City announces bike friendliness funding initiative

IU sophomore and avid biker Juliet Stanton vividly remembers her most terrifying cycling experience. Stanton was riding on Third Street one afternoon in September on her way from class to Target.

She could hear a vehicle close to her but waited to turn and look. Stanton was already riding at the edge of the road, and moving over would have sent her tumbling into the roadside dirt.

“I didn’t see it until the side mirror almost hit my shoulder,” Stanton said. “I almost got run off the road by a big red truck.”

For Stanton, close calls are an exception to her biking experience in Bloomington.
But on March 22 Mayor Kruzan, City Councilmen Dave Rollo and Andy Ruff and City Planning Director Tom Micuda announced a new funding initiative to make Bloomington a more bike-friendly city. In 2010 the League of American Bicyclists ranked Bloomington a silver-level bicycle-friendly community.

Bloomington’s goal, stated in a May 2010 city council resolution, is to reach the highest ranking available and become a platinum-level community by 2016.

The city council resolution created a Platinum Task Force, which began working in September 2010 to outline the steps Bloomington needs to take to become a platinum-level community, Micuda said. The Planning Department attends task force meetings and assists with recommendations.

“We (the planning department) will be one of the key departments ensuring these funding initiatives come to fruition and get implemented,” Micuda said.

The funding initiatives include a greenways implementation plan, which will select which busy streets to add bicycle-friendly measures such as bike lanes; adapting the College Mall Pedestrian Study, which will make pedestrian and bike access easier; and constructing the Black Lumber Spur Trail, an abandoned railroad turned into a bike-and-pedestrian-only path.

Currently, only three cities have platinum-level rankings: Davis, Calif., Boulder, Colo., and Portland, Ore.

“They’re very, very hard to get,” he said. “We want to get to a level where we’re noted as one of the best places to cycle in the United States.”

In order to reach the platinum level, Micuda said Bloomington will have to meet every one of the League of American Bicyclist’s recommendations in five category areas: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation.

In addition to prestige, Micuda mentioned two additional benefits to obtaining platinum-level status: a healthier community and environment.

“Part of it is to create a culture where people are getting out of their automobiles and getting fresh air,” he said. “Fuel costs are skyrocketing and communities that can take cars off the road are promoting a healthier environment.”

Greg Anderson, a member of Bloomington Transportation Options for People, is running for Bloomington City Council on a pro-bicycle platform.

“Historically, the city has built two kinds of roads: roads for bikes and roads for cars,” he said.

His goal, if he is elected, is to influence policy to lower speed limits on busy streets such as College Mall Road or Third Street to 25 mph. Anderson acknowledged the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Commission past failures to influence city policy with task force recommendations.

“The reports make a lot of noise, but the city doesn’t follow through,” he said. “This time, I’m optimistic they’re listening.”

However, BTOP founder Buff Brown disagrees the city will be successful in funding the new initiatives.

“There is federal money available, and currently we have almost none for the next four years allocated to bike and pedestrian projects,” he said.

Brown estimated the city will need about $6 million in funding to implement the proposed bike-friendly plans.

“If we don’t allocate federal money from the federal transportation fun, we’re not going to get there,” he said.

Currently, Bloomington has $400,000 set aside for bike initiatives beginning in 2014 and $11 million set aside for three roundabouts.

On April 8, Mayor Kruzan will speak before the Monroe County Planning Organization Policy Committee to recommend the committee divert funds from one roundabout to alternative transportation funds, according to an email from former BTOP president Elizabeth Venstra.

Brown also said he believes Bloomington needs to increase its bike friendliness.
“We are labeled silver, which I think is very generous,” he said. “I think we’re not that bike friendly.”

Brown said the city can take fairly easy steps to becoming more bike friendly.

“The lowest-hanging fruit is to paint bike lanes,” he said. “There are many roads in Bloomington that have the space necessary. I think we could create a very impressive network of bike-laned roads.”

For Stanton, who lives off campus and bikes daily to class and every other day to run errands, biking in Bloomington is doable, but bike friendliness could be better.

“I think Bloomington tries,” she said. “I do appreciate that a lot of the major roads have bike lanes. I think there are good things about biking in Bloomington but there could be improvement.”