News

Drury University in Springfield has launched a loaner bicycle program for students. Drury's student body sustainability fee financed the forty bikes for semester-long loans and another twenty bikes for short-term use.

“This decision was made after a year-long discussion in the President’s Council on Sustainability about ways that we can enhance the bicycle culture on campus and encourage alternative transportation, particularly for students who live on campus,” says Dr. Wendy Anderson, director of campus sustainability. “We want to encourage students to get to class in ways other than their cars.”

Drury University press release.

OzarksFirst.com report and video.

Drury joins the University of Missouri-Kansas City as the second Missouri college offering a student bike program.  UMKC's Clean Commute program is now entering its third year on campus.

According to a St Louis Post-Dispatch article, the date of the first public meeting to discuss the proposed St Louis County Bicycle Ban has been changed:

The first of three public hearings on proposed new rules for bicycles on some St. Charles County roads has been re-scheduled for Sept. 7.

The session will be at 7 p.m. at the New Melle Community Center, 4700 Highway Z, New Melle.  The meeting originally had been set for Wednesday (Sept. 1.)

The other hearings will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 13 at the beginning of the County Council meeting at the Historic Courthouse in St. Charles and at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 20 at Trinity Lutheran Church, 4689 Highway 94 North in the Orchard Farm area.

Maryville: Currently installing a new trail that connects two schools with the adjoining neighborhoods, funded by MoDOT's Safe Routes to School program and federal stimulus funding.

Golden City: Cooky's Cafe in Golden City has the best pie on the entire TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, according to Adventure Cycling.

Springfield: Promoting bicycling, walking, transit use, carpooling, and the upcoming Ozarks New Energy Conference Oct. 7-8, 2010.

Columbia: The GetAbout Columbia nonmotorized pilot program will receive an additional $6 million in funding, which will be used to extend the bike/ped improvements planned under the GetAbout project.

Accurate counts of bike/ped traffic are essential for advocating and planning new facilities. The Missouri Bicycle & Pedestrian Federation encourages all cities to conduct regular counts, and an upcoming workshop in Kansas City provides a great opportunity for your city get some training in this area.

© Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

The workshop is geared towards professionals in city planning, public works, parks and recreation, traffic engineering, etc.  You can also ask your local elected officials to make sure your city is counting bicycle and pedestrian traffic. The data is often used to plan where to put new facilities, and before/after data is used to measure the facilities' use.

This type of data is increasingly required for competitive grant funding from federal and state agencies, so good bike/ped data collection helps your community compete for funding.

The Alliance for Bicycling and Walking recently featured a story on the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation's Bikemobile project. 

The Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation is tweaking the roving library concept and tailoring it to serve students in the Show Me State.

Get ready for the BikeMobile.

Thanks to funding from a Safe Routes to School grant, the Missouri advocates are outfitting a box truck, school bus, or maybe even an old ambulance to carry bikes and safety instructors to elementary students.

The Bikemobile will ultimately reach thousands of Missouri elementary and middle school students with a roving bicycle safety program starting this Fall in the Kansas City area.  The Bikemobile will be equipped with a fleet of bikes, helmets, tools and road safety equipment. 

The link to the story can be found here.

While funds are starting to roll in, MO Bike Fed is still searching for a vehicle.  Contact eric.bunch@mobikefed.org or call 573.701.2492 if you can give.  All donations are tax deductible.

Check out the Bikemobile webpage.  

According to a news release from National Bike to Church Day:

Bicyclists will be pedaling to Christ Lutheran Church - Overland Park, KS to celebrate the bi-annual National Bike to Church Day on August 29, 2010. The church is at 11720 Nieman Road Overland Park, KS 66210. Some of these bicyclists could be riding from as far away as more than 15 miles away. Christ Lutheran organizes snacks for the riders to eat before they take off for home again.

“We have been having a successful ride at our congregation since 2008, but we are looking to expand to other congregations across the city and the country” said John Blessing, one of the founders of National Bike to Church Day.

Currently Christ Lutheran Church is the primary location of the event, but the group encourages believers from churches around the nation to participate. The Facebook page for National Bike to Church Day reveals people from other Kansas City churches who have participated or given support as well as people from other cities in Kansas such as Emporia, Wellsville, and Wichita. Other states represented on the Facebook site are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New York, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. There are a few people from Indonesia who have shown interest.

Help us get a BikeMobile to transport a fleet of bikes and bike education to schools around the state.

We are launching an exciting new program to take bicycle education into schools and communities across the state.  We already have the funds for the bikes and the instructors, now we just need a way to transport them.

Can you help us by donating a gently-used van or bus?

Or can you can you donate some funds to help retrofit the BikeMobile?

Learn more about the BikeMobile and our travelling bike education program.

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St. Louis and the National Park Service have unveiled five proposals to revitalize the St Louis riverfront area including the Gateway Arch.

The five proposals are the finalists in a competition designed to uncover the best plan for improving the area.

All the proposals include significant improvements to bicycle & pedestrian access in the area, which includes both the Missouri and Illinois sides of the river.

Currently, streets with heavy traffic and the I-70 corridor cut off the Gateway Arch grounds from the rest of downtown St Louis, making it difficult and even dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists to travel between the two areas, which are separated by only a few yards.

According to the St Louis Public Radio story: