“Share the Road” in Greenville County

A little over a week ago, I asked the members of the Spinners email list for input on locations in Greenville County where they think “Share the Road” signs would be the most effective. I received quite a few responses, and I plan to pass the list on to County Planning and to County Councilman Jim Burns. I should note that County Planning has done a great deal of great work in planning for bicycle lanes and “Share the Road” signage. Many of the proposed routes that can be seen in the bicycle and pedestrian element (chapter 6) of the GPATS plan are a result, in part, of input from members of the Spinners a few years ago. The long-range plan is great, but I am asking you for additional input now because I would like to see more “Share the Road” signage in the short term as well. Your responses are helpful in establishing priorities to push for. If you have not yet provided your input, or have comments or suggestions about the responses so far, please leave a comment on this post so that your suggestion can be added to the list.

Here is the list that I have received so far:

US Pro Route, particularly Old Buncombe toward Paris Mountain- Old Buncombe was the most popular response. Seven different people mentioned this particular road to me. I personally ride this road most weekends as well, so I know that it is a visible spot for cyclists with a few fairly narrow two-lane sections.

Bakery Route, include both Dividing Waters Rd. and Callahan Mtn. Road - This was another popular response. I don’t ride this route often, but I would like to hear specific locations where signage might be needed.

Old US 25 watershed- another location mentioned by a few of you. Any suggestions for specific spots?

Little Texas Rd- mentioned by 3 people.

Roper Mt Rd- I ride short sections of Roper Mountain when I commute to work; once between Riley Smith Rd. and Independence Blvd and again to cross 385. The first section has narrow lanes with fairly fast automobile traffic, so I was glad that one other person mentioned Roper Mountain as a road that needs “Share the Road” signage.

Hwy 14 from Pelham on to Simpsonville, Roe Ford Rd- I have never ridden on Hwy 14, but a couple of you mentioned it.

The remaining roads were each mentioned as well, by at least one person (there may be some overlap with the routes already mentioned):

River Road

Belue Mill Road

Oak Grove Road

Hwy 11 between Gowensville and the western border of Greenville County

Tigerville Rd from TR up to NGC and Hwy 11

Hwy 101

Hwy 414

Stallings Road

Anderson Ridge Rd

Abner Creek Rd

Stallings Rd

North Main St from downtown to 291 N.

Groce Meadow Rd toward Lake Robinson

Reedy Fork Road in Simpsonville

Jonesville Road in Simpsonville

Miller Road

Georgia Road

Holland Road

Verdin narrows from 5 lanes to two lanes and changes names to Holland (S-23-333) with some rolling hills. A sign on one of the uphill stretches south of Bethel Road would remind motorists of the presence of bicyclists.

Rutherford, just after crossing Locust Hill Road

That’s the list for now. Again, please comment if you have anything to add and thanks for the responses so far.

George thanks Greenville

George Hincapie wrote a nice “thank you to Greenville” article in the paper this week. Following the US Pro races last weekend, he had quite a few nice things to say about the fans, the sponsors, the organizers, and about his adopted hometown in general. Jonathon archived the full article on his Greenville News cycling blog, so be sure to go there and check it out if you missed the print version.

Thanks to you as well George. Greenville's cycling community certainly thanks you for being an ambassador for cycling in this area.

US Pro races and advocacy updates

As anyone who rides a bike in this town knows, the USA Cycling Championship races took place last weekend in Greenville. You can see television coverage of the races this Sunday at 5:00 pm on the Versus network. I enjoyed seeing how Greenville and the Upstate were portrayed during last year’s TV coverage of the races, and I expect similar positive coverage of our City this time around.

As I mentioned in the last post, I attended the initial Plan-It Greenville open house last week. Everyone who attended filled out a survey that covered general quality of life as well as specific issues in Greenville. The survey provided several opportunities to make suggestions for future improvements in the City. As you may be able to guess, more provisions for cycling are something that I stressed in the survey. I encourage all of you who were not able to attend to go to the Plan-It Greenville website and take the survey online.

For those of you interested in off road advocacy, the Upstate SORBA chapter is now official. Check out the website for more information about how the group plans to improve Upstate South Carolina’s mountain biking opportunities.

The SCDOT has a new section on their website that allows the public to see where resurfacing efforts are underway or planned. This is a great opportunity for us to look for places that are heavily used for cycling and to request bike lanes or wide outer lanes as part of the resurfacing.

Photo: George Hincapie on the second to last lap on Broad Street. You can see more of my race photos here.

Plan-It Greenville and other updates

Before I pass along a few updates, I would like to thank those of you who attended the Spinners advocacy meeting on Monday. It was the first time in a while that the advocacy group has met and I think we had a few good discussions about topics that have been on the table for quite some time. I won't go into detail right now, but I will recap some of the important points at a later date.

I was able to attend the GPATS (Greenville-Pickens Area Transportation Study) Regional Transportation Plan presentation on Tuesday afternoon. Overall, it was very encouraging. Much of the presentation about a proposed 30-year plan for the region was focused on Complete Streets, which by nature include bicycle and pedestrian elements. According to a recent GPATS Long range Transportation plan survey, most residents rated this area’s current level of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure as poor. In keeping with other survey results that I have seen in the region (like the City’s recent Bike to Work day survey), safety issues seem to be the biggest factor that prevents people from considering cycling as a transportation option. Despite the low percentage of trips by bike in the Greenville area, I do believe that many people would ride to nearby destinations if they felt safer doing so. People who don’t currently ride often ask me questions about the logistics of bike commuting, so I know there is at least some interest. Some people, like me, ride mainly because of the love of cycling, but you don’t have to be a hardcore cyclist to ride for transportation. John Burke, president of Trek Bicycles, pointed out recently that 50% of all car trips are under 2 miles in length. I don’t expect everyone to replace their cars with bikes, but for those many short trips, cycling really can be a viable option for a lot of people. I am starting to ramble a bit, so let me get back to the GPATS presentation. One question the survey asks is “If you had $100 to spend on transportation improvements, how would you spend it?” There are several options to choose from, but on average, respondents wanted to spend a total of $28 of those dollars on bicycle, pedestrian, and streetscape improvements. That is a pretty impressive figure and, again, it shows that a real interest in complete streets does exist in this community. The survey is still active on the Greenville Planning website, so I encourage those of you who have not taken a few minutes to fill it out to do so here.

I was not able to attend the GTA bikes on buses press conference, but from what I hear, it went well. Fifteen GTA buses will get racks by Labor Day weekend, with the rest to be completed by the end of September. The Greenville News ran an article about the announcement this morning. Check it out here.

Finally, I want to mention another opportunity for the cycling community to get involved in shaping the future of this area. The Plan-It Greenville website has just been launched by the City. Greenville is getting ready to develop a new 10-year comprehensive plan and they want input from the community. To get more information, you can sign up to be on the email list. Also, plan to attend the Community Open House on Thursday, August 30 from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. at the Hughes Main Library. Several of you have mentioned that it is hard to make it to public meetings that take place during the workday, so this is your opportunity. I hope to see many of you there next week.

Bikes on buses follow-up

I mentioned this briefly last week, but now it is official. GTA is installing bike racks on all 27 buses in the system. Each bus will be outfitted with a Sportworks rack that will have the capacity to carry two bicycles. Currently 62.7 percent of public buses in this country have racks for bikes, so this is definitely a step in the right direction for Greenville. Thanks again to all of you who asked for this through your emails or through the transit survey at the beginning of the summer.

There will be a press conference and an official announcement about the bike racks at 10:00 am on Wednesday, August 22nd (two days from now) at Linky Stone Park (below the Academy Street Bridge). I have a conflict at work and will not be able to attend, but Steve Baker, president of the Greenville Spinners, will be on hand to say a few words and to demonstrate the new racks for the press. If any of you can make it out there Wednesday morning to show your support, I encourage you to do so.

If you didn’t see my post on this subject a few months ago and want to learn more about bikes on transit, I encourage you to download this pdf document from the Federal Transit Administration titled Bicycles & Transit: A Partnership that Works. The document points to success stories in other metro areas that have added provisions for bicycles to their transit systems. In most cases, bus ridership has increased dramatically. In a speech at last year’s National Bicycle Summit, Louisville, Kentucky Mayor Jerry Abramson mentioned that his city’s transit system has seen a double-digit rider increase every year since bike racks were added to buses. Pretty impressive, let’s hope for a similar result here in Greenville.

Bike Friendly South Carolina and the PCC

It was great to see a post recently on the Bike Commute Tips blog titled “South Carolina: Becoming more bike friendly.” The post points to an article in the Columbia Free Times about local efforts to make that city more bike friendly. The article is worth reading and quotes several bike commuters in the area, including Natalie Cappuccio-Britt, executive director of the Palmetto Cycling Coalition.

Unfortunately, our state has a poor track record when it comes to cyclist / motorist injuries and fatalities, but the PCC is a group that is working hard to change that. If you are not already a member, I encourage you to join. If you let your membership lapse (as I did recently) I encourage you to renew. This article was a good reminder for me. I’ll be sending in my membership renewal this week to support the PCC’s efforts to make South Carolina as bike friendly as possible.

August Spinners Advocacy meeting

Earlier, I mentioned an upcoming Greenville Spinners advocacy meeting that was tentatively scheduled for this week. Due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts, the meeting has been postponed to Monday, August 20th 7:00pm at Coffee Underground. I hope that many of you will be able to attend.

I also want to pass along a piece of good news. A few months ago, I mentioned that Greenville should have provisions for bikes on public transit. I asked several of you Spinners cycling advocates to take the transit survey and mention the need for bike racks on buses. Now the GTA Board has announced that they will be installing Sportworks bicycle racks on their fleet of buses. Each bus will have the capability to carry 2 bicycles. Great news! That is one less topic that we will need to discuss at the meeting next week. Thanks to those of you who took the survey and wrote letters on this issue. Your involvement really does make a difference.