It’s another relatively quiet week for bike advocacy, with two great opportunities to connect with Madison Bikes.
On Monday, our board of directors will hold their monthly meeting at the Central Library at 6:00. We’ll be refining some of the work that came out of our strategic plan in January and narrowing down on our top goals for the next year.
On Tuesday, join us for a public viewing of a webinar on “Preparing for Successful Safety Education and Enforcement Efforts to Promote Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety.” More details and RSVP on the Facebook event page.
Is this what you’d like Wilson Street to look like between MLK and Henry? Let the City know!
And on Wednesday, the Madison Bikes Advocacy Committee will be meeting at Barriques on W. Washington to talk about upcoming projects, including Wilson Street downtown. The public input session for that project is scheduled for Monday, March 20th and it’ll be very important for folks to show up and call for appropriate east and westbound bike facilities as part of this reconstruction. Watch for another blog post this week with more details. And if you’re on Facebook, you can vote for your favorite option here.
When we planned Winter Bike Week, Elly and Eleanor, two members of our Events Committee, suggested having a winter biking challenge. But it would be a challenge with a twist, focused not on cranking out as many miles as possible or having to ride every day. This challenge was more about getting out and about, exploring your snowy city by bike on days when otherwise you maybe wouldn’t have done so.
Before we announce the winner, show some of our favorite pictures, and tell you how you can get your finisher badge, let’s hear from two participants of the challenge, Elly and Kevin:
Elly’s take
Most days I’m not conscious of the decision to swing my leg over the frame to get from Point A to Point B. The winter bike challenge – a photo scavenger hunt on bike – made my routines feel less, well, like routines. I didn’t wait for an intersection to look to my left and right, and the possibility of finding something on the list of photo categories was exciting in a simple I’m-a-kid-and-just-found-an-amazing-puddle-to-jump-in sort of way. I slowed down. I stopped more often. And I noticed signs, murals, people, and bridges that I had either completely missed before or didn’t give more than a two-second glance. I started to take different routes in search of artwork and paths found in pictures shared by other Madison bike challenge participants. For me, the true bear of winter isn’t so much the cold temperatures, it’s the danger of how easy it is to get lost in a routine. The winter bike challenge cracked open the predictability of my commute, and lifted intentionality back into my ride. Plus, I get a cool new and elusive finisher badge!
Kevin’s perspective
Look, I hate to admit it, but I am … a fair weather biker. I see others out there, taking on the beard-icing temps, curse-worthy wind, and more curse-worthy treacherous surfaces. I have no problem running through the relentless Wisconsin winter, but, until recently, my tenacity whilst in running shoes did not transfer to my pedals. It only took two or three bike trips to realize what my problem was. Logistics. Or, more accurately, perceived logistics. I don’t have the right clothes. I can’t possibly carry all of my stuff. I can’t show up to work looking like a crazy person. I’ve got too many groceries to get. It looks pretty slick out there, I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t think it’s good for my bike. It took the winter bike challenge (and my lovely, yet persistent) wife Elly for me to call BS on myself. I do have the right clothes – it just takes a few moments to layer right. I can carry all my stuff if I take two minutes to figure out what I actually need to take. I teach middle school, so everyone knows I’m already a crazy person. If I only get what’s on my list, I’ve got plenty of room in my panniers and my backpack to fit the week’s groceries. It’s never as bad as it looks outside if you actually get close enough to see the conditions. It’s as good for my bike to be out and about as it is for me. Yes, it took the bike challenge to get my butt in the saddle – but simply being out on the bike in the winter for a week was my gateway activity to bike-commuting my errands and discovering the joy of defying society’s expectations. Oh, it feels so good.
So without further ado, here are some of our favorite pictures:
1. “Friends with Frosty” by Kevin Leigeb
Whatever the weather, it’s always better biking with friends! Kevin was also the overall winner of the challenge, with a whopping 29 submissions! Awesome job, Kevin!
Despite the chilly temperatures, Healthy Kids Collaborative made it all the way out to Jupiter on the Southwest Path. Maybe appropriate, given that the average temperature on Jupiter is a frigid -234 degrees Fahrenheit…
Sometimes the snow can disguise the Capitol dome, but Ben found it all the same!
Feel free to link to your personal favorite in the comments, or explore more of the submissions on Instagram.
How to get your finisher badge
If you’ve participated in the challenge and think you’ve earned a finisher badge (bike scout honor system!), please send an email to winterbike@madisonbikes.org with your name and mailing address. We will mail you the badge once it is ready (please be patient; it’ll take a bit to produce them).
And rest assured: The challenge is going to return!
Here’s hoping most of you were able to get out on the bike and enjoy the warm weather. I ride all winter long, but rarely get out of the city on my winter bike. It’s such a great feeling to get back out to the sights and sounds and smells of the country.
And for those that don’t follow the activity on the Madison Bikes Facebook Group, here’s a collection of some of the top articles recently shared:
Monday: Next Sunday is the beginning of Daylight Saving Time and that means today is the last MEAThead ride of the season. They’ll be back again in the fall after the easy weather is gone again.
Tuesday: On Tuesday, the Madison Bikes Communications Committee will meet up at the Memorial Union. Check out the About Us section of our webpage for more info on any of the Madison Bikes Committees.
The Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee had it’s final meeting last week. Attorney Strange will be making the final revisions and the new ordinance will be introduced at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting and then referred to the current transportation commissions for review and feedback.
The Pedestrian/Bicycle/Motor Vehicle Commission meeting last week was a long one, with debates on design choices for the Demetral connector, approval of protected bike lanes on Bassett Street, and a serious conversation about the upcoming Wilson Street reconstruction and our public input process. Stay tuned for a new public input session on this critical project and plan on attending to advocate for much needed bike accommodations on this critical connector.
This Week
On Monday, join Bike Fitchburg for their monthly meeting at the Fitchburg Public Library.
On Wednesday, consider attending a public input session for the final draft of our Regional Transportation Plan refresh.
Thursday, there’s a presentation of Dane County’s Bicycle Wayfinding Manual in the morning, another opportunity to provide feedback on the Regional Transportation Plan at the Senior Center, and a public input meeting on Walter Street reconstruction at Whitehorse Middle School.
There’s plenty of opportunity this week to get involved. If you’ve never attended a public meeting before, consider giving it a try this week.
On Monday at 4:00p, the Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee picks up where it left off last week (see below) to try and finalize a recommendation. At 6:00p, join the Madison Bikes Events Committee for a review of this year’s Winter Bike Week and a look ahead at upcoming events. For those that frequent Fitchburg, there’s a public hearing at 7:00p on the Fitchburg Bike and Pedestrian Plan at their Transportation and Transit Commission meeting.
On Tuesday, there are a pair of webinars to check out. At noon, tune in to hear about Integrating explicit and implicit methods in travel behavior research: A study of driver attitudes and bias and then at 1:30p join Madison Bikes and City of Madison Traffic Engineering for a webinar on Bicycle and Pedestrian Count Data. We’ll be holding a public viewing at 30 W Mifflin Street, open to anyone. Later that evening at 7:00p, consider attending a Wilson Street Public Information Meeting. It’s unclear at this point if the city will be proposing any new bike facilities for the 100 block of W. Wilson included in this project. Wilson Street currently is a one-way street with no accommodations for people biking. On the one hand, Alder Verveer’s February 18th blog post suggests that the proposal will include “an off-street, 2-way bike facility on West Wilson Street”. And yet the recently published Ped/Bike/Motor Vehicle Commission agenda includes an attached file showing instead a concept with no bike facilities. A design that accommodates eastbound bike travel on Wilson Street has been on the top of the list for local bike advocates for many years; here’s hoping the attachment for the PBMVC meeting is a mistake and that the proposal will indeed include the 2-way facility described in Alder Verveer’s post.
In addition to the Wilson St. project, Wednesday’s Pedestrian/Bicycle/Motor Vehicle Commission meeting will also include review of several other key projects, including protected bike lanes on Bassett Street, the Demetral Path connector alternatives, and a review of the Judge Doyle Square Bike Center Operator request for proposals, as well as a look at a new draft Safe Accommodation for Pedestrians and Cyclists in and Around Work Zones policy. Consider attending this meeting to offer your input or watch the proceedings online on Madison’s award-winning City Channel.
The biggest update from last week is from the Valentine’s edition of the Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee. The continued discussion around how to best organize and coordinate our transportation planning and implementation has started to gel around a recommendation that will likely include a new Transportation Planning and Policy Division of the theoretical (but leaderless) Department of Transportation. A newly proposed City Transportation Policy and Planning Manager is meant to fill the gaps identified during the conversations around the need for a Director of Transportation and will serve as primary staffer of the two new transportation commissions. This is a softening of earlier enthusiasm around a recommendation to actually hire a Director of Transportation.
On the committee side, there was a lot of discussion around Transit/Metro and how to best support regionalization. This has been a tough nut to crack for the group, but there seemed to be a general consensus around a new plan to move forward with the two new transportation bodies (Transportation Planning Board and Transportation Commission) and to maintain the regional focus within the existing Contracted Services Oversight Committee. This group may get a new name and will be expected to have a joint meeting with the Transportation Planning Board at least annually.
Additional conversation focused on the composition of the Transportation Commission and there was agreement that there should be members who are frequent users of biking, walking and transit as well as a person with a disability. I will be recommending that this be bumped to two of each of those underrepresented modes at this week’s meeting.
Thanks to all the sponsors and all the participants for an amazing Winter Bike Week! Stay tuned for a blog post to share some of the memories and photos and will also announce the winner of the Winter Bike Challenge.
In addition to all the fun, there were also a pair of meetings on Monday. First the Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee met to continue their work to propose a major overhaul to the city’s transportation ordinance. At the previous meeting, there was some compelling testimony around the value of hiring a director of transportation for Madison, but apparently some members of the group have started to back off that enthusiasm. At the end of Monday’s meeting, the talk was about still hiring for a new role, but now more along the lines of a coordinator or manager that would be a peer to the Traffic Engineer and Metro Manager with limited direct authority over transportation decisions. There was little conversation around the committee structure at this meeting. The group plans to meet several more times over the next month to finalize a recommendation.
Proposed design for Bassett Street between Gorham/University and Dayton
There was also an unannounced public input meeting on a proposal to add protected bike lanes to a stretch of Bassett Street. In spite of the poor communications, several Madison Bikes members were able to attend and hear the proposal. While it’s encouraging that the city is trying to improve the bike connections between University Avenue and the Capital City Path, it seemed clear to all in attendance that the proposal was not quite ready for prime time. Engineering has shifted their timeline a bit in order to work on refinements. Expect to see something at the February 22nd Pedestrian, Bicycle, and Motor Vehicle Commission meeting with a public hearing at Board of Public Works on March 8th and again at Common Council on March 21.
This Week
The Madison Bikes monthly board meeting is on Monday. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
On Tuesday, bring your loved one to a special Valentine’s Day edition of the Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee where the conversation will continue around the value of a director of transportation and towards refining the recommendation for our transportation committee structure.
On Thursday, Madison in Motion will meet to consider feedback received from the many city committees over the last two months. This will likely lead to a final draft of the document that will then be presented to the Council.
Madison Bikes board member Chuck at the Frozen Assets race
Winter Bike Week kicked off with the Frozen Asset Fat Bike Race on Friday, followed by Family Music at Cargo Bikes/Domestique and Capital Goldsprint at Motorless Motion on Saturday. And Kids and adults alike had a blast on Sunday at the Fat Bike Sled Pull.
And in addition to all the winter bike fun, there are a couple items of business.
Monday: The Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee meets again to continue their work on a potential rewrite of our transportation ordinance. Then at 6:30 there’s a public input meeting to review a draft concept of a proposed protected bike lane on Bassett Street.
Tuesday: The Madison Bikes Communications Committee will hold its monthly meeting on Tuesday at Blue Moon Bar & Grill
There’s a lot to report from last week’s three transportation-related committee/commission meetings. The Pedestrian, Bike, and Motor Vehicle Commission (PBMVC) started out with another quarterly Traffic Enforcement Activity Report. I pressed Lt. Knight (again) to bring us more actionable information. You can see an example of the report and spreadsheet that is presented each quarter. It’s a lot of data, which basically just shows how much work the Traffic Enforcement team has put in. Citations go up and down based on hours worked and don’t really tell us anything about trends in dangerous activities. Instead, I argued that we need analysis of crash data that helps us pinpoint the leading causes and locations of collisions resulting in injury and loss of life. From there, we would be able to start working on interventions to address these issues. While we should be encouraged that Madison ranked third best in the nation in the recently released Dangerous by Design report, it’s still clear that pedestrian and bicyclists make up a disproportionate number of traffic fatalities in our city. This is definitely an area where we need to look to the data to guide our work.
Next up at PBMVC was a motion to recommend approval of the draft Madison in Motion Sustainable Master Transportation Plan. I’ve been critical of this plan in the past, calling out the lack of specific and clearly articulated action items, lack of accountability, and absence of performance measures. Without these things, this plan is destined to collect dust on the shelf. I shared those comments again here beginning at 00:32:30.
There was also a good discussion about a proposal to complete the Demetral Path connection (you can watch via the link above beginning at 01:00:00). This is an updated proposal from the one that came forward almost a year ago that would have had a significant impact on the OM Village. The new concept (see above) proposes to move the path through the existing parking lot of the commercial building to the north. I enthusiastically support closing this gap as it will become a major corridor for people on bikes once the bike facilities are added to E. Johnson as part of that project. However, I did ask Engineering to explore an alternate routing of this connector within the public right of way. This would save the city $300K in land acquisition costs and would avoid several problems associated with the current proposed alignment. PBMVC voted to refer the item to its February meeting and asked that Engineering develop in detail that alternate concept for further evaluation.
The Transportation Ordinance Rewrite Committee meeting on Wednesday was an engaging one. This ad hoc committee has been meeting since last March to propose revisions to Madison’s current transportation ordinance and is aiming to finalize its recommendation over the next month. The main focus of the group to date has been on a major overhaul to the city’s existing transportation commission/committee structure that would see the dissolution of all seven of the existing commissions/committees/subcommittees (and their up to 54 members) and replace them with two new bodies: the Transportation Policy and Planning Board and a Transportation Commission. While I support the efforts to bring together the different elements of our transportation system, I’m not convinced of the wisdom of splitting transportation policy and planning from operations and implementation. I think there is tremendous value in having the policy and planning decisions driven off of the real life issues that are identified and addressed through operations and implementation. I’m also concerned with the massive cut to the number of citizen members and the negative impact that would have. Another major concern, is that the current proposal eliminates all mode-specific commissions (Transit and Parking & Pedestrian/Bike/Motor Vehicle) along with all requirements to have membership that represents users of transit or bikes or walking or the disabled. These are major concerns that require significant deliberation before moving forward.
And yet in some ways, this massive proposed reorganization of our committee structure pales in comparison to the issue of whether or not the city should fill its long vacant Director of Transportation position. This position has been vacant for well over a decade and many of the issues identified by this body would be directly addressed by filling this position. There was compelling public testimony along those lines from former alders Robbie Webber and Satya Rhodes-Conway who both made strong arguments for the importance of filling this critical leadership position. The members of the ad hoc committee seemed to hear the message clearly and will continue to debate the question at their next scheduled meeting on 2/6.
On Thursday, the Long Range Transportation Planning Committee met and voted to recommend approval of a resolution calling for Establishing Goals for Regional Transit Authority Legislation. This resolution describes the city’s intent to work with surrounding communities to define how an RTA might be structured with the ultimate goal of gaining approval from the State at a later date. An RTA would provide the needed funding to continue to regionalize Metro to more fully connect with surrounding communities outside of the city limits.
Madison Bikes closed out the busy week with our board of directors retreat where we focused on strategic planning for 2017. Watch for more details around opportunities for membership, new events, and more focused work on advocacy. If you’re interested in getting involved, head to our website and drop us a note.
This Week
Tuesday: Consider attending this talk by Global Health Institute Assistant Scientist Jason Vargo and Research Fellow Maggie Grabow entitled Helping Cities Quantify the Health Benefits of Active Travel (4:30pm) or find out more about how a new parking garage on East Main Street will accommodate bikes and impact travel at the Cap East Parking Structure Design Open House (5pm). For Eastsiders, there’s a public input session to develop a Cottage Grove Road Activity Centers Plan at Olbrich Gardens (6:00pm). While it’s not a transportation specific plan, it’s important to have the needs of cyclists represented for these land-use/development/neighborhood plans.
Wednesday: On Wednesday, the Madison Area Transportation Planning Board meets to review the draft Regional Transportation Plan. This is nearing completion and will likely start its rotation through city committees soon.
Saturday: Winter Bike Week continues with a Family Music at the Cargo Bike Shop and the Capital Goldsprint Seriesat Motorless Motion Bicycles.
Sunday: On Sunday, Madison Bikes offers a Fat Bike Sled Pull as part of the Frozen Assets Festival! Sunday also marks the start of our Winter Bike Challenge
Check out all the Bike Winter events here on website or RSVP on Facebook, including the Monday morning commuter station on 2/6 in front of Machinery Row.
