Share the News

A couple of months ago, I participated in the City of Greenville’s first major bicycle count, along with nearly 40 other volunteers. We spent one weekday morning and one Saturday morning counting cyclists and noting basic characteristics at various locations around the city. The new Greenville Bicycle Master Plan newsletter, called Share the News, outlines the results of that count, pointing out that we collectively counted more than 1,100 bicyclists during our two 2-hour long time slots. The newsletter also points out the following bits of information that were collected during the count.

• 76% of the bicyclists counted were male

• 64% of the bicyclists observed wore a helmet

• More than 60% of the bicyclists counted were riding

on the street rather than the sidewalk

• Bicycling was more common on the weekend than

during the week

• The most popular areas for bicycling were near

Willard Street, the Swamp Rabbit Trail and

McDaniel Avenue at Ridgeland Street

The results will be used for future planning and already validate some of the bicycle infrastructure plans that are slated for 2011 implementation. I’ll post more about those projects soon, but for now just know that good things are happening. Also, make sure that you are subscribed to the City’s Bicycling and Greenways newsletter for the latest news “about ongoing efforts to encourage bicycling and walking for recreation and transportation” in Greenville.

Continue to vote for Swamp Rabbit funding

Last month, I mentioned that the Swamp Rabbit Trail was in the running for a $250,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh Project. I have good news to pass along to all of you who voted. Thanks to you the project made it to the next round!

Now we all just need to continue voting everyday throughout December so we can bring that grant money to Greenville to make our trail safer. There are two ways to vote (and you can vote both ways each day):

• On the web at http://www.refresheverything.com/swamprabbit
• Texting the message “104074” to Pepsi (73774)

Keep spreading the word about this too. Let’s make it happen.

Update 12/13/10:  Follow the new Vote Rabbit blog for the latest news about this initiative, and if you are mentioning on Twitter, make sure to use the hashtag #voterabbit. However you chose to do it, continue to spread the word and influence others to vote rabbit everday.

Greenville on Design*Sponge

This isn't really cycling related, but I enjoyed seeing Greenville featured recently on the Design*Sponge blog. The "things to do" section mentions two popular places to ride in town,

The Swamp Rabbit Trail and Paris Mountain State Park. Check out the rest of the city guide too...it's a pretty good list.