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Newsletter Policy Safety & Education

News from the Trail — May 2020

Staying Healthy, Events Cancelled

We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during these challenging times. Our thoughts go out all that have lost friends, family, and club members during this pandemic.

We have been updating our COVID-19 page based on information from federal, state and local government agencies. They advise everyone riding, walking, and running to social distance from others, and to wear a mask in places that make social distancing difficult to maintain, eg. RiverWalk.

There are reports of more motorists speeding given fewer motor vehicles on the roads. Please be extra vigilant and walk/ride/run defensively. 

As for events, we obviously could not hold Bike to Work Day this year. We may consider doing something this fall, but it’s too early to make any commitment. We have cancelled our Joe Louis Greenway fundraiser ride scheduled for next month.

New Website

The Stay-at-Home order has provided a good opportunity to completely overhaul our website, which we rolled out this week. All of the web pages have been brought up to date. We’ve also taken the information from our printed bike/trail map and safety brochure and put it on the site. This includes

UMSI Crash Analysis

Also on the new website is a bicycle and pedestrian crash analysis — a report, slidedeck, and interactive mapping. This was just produced by a team from the University of Michigan School of Information. The team took state crash data, cleaned it up, and analyzed where the crashes were occuring. From the report:

Our data analysis led important discoveries around the existing safety issues per counsel district, specifically, how bikers are currently being impacted with districts. District 4, according to the data, had the most instances of biker injuries. It’s also worth noting that when a bike lane is present, accidents happen at a frequency a fraction of the time compared to instances of no bike lane with the point of contact being in the roadway.

Thanks to the team for this project and we look using this data to justify great investments that make Detroit streets safer for everyone. 

Other Updates

  • Please join us in welcoming two new board members: Beverly Kindle-Walker and Ryan Myers-Johnson. Beverly is the Executive Director for Friends of the Detroit City Airport CDC, a Legislative Assistance to County Commissioner Tim Killeen, and a board member for the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative. She’s done a great deal of work on the Eastside, including with the Conner Creek Greenway. Ryan is the Founder and Executive Director for Sidewalk Detroit.  You may have met her if you attended any of the Joe Louis Greenway Framework Planning meetings where she was a project consultant.  She’s also been involved in parks and planning in Northwest Detroit, including Eliza Howell Park. 
  • Detroit Council President Brenda Jones proposed an ordinance last year requiring all bike lane projects to have an additional vote by Council. That ordinance wasn’t feasible, so it was incorporated into an ordinance requiring Community Engagement for planning projects, including bike lanes and streetscapes. We strongly support effective Community Engagement! We’ll continue working with her office and suggesting improvements to the ordinance language so that it gets more Detroiters engaged in deciding how their streets look and who they serve.
  • MoGo Bike Share expansion is underway this week with stations being installed north of Eight Mile. We look forward to seeing those new stations automatically popup on our map. 
  • Make sure you complete your census! Michigan cities receive road funding based on their census populations. State road funding will already be lower in the near future with the reductions in fuel purchases. We don’t need to see it drop further.

Categories
Greenways Safety & Education

Hot off the presses: a Detroit Bike & Walk map

Long promised, finally here. Detroit has a bike and trail map again.

After many stops and starts, we finally got the funding we needed to complete the map and print 12,500 copies. Half of those have already been distributed at all the Detroit bike shops, runDetroit, the Lexus Velodrome, and Council member Scott Benson’s office at the Matrix Center. The Detroit Planning Department and Health Department also have copies they’ll be distributing at events across the city as will we.

The map shows all the current trails and bike infrastructure in Detroit as well as the Iron Belle Trail. It also include all the repair stations, bike shops, and kayak launches.

A substantial amount of effort went into including all the relevant laws pertaining to bicycling and pedestrians. Frankly, we’re not fans of the existing materials that fail to highlight laws motorists must follow around bicycles and pedestrians. We focus on those since they are the main determinant for improved safety. We also discuss the history of these laws, which were developed by the auto industry in the 1920s with no input from bicyclists.

The PDF of the map is available but it is a bit unwieldy. We’re going to work to get portions of it online in a more readable format.

Thanks to the DALMAC, the Office of Highway Safety Planning, and Michigan Department of Natural Resources for making this project possible.

Categories
Greenways Newsletter

News from the Trail – June 2019

Joe Louis Greenway Ride on June 23rd

Registration is open for our 24-mile Joe Louis Greenway bike ride on Sunday June 23rd. The ride is being sponsored by the SmithGroup and will start near the Clark Park ice rink (1251 Scotten St.) at 8:30am.

This second annual Joe Louis Greenway bike ride will be limited to 100 donating participants. The objective of the ride is to create more awareness of the Joe Louis Greenway and raise money for the Detroit Greenways Coalition.

This year, participants will receive a commemorative pint glass!

Event Registration

City of Detroit Community Visioning Sessions

From Christina Peltier, the City of Detroit’s Joe Louis Greenway Project Manager:

The first series of the Joe Louis Greenway Visioning meetings will be taking place in the next few weeks. All four meetings have the same content and activities so no need to attend all four. Translation services will be available at Lasky Recreation Center and Patton Creek Community Center. Refreshments will be provided.

The Joe Louis Greenway is an approximately 31 mile pathway that will connect many of Detroit’s neighborhoods, people and parks. More information can be found here: www.joelouisgreenway.com

Please share the event poster and facebook page with you friends and neighbors.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions or if you would like me to present to your neighborhood organization.

Detroit Iron Belle Trail & Bike Map

We have completed updates to a new Detroit bike and trail map and expect to have it printed and available later this month. We just received a $5,000 DNR Iron Belle Trail grant that will help us print the map. Of course the Iron Belle Trail will be prominently featured.

The map also contains a comprehensive list of rules and laws pertaining to bicycling, walking, scootering, and most importantly, safely driving motor vehicles around these other modes. We put a significant effort into this so that the focus is on motorist behavior, where we see the greatest room for improving safety on our roads and in our neighborhoods.

Recent Events

  • Bike to Work Day selfie with Council member Scott BensonThanks to those that attended our recent fundraiser event at the Lexus Velodrome on April 20th. We saw some amazing track racing, especially among the junior riders. There’s a lot more racing throughout the year, so check their schedule.
  • We had another successful Bike to Work Day event. The City of Detroit posted this video from the event.Thanks again to sponsors, including Henry Ford LiveWell.
  • Lastly, we need to give a shout out to the Grown Men on Bikes (GMOB) and Grown Ladies on Wheels (GLOW) bike clubs for another great Coupe Day in Cass Park over Memorial weekend. Bike clubs came from across the county and made it a huge success. We had a table with Detroit’s JLG Project Manager Christina Peltier and share information on the Joe Louis Greenway. We have photos from the event — including the many amazing custom bikes — on our Facebook page

For the most recent news, follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Categories
Newsletter

News from the Trail – June 2017

Happy National Trails Day!

Bike to Work Day

Thanks to all who participated in Detroit’s largest ever Bike to Work Day event. Special thanks also to our title sponsor Henry Ford LiveWell who helped make the event a success. Henry Ford Health System also had the most employees register for the event, followed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and the City of Detroit. Look for an even bigger event in 2018.

Highland Park Grants

We’ve recently received two grants to help build trails and bike lanes in the city of Highland Park.

The first is from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Fund for Design and Access, which is administered through the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. This grant is for the development of bike lanes on all of Hamilton Avenue within Highland Park.

The second is from the Doppelt Family Trail Development Fund administered by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. This grant is to support the development of the Inner Circle Greenway through Highland Park.

We’re excited to get started on both projects. We’re also discussing a number of partnerships with others that can further enhance these efforts.

Quick Updates

  • Thanks DALMAC for a $2,000 grant towards the new Detroit Bike and Trail Map we’re creating. Sponsorship opportunities are available.
  • Congratulations MoGo, Detroit’s first public bike share program for having over 4,000 rides during the first week.
  • The Detroit Planning Department’s Detroit Rides web site and social media have launched. We’ve been helping with the content through the Detroit Bike and Pedestrian Safety and Education task force.
  • Cass Avenue protected bike lanes will be installed this summer after the road is repaved. A correction from our May update — the city of Detroit is paying for this project rather than MDOT.
  • Warren Avenue protected bike lanes from Trumbull to Russell will be under construction this year as well. This will be the first two-way cycletrack in Michigan. It’ll also have it’s own traffic signal heads.
  • Have you seen our new embroidered patch? We sold them at the recent Coupe Day Event over Memorial Weekend and will have them at future events as well.

Upcoming Events
W Vernor Planning Mtgs
Saturday, June 3rd
Planning for neighborhoods along W. Vernor. 10am or 3pm meeting times.
More details

Come Together for
Back Alley Bikes
June 7th at 7pm
Enjoy drinks and hors d’oeuvres with our friends at Back Alley Bikes.
Event Registration

 
Categories
Greenways

Creating a new bike & trails map for Detroit

detroit-bike-mapThe Detroit Greenways Coalition is moving forward with plans to make a new printed bike & trails map for Detroit.

Our initial thoughts on what to show on the map include:

  • A map of Detroit showing the bike lanes, shared marked routes, and trails. This will include some of the immediate suburbs surrounding Detroit in order to show connections across the city boundaries.
  • Major trail information, including length and completion status
  • Bike repair station locations (Yes, we’ll have some this year!)
  • Bike-related and run-related businesses
  • Non-motorized boat launch sites & similar water trail features

It’ll also include general information about the Coalition, Complete Streets, safety information, bicycle locking information, and more.

This effort will build upon some earlier work done by the Challenge Detroit Fellows and Mode Shift. We expect to take the best elements of other city’s maps.

One feature that we probably won’t include is bike rack locations. There are too many within the Greater Downtown. Instead, we’ll be sure to update our existing Detroit bike parking map.

We expect to have these new printed maps available by the North American Bicycle Week at the end of March.

What are your thoughts on what else should be on the either map that would make them more useful?