard St. Here’s an overview map of the improvements:
Also at the Transportation Commission is a city letter to WisDOT about their planning for Stoughton Road. The city analyzed WisDOT’s proposals for their impact on safety, whether they are compatible with walking and biking, and their impact on development and future Amtrak service. Some of WisDOT’s proposals would preclude all-ages and all-abilities bike facilities and cause the loss of significant tax revenue to the city by taking properties off of the tax roll. Here is the presentation and the city’s proposed letter.
You can submit comments to the Transportation Commission by email to transportationcommission@cityofmadison.com or register to the meeting here.
Madison Bike Week
Okay, finally we’re getting to Madison Bike Week. I’m one of the people who gets an email notification whenever a new Bike Week event is being submitted. And let’s just say: I got a lot of emails! We have over 70 events on the calendar, and while the event submission deadline is technically over, I’m sure we’ll get some more submissions this week.
With this many events, trying to point out highlights or providing an overview is almost impossible. Instead, I encourage you to check out the full calendar of events and start planning. A little tip: The default view of the calendar on our website is sorted by day and location, rather than by day and time. So it’s easy to miss some morning events. You can click on “simple” instead to get a chronological view. You can also use the Sched app to plan our your event schedule.
I do want to highlight a few events that we are hosting or co-hosting ourselves:
- Make sure to join us for the Ride with the Mayor on Monday morning at 8am. There will be west side and northeast side feeder rides.
- Join our board member Pratik on Tuesday on a ride to Capital Brewery in Middleton to pick up a beer donation for our Bike Week Party
- Also on Tuesday, we’re once again co-hosting an afternoon bike station with root beer floats (including vegan ones) with Fire Station #9 on the west side
- More beer fetching is going on on Thursday. Join me on a ride to the Hop Garden in Paoli to pick up a keg of beer.
- And of course on Friday it’s Bike Week Party time! As per usual: Brittingham Park. Free food and beverages. Tabling by other orgs. Tunes by DJ KA-BOOM!BOX