Complete Streets is a Success at the Iowa Bicycle Summit.

Mon February 06 2006
Posted Feb 6, 2006
1,517

Complete Streets is a Success at the Iowa Bicycle Summit. The second annual Iowa Bicycle Summit was held on February 2-3, 2006 in Des Moines. The Summit included a new workshop on bicycle facility design and sessions for bicycle advocates. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Iowa Bicycle Coalition and the Iowa Department of Transportation. “People want our roadways to be bike friendly,” said Mark Wyatt, executive director of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition, “so we give the people building the roads the tools and knowledge to build complete streets.” The bicycle facility design workshop was led by Michael Ronkin, a bicycle and pedestrian program manager from Oregon. Oregon has been designing complete streets and bicycle friendly communities since 1971. Ronkin's lessons touched on bicycle parking to bicycle boulevard planning. The overall theme related to completing the streets for all transportation users. "In particular one point that stood out to me was how we currently measure the effectiveness of our streets by the Average Daily Traffic Count (ADT),” said Lisa Hein of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. “However, this measurement only counts cars and does not take into account total movement of people and overall quality of the street." Ronkin gave examples in San Francisco that actually resulted in a more effective street, because more people on bicycles were using the roadway in addition to vehicles Kathy Ridnour of the Iowa DOT noted, "The most bikeable communities have both on-street and off-street facilities for bicyclists, not just one or the other." The Iowa Bicycle Coalition is a member-supported bicycle advocacy group promoting Iowa bicycling as safe and enjoyable recreation and transportation. More information is available at www.iowabicyclecoalition.org or by calling 319-626-6017.