In Charles Marohn’s latest missive from Minnesota, he provides some tips for public officials who would like “to move away from the financially-ruinous auto-dominated building pattern and into something that would provide for more opportunities for biking and walking.”
Some of his do’s and don’t are painfully obvious: .
Do: Ensure that your proposed bike lanes connect places people may want to bike to.
Don’t: Simply add a bike lane to a random project where there is little demand, or even reason, to bike.
To be successful, a bike lane should actually allow a biker to get somewhere they want to go. … Your proposed bike trail is not likely to be embraced if it, for example, begins at a highway intersection and ends in a field with nothing but a church (more on that later) in between.
Something, you would think, that hardly needs to be put in words. And yet the evidence suggests that this is the benefit of Marohn’s guide: it says the obvious because the obvious isn’t.
For example:
Do: Zealously advocate for common sense approaches within your community.
Don’t: Appear to be completely impotent in the face of mandates that require you to do ridiculous things.
If you are going to truly advocate for biking and walking infrastructure, then do it. … You will not appear to be trying very hard if you claim, for example, that this street pictured below cannot legally – according to state rules — accommodate biking lanes without expanding the roadway by two feet or removing the non-existent parking lanes, especially if that is the end of your story.
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That’s tough to do because it requires real change – in bylaws, codes, legislative actions, budgets, the mindset of bureaucracies and senior governments.
Doing the obvious can be one of the toughest things a politician takes on.
More Do’s and Don’ts here.
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[Recommended for Next Generation Transportation.]
If you are going to truly advocate for biking and walking infrastructure, then do it. … You will not appear to be trying very hard if you claim, for example, that this street pictured below cannot legally – according to state rules — accommodate biking lanes without expanding the roadway by two feet …
Here is a trick courtesy of Vancouver Vision:
choose a street lined up by a park…and pave the park…problem solved?
As per normal Voony, you have once again maligned truth and contradicted yourself: on the one hand, you admit that the same reconfiguration of street and inclusion of bike lanes is not applicable in all circumstances (one plan does not fit all), and yet on the other hand, above here, you grossly generalize that Vision finds every street next to a park and advocates paving part of the park for a bike lane. That could not be a bigger mistatement of truth. Shame on you. And, by the way, putting in a separate bike lane, such as the proposed ones for Kits and Hadden parks, is NOT “pav[ing] a park.”
Common sense is not so common …
Irrelevant and tiresome pedantry, I know, but I can’t help myself:
An apostrophe before an “s” indicates possession, not plurality; rather than “Do’s and Don’ts and Duh’s”, try “Dos and Don’ts and Duhs”. Or better still, craft a headline using less troublesome phrases. Perhaps, “Road design tips for urban planners”.
Fred V., I am sure Gordon appreciates your grammar check, but to clarify, although the apostrophe does indicate possession in most cases, it is also allowable for the non-possessive case when the apostrophe is needed for clarity, such as separating numbers and letters or separating letters to show plurality when not putting in the apostrophe would render the word unclear or even not the intended word. Hope this helps.