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As a p art of their effort to provide community input into the effort to Plan Fort Collins for the next 5 – 50 years, the Fort Collins Bike Co-op recently held 9 public meetings in and around Fort Collins. The “listening sessions” or “Bike Town Meetings” were held to identify issues and opportunities for the future of bicycling in the city. The final report and list consists of 119 items that were gathered from citizens on how to improve bicycling in the community. The final report was adopted in its entirety by the Bicycle Advisory Committee and a recommendation to Council has been made that they begin implementation in the short and the long term. [Heather Manier]
Final Report: Bike Co-op Listening Sessions
Related to
Plan Fort Collins, May 1010
The Bike Co-op held its final listening session Wednesday, May 5th. This meeting served to summarize citizens’ comments made during eight previous sessions held throughout the City and to prioritize action items for referral to City Planners, Transportation Planners and citizen’s boards and commissions.
There was unanimous consent to offer the following recommendation:
The community should take steps to improve bicycle safety and efficiency through a comprehensive bicycle safety education program and through enhanced engineering efforts. The education should target motorists, cyclist, K-12 children, and CSU students while the engineering enhancements should include:
The creation of bicycle boulevards ( like Vine, Swallow, Stover, Canyon, Stuart, etc.) for efficient long distance movement of bikes between and among “activity centers,” across town and between existing corridors, including the Mason Trail, the Powerline Trail, the Poudre Trail and the Spring Creek Trail;
Installation of additional signal actuation devices at stop lights, including the use of default modes to facilitate bicycle travel;
The use of sharrows (shared lane arrows) and improved “Share the Road” signs that include the secondary sign “Bikes use full lane.”
The group reviewed the list of 120 items from the previous meetings and prioritized seventeen items (in random order):
- More grade separated crossings at intersections and along major trails;
- “Share-the-Road” signs should include “Bikes Use Full Lane” secondary sign;
- Increase bike/ped accessibility on and across College in “mid-town;”
- Add/improve bicycle lanes along North Shields, North College, Gregory, Lemay and others;
- Decrease speed limits near campus to 25 mph;
- Add “scramble intersections” (also called diagonal crossings and nicknamed the “Barnes Dance”) for Henry Barnes, an innovative traffic engineer at College and Mountain, Laurel and College, and Shields and Elizabeth for bikes and pedestrians;
- Add lighting on trails for safety (including use of motion detectors with lights);
- Make broader use of sharrows now that they are approved by the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Code Devices);
- Utilize more PR campaigns such as the “Coexist” campaign;
- Target scofflaw cyclists for education;
- Improve east-west access to, from and between the Mason and Powerline trails;
- Enforce laws consistently;
- Create more bicycle boulevards;
- Improve signal actuation for bicycles or have signals default to green for cyclists;
- Educate motorists about the rights of cyclists and the benefits of bicycling;
- Educate K-12 children on bicycle safety;
- Educate CSU students on bicycle safety;
Citizens wishing to comment on the above or those who wish to express further concerns should do so via the following e-mail addresses:
Rick Price, Safe Cycling Coordinator, the Bike Co-op:
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Dave Kemp, City Bike Coordinator:
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Bicycle Advisory Committee:
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Plan Fort Collins Staff:
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or
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Messages sent to the Bicycle Advisory Committee may not be acknowledged but are treated as public comment and become a part of the minutes of the BAC at the next meeting. Any Committee member who wishes to pick up on a citizen comment is welcome to do so and if the Committee agrees, the concern may be added to a future BAC agenda for discussion.
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