You are hereCouple quick snippets from the BAC meeting
Couple quick snippets from the BAC meeting
Tonight's meeting was pretty rad. I'm tired and I have to get up early to drop some stuff off at Mellow Johnny's (thanks for the coffee y'all), so I'm gonna make this brief. As in I'm just chopping stuff from my hastily typed notes and throwing it down as I see fit with incredibly minimal polish or editing. Check it:
The city plans to have ALL parking removed from bike lanes by the year 2020. Seriously. City Hall wants car-free bike lanes, and went against precedent to make it happen on Exposition. They also pushed to have a much longer section of it than originally planned striped with no parking in the lanes. I'm officially impressed!
The Exposition Boulevard project cost the City Bike/Ped program about 100k, and Annick Beaudet mentioned that a big part of its' success was the constant involvement of the bicycle community. We weren't with it during the Shoal Creek debacle and got screwed.
City Council approved 97k for Austin bike box/sharrow tests as of this morning. The Bike/Ped program people have to find a location for it first, but it's been given the go-ahead. AWESOME!
The BRAND SPANKING NEW Bicycle Master Plan is 98% ready. Annick and Nadia Barrera are diligently working on getting that last 2% nailed down. Feb 9th or 10th it goes for internal city review of the draft to look for conflicting items with other master plans/utility plans, etc. The public gets to check it out at an Open House on March 9th, location TBA. They're also going to distribute hard copies to all the public libraries, and make it available on the city website.
Parking Enforcement Officers needed. There are 10 positions, 4 of which have been filled already. You get to carry a swanky looking badge and a ticket book, and give out "warning" tickets. After a couple warnings they get a real ticket, given by a city employee. If you want more info contact Nadia, but it basically entails becoming an "official" volunteer of the City of Austin, filling out liability form, half an hour of training, and you're turned loose on all the parked cars in bike lanes with "no parking" signs. Oh yeah, authoritah!
Most of the parking meters downtown are going to be removed in March and replaced with kiosks, starting at Congress and moving east/west, from 10th on down. The plan is to convert the old meters into bike parking. The design looks like a cap that goes over a cut-off parking meter with a big circle attached to it, somewhat similar to these. There's a possibility of letting the meters be removed and just installing the standard U-racks, but Annick mentioned that it'd be good press/publicity to recycle the old poles and convert them to bike parking, then the U-racks can be used elsewhere since there's been a high demand for them.
All in all I think a lot of good stuff got discussed at the meeting. They're open to the public so if you haven't checked one out before I urge you to do so. It's most excellent to see the process from the inside. I guess that wasn't so brief. More happened than what you've read but I'm beat and my eyes are starting to cross, no more computer screens for me tonight. Evening y'all.
Exposition is the same width as Shoal Creek. And churches along Exposition were initially as opposed to any modifications as the 'neighbors' on SCB.
"Expedition" ==> "Exposition"
Maybe your mind is on an Expedition SUV tailgating you yesterday?
Thanks for getting the word out there on what's going on at the BAC!
It was late when I wrote that, I don't know exactly where my mind was at the time...
Thanks for the correction. I figure the BAC meetings are open to the public, so I might as well get the word out to said public about what goes on there since it affects all of us, members or not. I'm just happy to be involved.
Thanks for the BAC coverage! Especially since I can never seem to make these meetings.
While I share your enthusiasm for getting parking out of bike lanes, it should be noted that Expedition Blvd. was actually one of the easier places to do it, and it itself was a huge struggle. In the end the city did a great job and we have a product we can be happy with. But when we start seeing this same process unfold on streets with more existing on-street parking, it's going to be even more of a battle. And the potential exists to end up with either bad bike lanes (e.g. close to parking) or even the removal of bike lanes.
So stay tuned, and tuned in.
Thanks for tempering my optimism Rob. :p
Seriously though, the 40ft wide Expedition Blvd did make it much easier to accommodate on-street parking, driving lanes, and dedicated bike lanes without anyone getting TOO squeezed. It's broken down (west to east) as an 8ft parking lane, 6ft bike lane (to better accommodate the door zone), 10.5ft southbound driving lane, 10.5ft northbound driving lane, and a 5ft bike lane. That's 21 feet dedicated to driving, and 19ft dedicated to "other". Narrower streets and streets with more actively used on-street parking will present much more of a challenge, but it's refreshing to hear from Annick and Nadia that City Hall WANTS to accommodate cyclists with regard to parking in bike lanes. If the cycling community can continue to put pressure on City Council and the other members of city government to insure that our transportation needs are met, I see bright things for Austin's future.