More details about proposed St. Louis regional cycling and walking plan

Bob Foster of the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation gives more details about the proposed St. Louis Area regional cycling and walking plan:

The intent of the plan is that EVERY road be optimized for bike travel and provide guidelines for what that means. It also focuses on "environments" that is, how a user on a bike or on foot experiences the area. And it focuses on connecting trip generators (such as a residential area) with destinations (such as shopping and work locales).

The connectivity could include bike paths, trails, lanes or friendly roads. The question a planner would ask would be "Is there a desirable way for people who live HERE to get to this obvious destination THERE by foot or bike." That may be trail, road, transit, or combinations there of.

It's very common now that people drive to say, Grant's Trail, and unload their bikes. A successful plan would make it as desirable to bike to the trail as it is to drive.

The previous plan identified corridors for biking. As a consequence, roads not on the corridor got no treatments for biking and often non for walking -- even if the project cost TENS OF MILLIONS. And even the routes on the plan got nothing if no significant work was planned (think clayton between price and lindbergh). Advocates would learn about a project, urge wide curb lanes or shoulders, and because it was not a corridor, nothing happened (Laclede Station south of 44 for example).

I'm pretty encouraged by this process -- first it was jointly funded by East West Gateway, which administers transportation dollars and determines transportation priorities for the region and by Great Rivers Greenway, which is the trailbuilder for the region. Members of the Technical Advisory Committee included Mike Murray (GRG) Steve Sleet (Trailnet), Larry Welty (a cyclist from MODOT), and folks from stl county and city and IDOT, as well as yours truly. Four people on the committee (counting Luis Porrello who headed the effort for HNTB) are on the Stl Bike Fed board.

The model ordinances are very cool, and will help all users, imho.

Bob suggests checking out the plan carefully and making your comments, because "we will be living with the plan for many years, and want it to be as good as possible."