Madison Bikes

Our board member Pepe and two of our volunteer models for the Winter Bike Fashion made an appearance on local radio station WORT this morning. If you missed it, you can listen to the segment here (if the embedded player doesn’t appear, try this link:

We hope to see you and your friends this Saturday at the High Noon Saloon! You can get a preview of some of our models on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadisonBikes/posts/

This past week

The county has been repaving the Cap City Trail from Seminole Highway to Fish Hatchery Rd, and one of the more dramatic changes will be smoothing out the S-curve just west of Fish Hatchery. The steep hill and S-curve at the bottom has caught more than one bicyclist off guard. There is a lot of tree loss, but the path should be safer for everyone.

In case you missed our post on Saturday, we went through some of the frequently asked questions about the wheel tax. Check it out here.

Even though the Council will not formally take up the city budget until Nov 12, there are other meetings and decisions that precede the Council meeting(s). The Finance Committee met this past week to decide which alder amendments to the budget should be forwarded to the full council. There were three besides the wheel tax that we were watching. Funding for weekend maintenance of the paths during the winter passed. Additional funding for crosswalk painting also passed. However, funding to make improvements at several intersections with high crash rates did not get the OK from the Finance Committee.

The week ahead

Plenty of detours to keep track of. The Campus Dr Path east of the Vet School is supposed to close soon and stay closed until March, although it was still open as of Friday. A part of the SW Path northeast of Midvale is supposed to be closed starting Monday morning. Also, work on the Yahara River Path under Johnson is supposed to start on Oct 30. East Mifflin by Lapham school is closed, but should be open on Tuesday. There are more outside of downtown.

The good news on campus is that the work near Limnology — between the Lakeshore Path and Memorial Union is done! Less conflict with pedestrians now.

The best way to keep up with what’s going on is to subscribe to the city’s Friday update from Bike Madison.

Monday

Madison Bikes Community Meeting for all committees at 6:00 pm at Bendy Works, 106 E Doty St, 2nd floor. In case you haven’t noticed, we are no longer posting individual committee meetings. Instead, we are having a “community board meeting” on the fourth Monday of each month. Everyone is welcome, and this is where we will talk about what we need to do in the areas of advocacy, communications, events, and volunteer opportunities. If you want to be involved, but don’t know exactly what area you want to help, this is a great opportunity to find out where you can fit in.

This Monday, we will probably be talking about all the things we need to do — and for which we need help — to out on the Winter Bike Fashion Show on Saturday, Nov 2. If you can help out on Saturday, we still need some volunteers, from demonstrating the bike racks on the bus parked outside to greeting people at the door. Email Liz if you can help out.

Also on Monday is the monthly Bike Fitchburg meeting, 6:30-8:30 pm at the Fitchburg library, 5530 Lacy Rd, Fitchburg.

Tuesday

The city council will hold a special meeting to discuss and vote on the above-mentioned wheel tax. The meeting will be early — 4:30 pm in Room 201 of the City County Building — to allow alders to also attend other committee meetings that evening. A reminder that your voice is important, and you can contact the entire council or just your alder to voice your opinion. Don’t know who your alder is or need contact information? Go to the Council webpage to find that information. You can also attend any council or committee meeting in person to speak or just to fill out a comment card (if you don’t want to stay.) Yes, they do pay attention to constituent comments!

If you are interested in what’s going on with BRT, you can hear about the options for the downtown portion of the routes. City staff are trying to decide whether the BRT should go around the Square, the outer loop, or some other route. The BRT public information session is 6:30-8:00 pm at the Madison Senior Center, 330 W Mifflin.

Thursday

Although there aren’t any big issues of interest to bicyclists on the Transportation Commission agenda, it’s always a good idea to keep track of what is up with the overall transportation discussion. You can watch the meeting or check out the agenda here. Or attend in person: 5:00 pm in Room 215 of the Madison Municipal Bldg.

Saturday

As you must know by now, if you’ve been reading any of our communication, is the Winter Bike Fashion Show at the High Noon Saloon from 1:00-4:00 pm. It’s free, family-friendly, very fun, and very informative.

Before the WBFS, you can also drop by the Mayor’s Neighborhood Roundtable at the Central Library from 9:00 am-Noon. This is a great place to find out what’s going on across the city, meet up with neighborhood organizers, and find out more about what resources are available to improve your part of the city.

Sunday

Bombay Bicycle Club Fall Meeting and Potluck at the Lussier Center at 5:00 pm. You must be a member of Bombay and RSVP to attend. More information can be found here.

2019 Battle of Waterloo cyclocross races at Waterloo Fireman’s Park 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. Bring your bike and join in on the fun, or come out to cheer on the riders as they compete in the fast and furious sport known as cyclocross! Food and beverage available for purchase – Cowbells encouraged!

There has been a lot of discussion, as well as confusion, about the “Wheel Tax” that the mayor has proposed as part of the upcoming budget. So we thought we’d try to answer some of the questions that have popped up as well as explain why we think that bicyclists should care about it.

What is a wheel tax?

Simply put, it is a local registration fee for your car. Each year you have to renew the registration on your car with the state of Wisconsin, and this is just the same as that registration fee, except this additional fee goes to the city of Madison if your car is registered to an address in the city. You will pay it at the same time as you pay for state registration, and the state will send the money back to the city.

Why is the city doing this now?

The city has a deficit for the upcoming budget year. This means that we either have to reduce spending or raise more revenue.

The state legislature has made it very difficult for cities to raise additional funds for their budgets. There is a cap on how much they can raise property taxes each year. But Madison is growing, and many people would like to have a better transit system. This money will allow the city to both fund basic services (police, fire, parks, garbage pick-up, social services) as well as maintain or expand transit.

Without additional revenue or cuts in other areas, current Metro service would need to be cut. This would mean less frequent buses, shorter service hours, or the elimination of whole routes. Part of the wheel tax revenue would also be used to provide more summer bus passes to youth or bus passes for people with low incomes.

One big project the city wants to undertake is bus rapid transit (BRT), which has been discussed extensively for the last couple of years. BRT is a special type of transit that is faster than regular buses, but cheaper than rail. There’s a lot of details that we can’t cover here, but suffice it to say that transportation planners, elected officials, and other decision makers in the city have decided that this is the best way to improve transit in Madison. You may or may not agree, but if you want more information, go to http://www.madisonbrt.com/

Having a dedicated source of funding to support transit will also help the city get federal funding. We’ve applied for federal funding before, but haven’t gotten it. The federal government likes to see some assurance that a project will go through, and one way to show that is to have a pot of money. We have to compete with other communities that have dedicated funding for transit from a regional transit authority (RTA), a local sales tax, or other dedicated funding.

So, I’ve heard that a wheel tax has to be used only for transportation. But I’ve also heard the mayor and others talk about how this new fee will be used for other city services.

Yes, that is a bit confusing. By state law, local registration fees or wheel taxes can only be used for transportation costs. But right now, we are using property taxes to support transit, walking, biking, as well as driving operations and infrastructure — everything from snow plowing to patching roads and paths, as well as actually running Metro, buying gas for the buses, and paying the drivers. So what we are really doing is moving some of those expenses off the property taxes and moving them to the wheel tax. But ultimately all the money ends up in the same pot, so now we have additional property taxes to pay for those non-transportation things. If we don’t pass the wheel tax, we are going to have to make cuts somewhere else.

So for people that like transit, you can think of this as taxes car owners to pay for transit. If you think transit is not useful to you or the city shouldn’t be spending more money on it — and there are plenty of people out there who feel that way — it’s easier to swallow that the wheel tax will fund things they want to fund.

Isn’t a wheel tax regressive? If you have a junker car you pay the same as someone with a new luxury car.

Yes, that is true. No matter your income or wealth, no matter what car you drive: If you have a car, you will pay the same fee. But we don’t have many choices, given the constraints that the state has put on cities. We can’t use many of the tools that are used in other states, like local gas taxes, an RTA, local sales taxes, or other revenue sources (many of which are regressive as well). This is pretty much all we have. And low-income residents are less likely to have a car or multiple cars in their family than those with more money. And low-income residents are also more likely to be dependent on transit. Improvements to transit will benefit low-income residents (and cuts in Metro service would hit them especially hard). The city is also planning on using some of the revenue to provide support to low-income residents to offset the cost of the fee. We are prohibited by state law from refunding the fee or prorating it by income.

I ride my bike almost everywhere. Why should I care about transit?

Madison needs to move away from depending on cars and get more people using other modes. Fewer cars on the road both directly benefits bicyclists by making the roads safer and more pleasant, and it will free up space for better bike infrastructure, bike parking corrals, and other things we want. But that is only going to happen if we give people alternatives to driving their private cars. Transit is a key piece of that.

And a lot of people who bike also use transit, when they don’t want to ride because of weather, illness, carrying a bunch of stuff, traveling with people who don’t bike, or even just because they are tired. Transit allows us to throw our bike on the bus if we have a flat tire or the weather turns nasty. Transit lets less committed bicyclists or new bike commuters know that they have a back up. It allows more people to bike because they know they won’t be stuck if something happens. Bicyclists should all be out there pushing for more and better transit, because it just makes it easier to bike, even if you never use it.

Madison Bikes had a great time at the Science Fair on the Square last Friday.

First things first: If you missed our action alert yesterday: There still a little bit of time to send an email to the City’s finance committee and support a budget amendment that would expand winter path maintenance. Find all the details in yesterday’s post.

Some construction updates (for a complete list of updates go to the Bike Madison newsletter linked at the bottom of the post):

• Many of you have been wondering when the traffic signals at the new Willy/Blount diagonal crossing would be turned out. Well, there’s been small progress, and at this point the lights are flashing. According to the Bike Madison newsletter, they should be fully functional by the end of this week.
• Starting next week, there will be a detour on the SW Path. Reconstruction of a culvert will close the path east of Midvale until the end of the year. The detour will be via a temporary protected bike lane on Midvale, Yuma, and Council Crest.

On Monday and Wednesday, there will be Open Houses about the proposed Wisconsin River Recreation Bridge in Sauk City. The Monday one is from 6:30 – 8:30pm at Wisconsin Heights High School in Mazomanie. The Wednesday meeting is also from 6:30 – 8:30pm at River Arts Center (Sauk Prairie School District), 105 9th St., Prairie Du Sac. More info on the project on Facebook.

On Wednesday, it’s your last change to attend the Cyclocross Practice series organized by Madison Parks, Capitol Off Road Pathfinders, L5 and Neff Cycling. Starts at 5pm in Marshall Park.

This Friday is the last Friday of the month, which around the world is the day for Critical Mass. After a successful Critical Mass as part of the Climate Strike, there has been interest in making it a regular event. Meets at 6pm at the beer garden in Olbrich Park.

On Saturday, there’s another cyclocross race. Come to Angell Park in Sun Prairie for this year’s CrossFire race. Includes costumes, a kid’s race, and free entries for first-time cyclocross racers.

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city’s Bike Madison page.

It’s city budget season in Madison, and we want to alert you of a budget amendment that would greatly improve winter maintenance on our major shared use paths.

What’s the current situation? On primary paths, such as the Cap City or the Southwest Path, snow will usually be cleared by 7am from Monday on Friday. Smaller paths and trails will be cleared by 4:30pm, also only Monday to Friday. On the weekend and on holidays, snow and ice clearing depend on staff availability, which often means no clearing happens.

Why is this a problem? Those of us walk, roll, and bike on the paths during the winter know all too well what the consequence of not clearing the path 7 days a week can be. The immediate impact is that if you have to rely on paths on the weekend to get to work, run errands, or reach your nearest Metro stop, you’re often out of luck. What’s worse: Not clearing the snow for more than 48 hours (or 72 hours if it’s a long holiday weekend) means that snow will be compacted, rutted, or have turned into ice by the time the plows and sweepers come around. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of the clearing operations and can have negative impacts for many days or even weeks to come. If we want bicycles to be a viable transportation option in Madison, we can’t focus only on weekday 9-5 commuters.

What is proposed? The amendment to the city’s operating budget, sponsored by Alder Kemble and co-sponsored by Alder Foster, would allocate additional funding for snow clearing. This would allow Engineering and Parks staff to increase service on weekends and holidays so that clearing on arterial paths can occur within 12 hours after a winter event, weekday, weekend and holiday alike.

What you can do? If you think clearing the path 7 days a week is a good idea, consider sending an email to the Finance Committee, supporting budget amendment 4 (“Snow & Ice Control on Arterial Shared Use Paths”). The Committee meets tomorrow (Monday, 10/21), and so submit your comments ASAP. To help members of the committee understand the importance of keeping the paths clear and accessible 7 days a week, it can be helpful to share your own experience, whether you’re walking or riding on the paths in winter. Do you rely on biking and walking as your primary means of transportation? Have you had a crash because of snow and ice on our paths? Is it difficult for you to get to your job because have to work on weekends? Are there specific problem spots that you regularly encounter on the primary and secondary paths? After all, if you own a home in Madison, you are expected to keep your sidewalks clear of snow and ice all week. It’s hard to argue that different rules should apply to the City.

Who to send your email to? Below are the members of the Finance Committee. It’s also a good idea to include your district’s alder, as ultimately the whole Common Council will vote on the budget. You can find out who your alder is here.

district1@cityofmadison.com,

district7@cityofmadison.com,

district19@cityofmadison.com,

district4@cityofmadison.com,

district18@cityofmadison.com,

mayor@cityofmadison.com,

district5@cityofmadison.com

We had some warm weather for the first part of the week, but as of Friday colder weather has moved into the area. Winter is coming. If you didn’t know, Madison Bikes hosts an annual Winter Bike Fashion Show to show people just how easy it is to keep biking throughout the winter! This year’s Winter Bike Fashion Show will be hosted at the High Noon Saloon on Saturday November 2nd from 1 to 4 PM! More info here.

If you want to join the Madison Bikes Board of Directors, you have until October 20 to throw your cycling cap into the ring. More info in last week’s blog post.

This Week

Wednesday, October 16

At 5:00 PM the Transportation Commission (TC) will meet in Room 215 of the Madison Municipal Building at 215 Martin Luther King Boulevard. One agenda item is on a toolkit for traffic safety. Hopefully that toolkit includes all options to improve the safety of all non-motorists, including pedestrians and bicyclists. Read the full agenda here.

From 5:30 PM to 6:45 PM at Badger Prairie County Park there is a free Cyclocross Practice opportunity. Badger Prairie County Park is located at 4654 Maple Grove Drive in Verona. The free cyclocross practice is sponsored by the Capital Off-Road Pathfinders, L5, Neff Cycling, and Madison Parks.

At 6:00 PM, there will be a Basic Brakes Class at the University Bicycle Resource Center in the Helen C. White Garage (Lot 6) across from the Memorial Union. Bring your bike and learn from India Viola how to identify and use your barrel adjusters and how to clean braking surfaces! Free Planet Bike Blinky lights to the first five (5) attendees! No registration is required and anyone is free to join! Classes are first come, first serve, limit twenty (20) people.

Saturday, October 19

If you head out to Trek’s headquarters in Waterloo, you can put your cyclocross skills to the test. “GPJO 2019: a cyclocross celebration” will host races all day starting at 9 am. More info here, or you can go straight to the registration here.

If you’re more interested in road biking, join the Trek Store West for the El Diablo Gran Fondo, a supported 92 miles to Devil’s Lake and back. It seems like registration is free. More info here; starts with a breakfast at 7:30 am; departs 8:30 am.

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city’s Bike Madison page.

Want to become more involved in local bicycle advocacy? Consider joining the Madison Bikes board of directors.

We have already received several exciting applications. But it’s not too late to throw your hat into the ring! We are extending the application deadline to October 20.

Madison Bikes is looking for people who are dedicated, passionate, strong communicators, good compromisers, organized, and able to commit time and energy to promoting biking as a priority in the city of Madison. There are no paid staff and everything we do—from fundraising to advocacy to communications to events—is done by our volunteer board and volunteer committee members.

We are currently accepting applications for up to eight seats on the Madison Bikes Board of Directors, with elections taking place in December.

Our organization is committed to the goal of building a culturally diverse and pluralistic board committed to equity in our work. We strongly encourage applications from people of color, women, and other groups who are underrepresented in bike advocacy.

The Madison Bikes board is an all-volunteer working board. We expect board members to:

• Attend our monthly board meetings (6-8pm every third Monday of the month) and our Community Meetings (4th Monday)

• Participate in one or more of our focus areas and work on tasks between meetings

• Have passion for our organization’s vision: Making Madison a city where anyone can ride a bicycle conveniently and comfortably to any place in the city and neighboring communities year round.

Other examples of things our board members do:

• Write for our blog

• Plan, organize, and promote events such as Bike Week or the Winter Bike Fashion Show

• Attend city-held meetings (public input meetings, City Council meetings, local and regional transportation committee meetings)

• Mobilize the community to advocate for bike projects
• Meet and liaise with community partners (neighborhood associations, non-profits, other bike advocacy groups)

• Contribute to fundraising and organizational development efforts

If you are interested in joining our board, please complete this application form by October 20. If you would like to nominate someone other than yourself, please forward this post/email to them and ask them to apply.

Our executive board will review all application submissions and follow up with all applicants with next steps.

Have questions? Email Heather!

This week

Monday

The Winter Bike Fashion Show modeling application extended deadline ends today. Read more about what it means to be a model, and how to apply here. No experience needed.

Wednesday

It’s cyclocross season! Whether you’re cross-curious or are already a ‘crosser but want to improve your skills, the weekly cyclocross workshop series by Madison Parks and partners is for you. This week, the workshop is happening at Orchard Ridge Valley Park on Wednesday from 5:30-7 pm. Free and open to all.

Saturday

Join the iconic Badger Prairie Cyclocross race! Come race, spectate, or both. 2019 will feature food and beverage vendors, one of the largest prize payouts in Wisconsin, a Uni-Cross race, and more! More information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/384635395539004/

As always, you can find an overview of all bike events on our Community Bike Calendar. Email us at info@madisonbikes.org to add your events. And if you value our newsletter and other work, consider donating to Madison Bikes. For construction updates, check out the city’s Bike Madison page.

Once more, we just want to remind you that YOU are important in making the city a better place to bike and to help others feel comfortable on the city streets and paths. Speak up about what you care about; talk to city staff, your alder, your employer, the management of the places you shop, or other decision makers. Help us out by volunteering and donating. And be an example to others, like maybe being a model of how to get around by bike. (See below for an upcoming chance.)

Although we still have warm weather coming up this week, we can all feel the chill creeping into the air. But not only is it not time to put your bike away, it’s actually time to start thinking about how to equip yourself and your bike to ride all winter.

We are busy planning the Winter Bike Fashion Show, and just in case all our blog posts and Facebook messages have escaped your notice, remember to mark your calendar for Saturday, Nov 2 at the High Noon from 1:00-4:00 pm. Invite your friends, especially the ones who think you are nuts for biking in the winter. Or maybe you are winter-bike curious? This is just the event for you. And it’s family friendly.

BUT‚Ķ. We will need models! Would you be willing to share your wisdom? Show off your favorite cold weather clothing trick? Talk about fat vs studded vs skinny tires? Explain how your route changes –⁠ or doesn’t –⁠ when there’s ice and snow to deal with? No experience needed. Just fill out this form, and we’ll contact you. (It says the deadline is Sept 30, but if you are interested, just let us know.)

And if you want to help us with the event, your input and time would be quite welcome. We are an all-volunteer organization, so drop us a note if you want to help with this event or any other aspect of the organization.

Last week

Have you ever seen that velomobile cruising around town? The State Journal ran a story about Nick Hein, the owner, so now you can read all about the vehicle and the man who pedals it.

Another bicyclist was severely injured by a hit-and-run driver, this time on the 900 block of South Park St. Unfortunately, this part of the road does not have bike lanes, despite what the article says. There are sharrows in the right lane, but that treatment is completely inadequate for such a high-volume road, where drivers often far exceed the 30 mph speed limit.

This past Saturday, the city sponsored a Bike and Talk Action Workshop to discuss how to more safely get around the south side and what improvements need to be made to make the area safer. Maybe they talked about the lack of bike lanes on Park St?

The week ahead

Monday

Another open house to gather ideas for a plan for Law Park will be held 6:00-7:30 pm at Badger Rock Neighborhood Center, 501 East Badger Rd. Since this is an important walking and biking corridor for all of us, your input is important. There have been five open houses, and this is the last one, so if you can’t make this one and still want to provide input, email city staff at LawPark@cityofmadison.com.

Wednesday

Two miles of the Cap City Trail will be closed for resurfacing. The section that will be closed is between Fish Hatchery Road and Seminole Highway. Work is expected to be completed sometime in November. More information is available in this State Journal article.

If you are curious about cyclocross or want to practice, stop by Badger Prairie County Park, 4654 Maple Grove Dr, Verona, from 5:30-7:00 pm. A series of practices are happening now through the end of October. There is always a beginner and intermediate option. More information about what to expect and the groups putting it on is available on the Madison Bikes Community Calendar.

Also Wednesday is the Madison Area Transportation Planning Board (MPO) meeting at the Water Utility Building, 119 E Olin Ave, from 6:30-8:30 pm. The MPO allocates all the federal transportation money for the entire metro region, and this month they will be approving the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP), that’s all the projects that might get funding for the next five years. This is done every year with a new TIP, but it’s an incite into where your money is being spent. The MPO will also have a presentation on the bus rapid transit planning study. Want to see the materials for any of this? You can find them here as a PDF.

For more information….

More information on road projects and upcoming events are available from the city via the Bike Madison weekly update put out by the city Pedestrian-Bicycle Coordinator. This weekly email s much more detailed information about specific construction, detours, and official city business. Thanks for Renee Callaway for keeping up informed.

And if you have a anything to add to the Madison Bikes Community Calendar, send us an email.

Do you appreciate the weekly updates and work that Madison Bikes is doing to improve the city for all ages and abilities? You can donate to support our work.