Do you have five minutes to spare and want to improve the situation for people walking and biking on West Wilson Street? Here’s how:
The Board of Public Works will discuss the design proposed by City Engineering in their meeting on Wednesday. If you haven’t been following the project, you can catch up on a lot of background here, here, and here. Writing a quick email in opposition to putting people on bike bike onto the sidewalk and in favor of real bike accommodations on the street is going to be important. I know several of you already sent emails when the item was on the agenda for the Pedestrian/Bicycle/Motor Vehicle Commission last week, and you can just re-use that email. One new development is that doing a pilot study, where one side of on-street parking will be removed for a while is now on the table. If done well, we think that this is a good option, and we encourage you to mention the pilot.
Email addresses for the Board of Public Works members:
claudia.haack@yahoo.com; btrades@sbcglobal.net; pdahl@fpm.wisc.edu; jaclyn.lawton@charter.net; jclausius@charter.net; debkenjohnson@charter.net; district12@cityofmadison.com; district9@cityofmadison.com; szwalling@charter.net
I recommend also included these folks in the cc line, as well as your district’s alder:
MHacker@cityofmadison.com; RPhillips@cityofmadison.com; CPetykowski@cityofmadison.com; YTao@cityofmadison.com; district4@cityofmadison.com
Here’s what I’m going to write; you’re welcome to reuse the text:
Dear Members of the Board of Public Works, dear Alders:
Regarding the planned reconstruction of West Wilson street, please move forward with a street design that takes into account the needs of people biking and walking on this important connection to downtown, both going west to east, and east to west. I strongly oppose an option that mixes people walking and cycling on the sidewalk, as that is neither safe nor convenient for anyone. I support doing a well-designed and evaluated pilot project that would close one of the on-street parking lanes to put in a protected one-way or two-way bike lane.
Thank you for your consideration.
Thanks for helping out! The final decision on this will be made at City Council. We’ll send out another update before that.