April 2013 ABAC Meeting Notes

This sounds interesting

Level of Comfort Map – The city of Austin has experimented with a new kind of bicycle map that doesn’t show bicycle infrastructure on the city streets. Instead it expresses the level of comfort of its streets, recognizing the fact that just because there’s a bicycle facility in place doesn’t mean a new rider will feel comfortable riding on it. For example, there are bike lanes on Clarendon and Wilson Blvds, however someone who doesn’t like riding next to a lot of cars still might not feel comfortable because of the high volume of traffic on those streets. We think this kind of map is important to appeal to the interested but concerned market and we plan on developing a map based around level of comfort, measured by traffic speed, traffic volume, topography, and bicycle facility. We will be surveying the public to help us gauge what factors are most important to them (i.e. speed or volume?). We will filter the responses to capture the beginners / interested but concerned as their level of comfort is what we want to portray. [ASK] We will be asking you to assist us in grading level of comfort of certain sections and links based on how beginners would feel (i.e. you might feel comfortable riding on Washington Blvd, but a beginner would not). An easy way to have that mindset is to think about whether you would ride on the road with children or let your children ride on the road alone.

What kind of idiocy requires them to remove an abandoned road before removing stop signs from a trail crossing it? Did anyone even consider simply rotating the stop signs so they point at the abandoned road, and then leaving said abandoned road alone? They could use the money saved to actually improve cyclist infrastructure elsewhere.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more annoyed I get. If NPS has some kind of ridiculous policy that they must put a (illegal, unenforceable, and ignored) stop sign at every road crossing, that’s something that really needs to be fixed.