Swamp Rabbit Trail Roadzyme Demonstration

For those of you who might be interested, I want to pass along the following message from Greenville County Director of Greenways Ty Houck. Sounds interesting; I’ll have to see if my work schedule will allow me to get out and see this demonstration next Tuesday.

Tuesday February 26th all day, weather permitting we will be doing a demonstration of Roadzyme. Engineers will be on-site all day next Tuesday for questions.

Roadzyme is a road building product that is:

- non-toxic, made from sugar beet extract
-will not leach a pollutant like asphalt
- significantly less expensive than asphalt
-environmentally friendly
-quick and easy to install

The demonstration site is at the southern end of the Furman lake across the dam. Park at the public parking at the student center and take the short walk over the dam, at the end of the road is an access gate to the trail. This is an exciting green product that we want your opinion on so hope to see you there.

Update 2/26: Due to the rain today, the demonstration will probably be moved to Thursday or Friday. Stay tuned.


Update 2/28: Friday it is. Check it out if you can.

More Share the Road news

In a recent post, I mentioned a few places in the City of Greenville where “Share the Road” signs will soon be installed. I just found out about one more road, Chick Springs. It sounds like two signs have been approved for that road and are currently being fabricated by the City. Many local cyclists use Chick Springs as a route from Altamont/ Paris Mountain to downtown, so it will be great to have the signs there to remind motorist of the presence of cyclists. Thanks to the City Staff for getting this done. I hope to see many more STR signs popping up in the City limits as the year progresses

So far, my attempts to get more “Share the Road” signs in the County have not been very successful, but I still consider that to be a major advocacy goal for 2008. I don’t want to blame the County entirely though; part of the problem has probably has been that I have not had the time to spend and have not been talking to all the right people. Any help that all of you can provide with contacts would be greatly appreciated. “Share the Road” signs are a cost effective way to spread the message that cyclists have a right to use the roadways, so there is no reason that we shouldn’t be able to get signs installed on the routes that we most often use.

One thing that all of you can do is use the form that is shown here (click to enlarge) to let the SCDOT know which roads in Greenville County need “Share the Road” signs. I encourage any of you who have a specific route in mind to identify specific locations on that road (with pictures if possible), fill out this form, and send it to the SCDOT (or just send it to me and I will forward it for you). As I mentioned before, Old Buncombe is the highest priority road in my opinion. Let’s work to get signs installed along that road before the US pro races in August.

Some good news

The Palmetto Cycling Coalition recently sent out a press release to announce that South Carolina Bicycle Safety Bill H.3006 passed in the House in January by a vote of 105-0. That is great news and we owe the PCC our thanks for their hard work on this for the past couple years. Those of you who have been following the progress of this bill know that it revises South Carolina bicycle statutes to bring them into greater conformity with the Uniform Vehicle Code. Two of the reforms in the bill that stand out to me are the establishment of a minimum passing distance (five feet) and the elimination of a mandatory sidepath law.

In the PCC press release, Paul Lefrancios, President of the PCC is quoted as saying “We are so excited about the House passage of this bill. South Carolina is 4th in the nation for cycling fatalities. This is unacceptable. And House members agreed.” I have mentioned South Carolina’s terrible record on cycling safety before on this blog, and you can view the 2004 NHTSA statistics on cycling fatalities for yourself right here. Our state’s rate of 5.24 cycling fatalities for every million state residents is well over twice the national average; a fact which, as Mr. Lefrancios stated, is quite unacceptable.

You can read the PCC position paper on the legislation here. The bill will now go on to the State Senate for consideration as S.0354. In the Senate, the PCC is working to improve the bill by removing the Single File amendment, which would require cyclists to ride single file rather than two abreast. As the PCC’s Executive Director Natalie Cappuccio Britt points out, the Single File amendment “would prohibit parents from riding next to their children” and “It is far more difficult and dangerous for a motorist to pass a long line of cyclists riding single file versus two abreast.”

The bill is expected to pass in the Senate this year, but it still needs support from all the cyclists in South Carolina. If you are not already a PCC member, I encourage you to join them in their effort to make our state bicycle friendly.

While I am posting good news, I also want to mention that the Greenville City Council officially adopted the “Trails & Greenways Master Plan” at Monday evening’s City Council meeting. In addition, some good discussion took place at that meeting regarding implementation of additional bike lanes downtown in the near future. A few of you have mentioned that the downtown bicycle plan, which City Council endorsed in 2005, seems to have stalled a bit recently. That may be true, but I am still optimistic that we will see some progress in 2008. Mayor White, the City Council, and many members of the City staff openly support bicycle infrastructure projects, so we just need to continue to communicate our needs and desires to them. I received very positive responses from several City Council members to my comments, and to a follow up email that I sent, about a greater emphasis on bike lanes and “Share the Road” signage in the city of Greenville. As I said before, the City is working on several projects and I think we will see some notable improvements this year. Still, we can’t just wait for things to happen. We need to keep communicating with the City and helping them to pinpoint areas where improvements to make cycling safer are necessary. I don’t have all the ideas, so I am asking all of you to let me know what improvements you would like to see to make Greenville a bike friendly town.