12% of households here in Bloomington
Illinois don’t have access to a car
think about this for a second when’s the
last time you walked more than a block
or two have you ridden a bike since
childhood what about a bus for more than
1 in 10 people right here in our
community there is no car sitting right
outside their house we didn’t take them
where they want to go when they want to
go there they’re walking biking and
taking public transit because those are
the only options they have and this
isn’t Chicago there’s not a bus every
eight minutes a few blocks away from
every home like most smaller American
communities we’re too spread out to make
that work and and we’re lucky to have
30-minute wait weights between buses
that’s an incredible disparity between
the ability to take a car right when you
want wherever you want and having to
wait 30 minutes potentially to go
somewhere now the thing about writing a
boss is that it can take you all the way
across town but you have to walk or ride
a bike to get to the bus stop so what
are we doing for pedestrians well we’re
actually doing pretty well for
pedestrians Bloomington has more than
400 miles of sidewalks in the city
limits alone and while our 88 compliance
isn’t perfect the city is constantly
making progress on accessibility but for
bikes well we’ve got basically nothing
and that’s a shame because a bicycle can
be a really awesome way to get around a
community or our size so what’s the
problem well there are two problems
first is that our side streets the non
arterial streets the residential
neighborhood streets they’re part of a
disjointed network that makes it
difficult or even impossible to cross
town safely and efficiently without
using the arterial streets but then the
other problem is our arterial streets
our high speed corridors where people
are not safe riding a bike the cars are
whizzing by cyclists really fast and
really close so
if we can slow down the cars even a
little and separate the bikes from the
cars even a little we’re going to make
the streets safer for everyone but what
do I mean by everyone well it turns out
that a bicyclist or a pedestrian who is
hit by a car traveling at 20 miles an
hour has a 90 percent chance of
surviving the incident on the other hand
a person who’s hit by a car traveling at
40 miles an hour has a 90 percents of
dying as a result of that car crash so
if we can slow down the cars we’re going
to save the lives of bicyclists and
pedestrians but what about people in
cars
well slowing down cars also helps people
in cars so you think about it like this
if a car hits a tree on the side of the
road and that car is going 20 miles an
hour it’s going to suffer less damage
than it would if it were going 40 miles
an hour but even more importantly if two
cars going opposite directions collide
at 40 miles an hour the impact of their
speed is doubled that’s an 80 mile an
hour crash that is very dangerous for
everyone involved and the cars are going
to suffer a lot of damage and the people
inside the cars are going to get injured
so if we can slow down the cars we are
going to make everyone safer not just
like the bicyclists and pedestrians but
here’s another fact we surprise them to
roughly nobody people pay hardly any
attention to the speed limit so if you
want to slow cars down great post a new
sign that tells people to drive slower
but I promise you people are not going
to drive much slower so what’s the
solution well it’s actually pretty
simple you narrow the lane width traffic
engineers have known for decades the
wider lanes make for faster driving the
National Association of city
transportation officials encourages
cities to build narrower lanes than they
used to citing a study from the year
2000 that shows that for every three
extra feet in lane width cars are gonna
go ten miles an hour faster isn’t that
incredible three feet means 10 miles an
hour
that’s a huge safety difference so if
only there were a way to stop people in
cars from using some portion of the
street narrower the lane width and allow
someone else to use it instead if only
you could just paint a line on the
street and make that happen oh look it’s
a bike lane so they’re even safer
options out there if you’ve got the
money in the space to do it you can
separate the cars from the bikes using
barrier median not like a post sir or
curb or planters with flowers or even
parked cars these are all great options
in the right context but the gist is you
can add a bike lane to a street in an
effort to make that Street safer for
everyone so let me tell you a story it
was April of 2012 and I was a young
adult just starting to look for ways to
get involved in my community I was
reading the newspaper one day and I saw
this story about how the Regional
Planning Commission had just put out a
study showing how Main Street could be
revitalized it was a pretty simple idea
they were going to change the way that
the code worked and encourage more of an
urban feel among the buildings with
first floor retail and apartments above
make better sidewalks add some bike
lanes basically make the street more
vibrant and livable but it made the
mistake of reading the comments section
on the newspaper website and oh boy
there were a lot of people who did not
think this was a good idea I did like
the idea so I searched some local
hashtags on Twitter and I found a few
people who agreed with me we decided to
go to a city council meeting to speak in
favor of the proposal the problem was we
were gonna ride our bikes to the city
council meeting I had barely ridden my
bike since childhood and it was way on
the other side of town so I was horribly
unfit to ride this far but the other
guys were nice about it they had just
met me that afternoon but they slowed
down to help me get there with them and
once we got there we encountered this
woman she had a sign that read simply no
that’s it too
and oh and she held it up anytime anyone
was speaking in favor of bikes but we
made our case to the councilman listened
and we became energized so we started to
meet up outside of this and push for
bike infrastructure throughout the city
we got a few wins pretty quickly one of
the first is actually right outside this
building it’s called sharrows it
connects Illinois Wesleyan with downtown
Bloomington with share of the road
arrows that basically don’t give
cyclists any space on the street but
they help people find their way and know
where they should be riding and for a
bunch of people who had never gotten
paint on the street before that felt
pretty awesome to get some paint on the
street I even woke up in midnight one
night just to get a picture of the
sharrows being installed but there was a
lot more work to do so we started
pushing for a citywide bicycle master
plan and we actually got one pretty
quickly more than a thousand people
submitted official input throughout the
process of developing the plan and it
was pretty clear from the streets people
requested they wanted bike lanes on
arterial streets most of the streets
that people requested ended up getting
accommodations in the plan but the
number two requested Street Washington
Street didn’t well why not
turns out that the city has wanted to
widen Washington Street in the future
adding bike lanes into the mix would
make it way too wide they don’t want to
spend all that money to build a wider
Street tear down all those trees they
don’t want to do it so okay we got a
bike plan it’s pretty good we decided to
move forward so we held a meeting and we
asked the couple of dozen people who
showed up to split up into four groups
and tell us what projects in the bike
plan they wanted us to work on first and
as you can imagine three out of the four
groups disregarded our instructions they
wanted Washington Street so we had our
marching orders the first thing we did
is we went out after work one day and we
measured Washington Street curb for
to curb face block-by-block throughout
the community we figured if we knew how
much pavement there already was we could
put together a proposal that didn’t
include any widening of the street
it would just be repainting it so we did
that then we went online and used a free
tool called Street mix dotnet and this
tool helps us make really pretty
renderings that kind of actually looked
like you want to live it lived there
right it’s pretty houses you’ve got
trees nice colors these are great
renderings and they helped us with our
next thing next we went to a
neighborhood meeting we wanted to make
sure that the people living along
Washington Street wanted bike lanes just
as much as we did so we met with the
founders Grove neighborhood and we
learned two interesting things first we
learned that they wanted people to stop
treating their street like a racetrack
and second we learned that their
neighborhood association formed about 20
years ago specifically to stop the city
from widening Washington Street in their
neighborhood
imagine how great it was for us to be
able to tell them that we have a
proposal that would do both of those
things so the next step we started
meeting with the city’s engineers we
figured if we were ever going to get
anything done we needed them to sign off
on it and say it was feasible not
necessarily that they wanted it to
happen but that it was feasible from an
engineering perspective the problem was
they had never put bike lanes on an
arterial street before so they didn’t
really know how to make it work so
pretty quickly I realized no matter how
much I tried to convince them I wasn’t
gonna be able to do it on my own so I
worked with the statewide bike advocacy
group to bring an engineering seminar to
our community
once our local engineers had heard from
other engineers across the country about
how to put bike lanes on arterial
streets they were ready to start talking
about Washington Street so it still took
about six months of back-and-forth
discussions we met with business owners
about parking needs and we analyzed a
couple of tricky intersections but in
the end we got the engineers to say it
was feasible the next thing we did was
pretty radical
we went out as a bunch of volunteers in
the middle of the night and we put bike
lanes on Washington Street now the
city’s engineers actually said this was
okay their thought was if people could
see the bike lanes if they could
experience driving by them and riding
their bikes down the street they could
give more informed public input so we
went out at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night
with 30 cans of spray chalk and by the
morning commute there was a bike lane on
Washington Street and I consumed a lot
of caffeine and sugar or the next day
when it came time for public comment
more than two-thirds was in favor of the
proposal and the City Council a body
that’s often said to disagree on whether
or not the sky is blue well they voted
unanimously in favor of the proposal and
I skipped out of work at 3 in the
afternoon one day last fall and I
watched the last three years of my life
being painted on fresh asphalt so if
this story sounded like something that
you want to do here are the next steps
start reading blogs like strong towns
and streets blog and get yourself
acquainted with community first street
design then grab a copy of Jeannette
Sadiq Khan’s memoir about her time
leading the New York City Department of
Transportation and go out into your
community and build a coalition of
people light you who want to change the
way City Hall thinks about streets
thanks
Illinois don’t have access to a car
think about this for a second when’s the
last time you walked more than a block
or two have you ridden a bike since
childhood what about a bus for more than
1 in 10 people right here in our
community there is no car sitting right
outside their house we didn’t take them
where they want to go when they want to
go there they’re walking biking and
taking public transit because those are
the only options they have and this
isn’t Chicago there’s not a bus every
eight minutes a few blocks away from
every home like most smaller American
communities we’re too spread out to make
that work and and we’re lucky to have
30-minute wait weights between buses
that’s an incredible disparity between
the ability to take a car right when you
want wherever you want and having to
wait 30 minutes potentially to go
somewhere now the thing about writing a
boss is that it can take you all the way
across town but you have to walk or ride
a bike to get to the bus stop so what
are we doing for pedestrians well we’re
actually doing pretty well for
pedestrians Bloomington has more than
400 miles of sidewalks in the city
limits alone and while our 88 compliance
isn’t perfect the city is constantly
making progress on accessibility but for
bikes well we’ve got basically nothing
and that’s a shame because a bicycle can
be a really awesome way to get around a
community or our size so what’s the
problem well there are two problems
first is that our side streets the non
arterial streets the residential
neighborhood streets they’re part of a
disjointed network that makes it
difficult or even impossible to cross
town safely and efficiently without
using the arterial streets but then the
other problem is our arterial streets
our high speed corridors where people
are not safe riding a bike the cars are
whizzing by cyclists really fast and
really close so
if we can slow down the cars even a
little and separate the bikes from the
cars even a little we’re going to make
the streets safer for everyone but what
do I mean by everyone well it turns out
that a bicyclist or a pedestrian who is
hit by a car traveling at 20 miles an
hour has a 90 percent chance of
surviving the incident on the other hand
a person who’s hit by a car traveling at
40 miles an hour has a 90 percents of
dying as a result of that car crash so
if we can slow down the cars we’re going
to save the lives of bicyclists and
pedestrians but what about people in
cars
well slowing down cars also helps people
in cars so you think about it like this
if a car hits a tree on the side of the
road and that car is going 20 miles an
hour it’s going to suffer less damage
than it would if it were going 40 miles
an hour but even more importantly if two
cars going opposite directions collide
at 40 miles an hour the impact of their
speed is doubled that’s an 80 mile an
hour crash that is very dangerous for
everyone involved and the cars are going
to suffer a lot of damage and the people
inside the cars are going to get injured
so if we can slow down the cars we are
going to make everyone safer not just
like the bicyclists and pedestrians but
here’s another fact we surprise them to
roughly nobody people pay hardly any
attention to the speed limit so if you
want to slow cars down great post a new
sign that tells people to drive slower
but I promise you people are not going
to drive much slower so what’s the
solution well it’s actually pretty
simple you narrow the lane width traffic
engineers have known for decades the
wider lanes make for faster driving the
National Association of city
transportation officials encourages
cities to build narrower lanes than they
used to citing a study from the year
2000 that shows that for every three
extra feet in lane width cars are gonna
go ten miles an hour faster isn’t that
incredible three feet means 10 miles an
hour
that’s a huge safety difference so if
only there were a way to stop people in
cars from using some portion of the
street narrower the lane width and allow
someone else to use it instead if only
you could just paint a line on the
street and make that happen oh look it’s
a bike lane so they’re even safer
options out there if you’ve got the
money in the space to do it you can
separate the cars from the bikes using
barrier median not like a post sir or
curb or planters with flowers or even
parked cars these are all great options
in the right context but the gist is you
can add a bike lane to a street in an
effort to make that Street safer for
everyone so let me tell you a story it
was April of 2012 and I was a young
adult just starting to look for ways to
get involved in my community I was
reading the newspaper one day and I saw
this story about how the Regional
Planning Commission had just put out a
study showing how Main Street could be
revitalized it was a pretty simple idea
they were going to change the way that
the code worked and encourage more of an
urban feel among the buildings with
first floor retail and apartments above
make better sidewalks add some bike
lanes basically make the street more
vibrant and livable but it made the
mistake of reading the comments section
on the newspaper website and oh boy
there were a lot of people who did not
think this was a good idea I did like
the idea so I searched some local
hashtags on Twitter and I found a few
people who agreed with me we decided to
go to a city council meeting to speak in
favor of the proposal the problem was we
were gonna ride our bikes to the city
council meeting I had barely ridden my
bike since childhood and it was way on
the other side of town so I was horribly
unfit to ride this far but the other
guys were nice about it they had just
met me that afternoon but they slowed
down to help me get there with them and
once we got there we encountered this
woman she had a sign that read simply no
that’s it too
and oh and she held it up anytime anyone
was speaking in favor of bikes but we
made our case to the councilman listened
and we became energized so we started to
meet up outside of this and push for
bike infrastructure throughout the city
we got a few wins pretty quickly one of
the first is actually right outside this
building it’s called sharrows it
connects Illinois Wesleyan with downtown
Bloomington with share of the road
arrows that basically don’t give
cyclists any space on the street but
they help people find their way and know
where they should be riding and for a
bunch of people who had never gotten
paint on the street before that felt
pretty awesome to get some paint on the
street I even woke up in midnight one
night just to get a picture of the
sharrows being installed but there was a
lot more work to do so we started
pushing for a citywide bicycle master
plan and we actually got one pretty
quickly more than a thousand people
submitted official input throughout the
process of developing the plan and it
was pretty clear from the streets people
requested they wanted bike lanes on
arterial streets most of the streets
that people requested ended up getting
accommodations in the plan but the
number two requested Street Washington
Street didn’t well why not
turns out that the city has wanted to
widen Washington Street in the future
adding bike lanes into the mix would
make it way too wide they don’t want to
spend all that money to build a wider
Street tear down all those trees they
don’t want to do it so okay we got a
bike plan it’s pretty good we decided to
move forward so we held a meeting and we
asked the couple of dozen people who
showed up to split up into four groups
and tell us what projects in the bike
plan they wanted us to work on first and
as you can imagine three out of the four
groups disregarded our instructions they
wanted Washington Street so we had our
marching orders the first thing we did
is we went out after work one day and we
measured Washington Street curb for
to curb face block-by-block throughout
the community we figured if we knew how
much pavement there already was we could
put together a proposal that didn’t
include any widening of the street
it would just be repainting it so we did
that then we went online and used a free
tool called Street mix dotnet and this
tool helps us make really pretty
renderings that kind of actually looked
like you want to live it lived there
right it’s pretty houses you’ve got
trees nice colors these are great
renderings and they helped us with our
next thing next we went to a
neighborhood meeting we wanted to make
sure that the people living along
Washington Street wanted bike lanes just
as much as we did so we met with the
founders Grove neighborhood and we
learned two interesting things first we
learned that they wanted people to stop
treating their street like a racetrack
and second we learned that their
neighborhood association formed about 20
years ago specifically to stop the city
from widening Washington Street in their
neighborhood
imagine how great it was for us to be
able to tell them that we have a
proposal that would do both of those
things so the next step we started
meeting with the city’s engineers we
figured if we were ever going to get
anything done we needed them to sign off
on it and say it was feasible not
necessarily that they wanted it to
happen but that it was feasible from an
engineering perspective the problem was
they had never put bike lanes on an
arterial street before so they didn’t
really know how to make it work so
pretty quickly I realized no matter how
much I tried to convince them I wasn’t
gonna be able to do it on my own so I
worked with the statewide bike advocacy
group to bring an engineering seminar to
our community
once our local engineers had heard from
other engineers across the country about
how to put bike lanes on arterial
streets they were ready to start talking
about Washington Street so it still took
about six months of back-and-forth
discussions we met with business owners
about parking needs and we analyzed a
couple of tricky intersections but in
the end we got the engineers to say it
was feasible the next thing we did was
pretty radical
we went out as a bunch of volunteers in
the middle of the night and we put bike
lanes on Washington Street now the
city’s engineers actually said this was
okay their thought was if people could
see the bike lanes if they could
experience driving by them and riding
their bikes down the street they could
give more informed public input so we
went out at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night
with 30 cans of spray chalk and by the
morning commute there was a bike lane on
Washington Street and I consumed a lot
of caffeine and sugar or the next day
when it came time for public comment
more than two-thirds was in favor of the
proposal and the City Council a body
that’s often said to disagree on whether
or not the sky is blue well they voted
unanimously in favor of the proposal and
I skipped out of work at 3 in the
afternoon one day last fall and I
watched the last three years of my life
being painted on fresh asphalt so if
this story sounded like something that
you want to do here are the next steps
start reading blogs like strong towns
and streets blog and get yourself
acquainted with community first street
design then grab a copy of Jeannette
Sadiq Khan’s memoir about her time
leading the New York City Department of
Transportation and go out into your
community and build a coalition of
people light you who want to change the
way City Hall thinks about streets
thanks
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