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WFP: City looks ready to roll with concrete bike-lane curbs (Aug.23'17)
by Beth McKechnie 23 Aug '17

23 Aug '17

*City looks ready to roll with concrete bike-lane curbs * https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/city-flip-flops-on- use-of-concrete-curbs-for-bike-lanes-441458283.html CITY hall appears to be reconsidering its opposition to the use of low-profile concrete curbs for laying out protected bike lanes in Winnipeg. The city announced a nine-month pilot project Tuesday that would result in the placement of the concrete curbs on a short block in the Exchange District and on a 100-metre stretch of … [View More]Sherbrook Street, south of Cumberland Avenue. The move is surprising. Coun. Janice Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert) has been proposing a similar approach for months, but each time, her efforts were rejected by the administration and the public works committee on the grounds the curbs were contrary to the city’s “award-winning” cycling strategy, which uses time-consuming and more expensive poured concrete. “It just goes to show the dysfunction we operate under at city hall,” Lukes said. “Of course, I’m happy, but what a lot of needless nonsense, time and effort was spent when they were going to do it all along.” Stephanie Whitehouse, city hall’s active transportation (AT) co-ordinator, said the nine-month pilot is a “materials test” to determine the suitability of the low-profile, portable concrete curbs, but added she was excited about the move. Whitehouse said the city’s awardwinning AT strategy places the highest priority on building protected bike lanes leading into and throughout the downtown network, but it doesn’t stipulate which materials to be used. She said the experience of other municipalities has shown concrete curbs to be an easy, efficient and less expensive way to build a bike network. The pilot will determine if they emerge as a preferred material to the city’s traditional method of using poured concrete. “I’m excited about this one. I think it’s a win,” Whitehouse said. “They’re great, they’re adjustable and movable.” Whitehouse said it took crews only three hours to lay down the 100 metres of concrete curbs on Sherbrook Street, adding she believes crews can beat that time on a similar stretch Wednesday along Bannatyne Avenue, between King and Albert streets. Whitehouse said the pilot program will determine if the concrete curbs are compatible with winter snow-clearing and ensure they are durable. “We don’t want to find efficiencies in installation and then discover we’ve created a whole host of deficiencies in our ability to deliver a street and cycling maintenance programs,” she said. The City of Winnipeg has been slow to adopt and resistant to using adjustable materials to construct protected bike lanes. While Winnipeg’s current approved plan is to build 10 kilometres of protected bike lanes downtown over a three-year period, Calgary built a 6.6km network in four months in 2015 and Edmonton built a seven-km network in a three-month span earlier this year. Both cities used the low-profile concrete curbs, along with paint and flexible bollards. Other municipalities, including Vancouver and Ottawa, have also incorporated the concrete curbs, along with other portable/adjustable materials, including planters, in constructing protected bike lanes. Whitehouse said regardless of the outcome of the pilot program, the city is committed to constructing the Garry Street portion of the downtown network using poured concrete methods, as part of a major roadway reconstruction. “We recognize this as an important material and a potential mechanism for delivering protected facilities,” she said. “They’re a great way to get (bike lanes) in and a more efficient way and generally more cost-effective.” Whitehouse said staff decided to do the $15,000 pilot as part of a $100,000 initiative for the enhancement of delineated bike lanes. The overall funding had been approved by council, part of its $4.7 million for active transportation for 2017. Whitehouse said the city will be looking for feedback from motorists and cyclists for the pilot areas. While the concrete curbs are fixed into the roadway, they are portable and can be moved and the routes adjusted in response to public concerns. (Details on the pilot program can be found on the city’s website: wfp.to/walkbike.) “Once people get a taste of it, they’ll want more,” Lukes said. “I’m glad we made the big effort and put the spotlight on the need for it.” aldo.santin(a)freepress.mb.ca * * * * * Also coverage on CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ manitoba/winnipeg-adjustable-bike-lanes-1.4258288 [View Less]

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New White Paper on Advisory Bike Lanes
by Mark Cohoe 18 Aug '17

18 Aug '17

Alta Planning + Design has put together an excellent white paper on Advisory Bike Lanes <http://altaplanning.com/resources/advisory-bike-lanes-north-america/> that is well worth reading. Of note, there is a Canadian example (Somerset Street East in Ottawa). For those wondering what an advisory bike lane is, it's essentially a bike lane with a dashed lane marking between the bike lane and the travel lane. The big difference from a normal bike lane is that vehicles share a two-way center … [View More]

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Considerate Constructors
by Charles Feaver 18 Aug '17

18 Aug '17

There is a program in the UK to encourage builders to be neighbourhood-friendly and ecologically careful in their building activities. The sites which meet the guidelines display the attached poster on their hoardings. The organization is going international; maybe we could invite them to Winnipeg... https://www.ccscheme.org.uk/ The Considerate Constructors Scheme is a non-profit-making, independent organisation founded in 1997 by the construction industry to improve its image. … [View More]

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Million dollar neighbourhoods
by Jeremy Hull 13 Aug '17

13 Aug '17

Walkable mixed-use neighborhoods help families build wealth—enough to help fund big-ticket items like college and retirement. https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/08/07/million-dollar-neighborhood <https://www.cnu.org/node/538> ROBERT STEUTEVILLE <https://www.cnu.org/node/538> AUG. 7, 2017 Houses appreciate. Cars depreciate. That simple contrast is a key to building wealth over a lifetime, writes Todd Litman, a researcher with the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. Even … [View More]though housing is more expensive in walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods, vehicle costs are substantially lower. Households in such neighborhoods shift their spending from transportation to housing. Over 40 years, this shift will add a million dollars of net worth to a typical household, Litman calculates. That's enough to put children through college and/or to retire on—all from careful choice in housing location. There are plenty of other reasons to live in a walkable neighborhood—among them better health because exercise is built into the daily routine, less damage to the environment by cutting carbon emissions, and less time spent driving which frees up leisure. But the "million dollars" should really get people's attention. "Urban fringe homes generally offer more space per dollar, and so appear to be better investments, but there are other economic factors to consider. By shifting household spending from transport to real estate, Smart Growth tends to increase household wealth, and by providing more affordable transport options it increases economic resilience," says Litman, in a report called *Selling Smart Growth* <http://www.vtpi.org/ssg.pdf>. In the last generation, urban housing in North America has appreciated faster than suburban or rural housing. This price appreciation has added to the wealth of those who have invested in multimodal places. The appreciation is due to the rising demand for walkable urban places due to changing demographics, reduced crime, and the return of jobs to urban centers. Housing appreciation in Urban, Suburban, and Rural locations over the last 20 years. Source: Todd Litman, *Selling Smart Growth*. Litman discusses his own experience living in a walkable neighborhood in Victoria, British Columbia. • He purchased a house in 1995 for $236,000 • That house is currently worth about $750,000 • In 2025, when the mortgage is paid and Litman can retire, it "should be worth more than a million dollars," he says. That's a thirty year time period in Canada, but he has run the numbers for the US over 40 years for three scenarios: the TOD (transit-oriented development) location—a house in a walkable neighborhood with transit access; the inner-ring suburb; and the urban fringe. The fairly typical $60,000/year US household can afford $27,000 in combined housing and transportation expenses (that's 45 percent of income for the two expenses together). "After ten years the TOD home builds $63,789 more equity, and after 25 years $448,217 more equity, than an urban fringe home. If, starting at age 25, a household always chooses TOD homes and invests the transport savings in real estate, they can retire at age 65 with approximately $1.8 million in equity, $1,016,561 more than if they purchased urban fringe houses with high transportation costs," Litman calculates. Living in a walkable neighborhood benefits those who buy homes, but how about renters? The math works for non-homeowners as well. Households can save substantial money by reducing the number of cars the family owns, eliminating them entirely, and/or reducing the mileage on the cars they do own. For this, they have to live in a walkable neighborhood. Here are typical numbers for household living options: The potential savings are demonstrated in the Housing & Transportation Affordability Index <http://htaindex.cnt.org/> (H&T Index), created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago. The Index makes the case that households should not spend more than 45 percent of their income for housing and transportation combined. This goal is best achieved in walkable neighborhoods, even though the cost per square foot of housing may be higher in those neighborhoods. H&T Index of the Pittsburgh area shows affordability based on housing, left, and housing and transportation, right, in the Pittsburgh region. Distant areas are relatively less affordable. CNT founder Scott Bernstein notes that poor and working-class families are routinely given financial advice on how to get a car loan, but they are not educated on the financial advantages of reducing transportation expenses. Less affluent households in distant suburbs are often caught in a bind, Bernstein notes. Such households may use strategies to reduce car costs—especially owning older cars—but higher maintenance costs kick in when the car is driven a lot of miles. "It is difficult to spend less than about $6,000 annually to legally own and operate a high-annual-mileage vehicle," says Litman. The following are the characteristics of multi-modal neighborhoods where households can best cut their transportation costs: - An urban center is nearby. - Walking and cycling conditions are excellent. - Density is sufficient and housing is diverse. - Homes are within an easy 10-minute walk of commonly needed services (public transit, shops, schools, parks, etc.). - Streets are complete (designed for multiple users) and well connected. - Public transit and taxi/ride-hailing services are adequate. - Car-sharing (vehicle rental services) is available. - Delivery services are available. "Realtors should be paying attention to this," says Peter Katz, who co-presented this research in a session with Litman at CNU 25 in Seattle in May. Realtors have been selling "drive 'til you qualify," advising clients to buy the cheaper house further out regardless of transportation costs. "This doesn't serve Realtors for two reasons. It lowers the dollar value of their fee and it may eliminate the fee altogether, because the customer is looking at an entirely different location with perhaps a different Realtor." Robert Steuteville is editor of Public Square: A CNU Journal and senior communications adviser for the Congress for the New Urbanism. <https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/author/robert-steuteville-1> [View Less]

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New E-Petition to support federal legislation on sideguards on trucks
by Anders Swanson 10 Aug '17

10 Aug '17

[I know Jeannette, the sponsor of this bill. Her daughter was killed in Montreal. She has been successful in having this implemented in numerous jurisdictions, but is now aiming to see it happen at the federal level. See below if you wish to review and consider signing and/or spreading among your networks. - Anders] https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1208

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AT Webinar Invite: Incorporating Public Art into Transportation Corridors, Wed, Aug 16, 2-3pm, EcoCentre
by Beth McKechnie 10 Aug '17

10 Aug '17

Green Action Centre and Bike Winnipeg invite you to join us for a local viewing of this month's APBP <http://www.apbp.org/> webinar: *Incorporating Public Art into Transportation CorridorsWednesday, August 16 | 2:00 - 3:00 pm CDT * The webinar viewing takes place in the EcoCentre boardroom (3rd floor, 303 Portage Ave) and will be followed by group discussion of local applications for those who wish to stay. RSVPs appreciated but not necessary. Hope to see you then! cheers, Beth … [View More]

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Forget the rest: The real reason to support active commuting
by Beth McKechnie 10 Aug '17

10 Aug '17

A new study offers perhaps the most definitive reason yet why society should be doing more to encourage cycling, and serves as another reminder that the health benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks. This British study <http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1456> took a comprehensive look at the health benefits of bicycle commuting, and the results are staggering. Over the course of the study, the 263,450 subjects who were under review had a 41 per cent lower chance of death than those … [View More]who didn’t. “Cycle commuters had a 52 per cent lower risk of dying from heart disease and a 40 per cent lower risk of dying from cancer. They also had 46 per cent lower risk of developing heart disease and a 45 per cent lower risk of developing cancer at all,” the study’s authors wrote <http://theconversation.com/cycling-to-work-major-new-study-suggests-health-…> . Just let those numbers soak in a bit. They truly are significant. If a pharmaceutical company created a pill that could reduce your chance of dying by almost half, with particular success against those stubborn scourges of humanity of cancer and heart disease, it would be heralded as a wonder drug. Luckily, this pill is already hanging from the rafters of your garage. Two things struck me particularly from the study. In their analysis, the researchers accounted for the risk associated with road accidents, which offers further evidence that even the supposed risks of riding a bike are vastly outweighed by the benefits of riding. Put another way: Our irrational fear of the relatively small risk of a blow to the head is overriding the guaranteed health benefits of bicycle commuting. Our assessment of risk in this context is, to be blunt, pretty messed up. This mirrors the message of this new Australian documentary <https://youtu.be/nGsM-XIuGwo>This mirrors the message of this new Australian documentary arguing against the country’s mandatory helmet law. In it, public health doctors and advocates express the same message: the health benefits of cycling far outweigh the risk of injury, so we should be doing more to make it easier to ride bikes daily for transportation. Which leads me to the second aspect of the study that really caught my attention. Of most benefit here wasn’t just riding a bike, but bicycle commuting. This is a pretty significant distinction. That distinction is the difference between encouraging people to get out and exercise and making it easier for people to simply use a bike in their everyday lives. The medical community has been encouraging us for nearly a century to do the former, and despite the mainstreaming of things like running and going to the gym, we keep getting more sedentary, more obese and more unhealthy. That approach to health isn’t exactly a ringing success. But this study seems to be mirroring what many cycling advocates have long said, and what bike commuters preach about all the time: But this study seems to be mirroring what many cycling advocates have long said, and what bike commuters preach about all the time:* Active living works when it’s part of our day, not an add-on.* The study found most of the benefits from cycling come in those situations in which cycling has already been built into the daily lives of people. In the world’s great bike cities, for example, people don’t bike because it’s good for them any more than they bike because it improves the street life of the city or because, God forbid, it reduces their carbon footprint. If you ask them, they will tell you that they ride a bike because it’s quick and easy. “Policies designed to affect a population level modal shift to more active modes of commuting, particularly cycle commuting (eg, cycle lanes, city bike hire, subsidised cycle purchase schemes, and increasing provision for cycles on public transport), present major opportunities for the improvement of public health,” according to the study’s conclusion. Therein lies the solution. If we want society to realize that 41 per cent improvement in our health that comes with bicycle commuting, we need to make it fast and easy to get places on a bike. That means continuing to accommodate bikes on our streets and building cities around the idea of active transportation. We’ve already started in most cities. We just need to hurry up. http://shifter.info/forget-all-the-other-reasons-you-should-be-riding-a-bik… [View Less]

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Downtown Columbus will buy bus rides for 43, 000 workers
by Beth McKechnie 09 Aug '17

09 Aug '17

Property owners in the Ohio capital's core are rethinking the relationship between cars and jobs. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/08/downtown-columbus-will-buy-b… Despite a surge of redevelopment in downtown Columbus, office rents are tumbling and vacancy rates are on the up. The problem, business leaders say: Lack of parking. A structured parking space in the Ohio capital’s space-crunched core runs nearly $25,000 a year, which typically isn’t covered by revenues. So developers … [View More]feel hamstrung from building new garages, and the city is wary of subsidizing them; building to meet parking demand, after all, is an exercise in futility <https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/01/the-strongest-case-yet-that-…>. Meanwhile, employers fear they’re losing ground to suburban competitors. Now Columbus has found an out-of-the-box solution, following a vote by downtown property owners last week. Starting next summer, they’ll buy transit passes for thousands of workers <http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170802/program-approved-to-give-free-bus-pas…> . Some 43,000 employees inside a special improvement district will be eligible for annual bus passes, free to them and paid for primarily by the 550 building owners in the area. “Capital Crossroads” property holders will pay 3 cents per square foot of space per year, which will generate about half of the $5 million subsidy. Grants and fundraising by Capital Crossroads board leaders will raise the rest. The Central Ohio Transit Authority has said it will offer the passes at a deep discount <https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/columbus-ohio-free-bus-passes>. The decision follows a successful pilot that ran from June 2015 through January 2017, which doubled the share of bus commuters among 844 employees at four companies in the district from 6.4 percent to 12.2 percent. If those results can be replicated across the entire downtown district, “Capital Crossroads estimates that it would free up 2,400 parking spaces—about four parking garages—and allow for 2,900 more people to work in the district,” according to the *Columbus Dispatch* <http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170312/building-owners-might-subsidize-free-…> . “Between 4,000 and 5,000 people would trade their cars for COTA on their commute, the district estimates.” In some ways, Columbus’ solution is a textbook “transportation demand management” strategy to nudge drivers out of single-occupancy cars, and reduce congestion, pollution, and road wear. San Francisco, Boulder, Cambridge, and others have TDM ordinances requiring developers to include transit-oriented amenities in new properties. Cities all over the country require developers to pay infrastructure impact fees, which often feed transit budgets <http://sf-planning.org/impact-fees>. And employers often help cover the cost of their employees’ transit passes. But this program will be the first in the country where bus passes are directly funded by property owners, according to Cleve Ricksecker, executive director of Capital Crossroads, and many cities are keeping a watchful eye on its deployment. “The more people who think about this, the more sense it makes,” Ricksecker told the *Columbus Dispatch* <http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170802/program-approved-to-give-free-bus-pas…> . There is deep and rather remarkable logic coming to the surface here. As the famed transportation scholar Donald Shoup has put it, the true costs of parking are largely hidden from drivers. Developers, property owners, employers, and cities subsidize the costs of parking infrastructure because of the seemingly un-severable connection they make between car access and economic viability. Columbus’s new program adds capacity to the number of commuters downtown can handle, and it also shows an optimism among property owners—who have everything to lose—that cars aren’t everything when it comes to a thriving downtown economy. Transportation demand management isn’t a silver bullet; many programs that pay commuters to take transit rather than drive have not yielded enduring behavioral changes. Some critics say that courting transit commuters with free passes takes the pressure off transportation authorities to build the higher-capacity, higher-frequency service that would organically attract more riders. [View Less]

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New, authoritative reference on protected bikeways (ITE)
by Beth McKechnie 08 Aug '17

08 Aug '17

*From People for Bikes:* If the new *Protected Bikeways Practitioners Guide *from the Institute for Transportation Engineers were a record, it'd be a Jay-Z album: sampling the famous and the obscure to create something new. The 36-page document published this week (and available <http://ecommerce.ite.org/IMIS/ItemDetail?iProductCode=IR-144&Category=PUB&W…> to ITE members for $25, nonmembers for $31.50) remixes some of the most useful data, recommendations and perspectives from … [View More]

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Undercover bike police seek out dangerous drivers
by Beth McKechnie 02 Aug '17

02 Aug '17

*Undercover bike police seek out dangerous drivers* https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/undercover-bike-police-seek-out-dan… Undercover police officers wearing plain clothes and video cameras have been sent out on bicycles to catch motorists who endanger cyclists by driving too close or cutting them up. The initiative was launched by the Metropolitan Police yesterday to increase safety for cycling commuters in London, where more than half a million daily journeys are made by bicycle. … [View More] Analysis from City of Westminster council in 2013 showed that more than two thirds of collisions between bicycles and motor vehicles in central London were the motorist’s fault. Police have launched the programme to focus on motorists who drive dangerously, but officers will also pull up cyclists who misbehave, with one senior officer warning: “We can’t be everywhere, but we could be anywhere.” Motoring groups have welcomed efforts to increase safety for cyclists, but expressed concerns that resources could be better deployed by having more visible traffic officers, whose numbers have been cut by more than a quarter over five years. The Met said: “Officers . . . will go to any location, at any time, in any borough, based on intelligence and complaints, to ensure drivers properly obey the rules of the road.” The officers, riding unmarked bicycles donated by BMW, will prioritise three common driving offences, including the tailgating of cyclists, unsafe overtaking, and turning across a cyclist’s path. “If officers encounter a driver committing any of these offences, they will identify them to a nearby, marked police motorcycle rider, who will stop and engage with them,” police said. The motorist will be given a presentation on Highway Code rules governing safe driving around cyclists and will have to provide insurance and licence details and pass an eyesight test, while their vehicle is checked. Professional drivers will be reported and may have to appear in court, as will all motorists who are guilty of “particularly bad” driving. A similar initiative in Edinburgh this year resulted in almost 70 drivers pulled over in the first week. Sergeant Andy Osborne said: “We want all road users to obey the Highway Code. This tactic is about education and encouraging motorists who do not comply with the rules of the road to start doing so, for everyone’s safety and protection, theirs included.” Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner, said: “We know that safety concerns are one of the biggest barriers to cycling in London. That’s why we’re working hard to build high-quality safe routes to encourage even more people to cycle, and why I’m so pleased to see the Met tackling some of the dangers that we see on our roads.” Neil Greig, director of policy and research at IAM RoadSmart, said he wanted to see improved safety for cyclists, particularly through segregated cycle routes, but added: “Our members want to see more traffic police out there. If you have enough manpower to have [undercover officers] out there, then have them in uniform.” Mr Greig said that motorists had become used to cameras mounted on bike helmets and dashboards and would not be unduly concerned by the police’s use of cameras. Edmund King, president of the AA, said: “I think drivers are generally quite considerate, but there are some who pass far too close and I don’t think they understand the consequences of their actions, which could be fatal.” [View Less]

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