Missouri Bicycle News Article

Today's Kansas City Star has an excellent overview of bicycling and bicycling accommodation in the Kansas City area.

Note the following, which clearly points up the need for bicycle advocacy. We need to speak up, folks!

Many city planners said their on-street strategy largely involved re-striping to widen outside lanes by a foot or two, and only on certain streets.

“That’s something,” said David LaRoche, a safety traffic engineer for the Federal Highway Administration. “But the idea is to plan these things out to be safe. Cities aren’t doing that.”

City officials cite two reasons: cost and need.

Wide, two-lane streets like Mission Road could easily support bike lanes if they didn’t have intersections, said David Ley, who oversees development for Leawood.

But left-turn lanes eat up space for bike lanes, so cities have the choice: Forgo bike lanes or dig up pavement, curbs and medians to rebuild the intersections.

“It’s not as simple as re-striping the lanes,” Ley said.

And most suburban planners say that if there is demand for on-street bike accommodations, it’s news to them.

“If there is, they haven’t been real loud or vocal,” Overland Park traffic engineer Brian Shields said.

He said his city has no bike lanes.

Bicyclist Jeremy Wilson is right on target when he says:

“We need educational campaigns for both drivers and bikers. We need to tell people to share the road.”

The need for more bicycle education is one reason the Missouri Bicycle Federation has strongly supported the effort to train more BikeEd instructors in Missouri--a recent training workshop more than doubled the number of BikeEd instructors in the state.

In addition, bicycle and motorist education will be a primary focus of the soon-to-be-launched "Missouri Bicycle Foundation, Inc.", a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation that will be associated with the Missouri Bicycle Federation.

The article also highlights the recent changes to Missouri bicycle law--changes spearheaded by the Missouri Bicycle Federation and made possible by the support of its members and member organizations across the state.

Related:

News: Harkin "Complete Streets" Amendment fails; MO Sen. Bond speaks against

News: Local planning organizations make bike/ped-friendly streets better than state DOTs

News: MoBikeFed at the National Bike Summit--Day 1 highlights

News: Kansas City passes huge bicycle parking & other bike/ped improvements

News: Report Card: Media coverage of "Missouri Gets a D"