“Imagine Greenville”- The County’s Comprehensive plan

This is something that I completely missed until today when I saw a message about it on the Spinner’s list (thanks Nigel for getting this info out). Greenville County is in the process of updating its comprehensive plan and is holding a series of public meetings to get input from the community. Bike lanes were discussed at the meetings that have already taken place, so we need to make sure that the cycling community is represented at future meetings. Bike lanes, Greenways, and the County “Share the Road” effort are all topics that are worth bring up in this public forum.

Each meeting starts at 6:30pm and should end at around 8. A couple of the meetings have already taken place, but here is the schedule for future meetings:

Monday, April 7th Mauldin High School

Tuesday, April 8th Berea High School

Thursday, April 10th Carolina High School

Thursday, April 17th Hillcrest High School

Tuesday, April 22nd Travelers Rest High School

Thursday, April 24th Woodmont High School

Find out more about “Imagine Greenville” on the County’s website. I will make it to at least one of the future meetings and I hope that some of you can attend these as well. As Nigel pointed out in his message to the Spinner’s list, “It is crucial that we as cyclist get involved and make a difference about the future of Cycling in Greenville, before someone else does it for us!”

Bicycle infrastructure funding

I already mentioned this on the Spinner’s email list, but it is worth mentioning again here for anyone who is not on that list. At the upcoming meeting on April 14th at 5:30, City Council will vote to approve the Capital Improvement Budget, which includes the following items.

1) $45,000 per year for bicycle lanes and bicycle infrastructure in the City limits. This 45k will be available each year for the next 5 years for a total of $225,000. The money will begin implementation of the Bicycle Infrastructure Master Plan that the Spinners and the City developed 3 years ago (see a map of that plan here).

2) $4.5 million over the next 5 years for City-wide trails and greenways. This money will continue implementation of the City's Trails and Greenways Master Plan, which was developed last year by Greenways Incorporated and the City staff.

This is great news so I hope that many of you will join me at City Hall in a couple of weeks to express your support. We have a Greenville Spinners club meeting planned that same night at 6:30 at Coffee Underground, so please plan to come downtown one hour earlier to let the Mayor, City Council, and City staff know that we support this effort and that we appreciate all of their work on cycling issues.

Plan-it Greenville Theme Committees

I received an email this week about committees that are being established for the different Plan-it Greenville themes. Basically, if you live and/or work in the City of Greenville, you can volunteer to participate on any of the different citizen advisory committees based on the themes that have been identified so far. Each committee will meet 3 times during the spring and summer to discuss goals and make recommendations related to the theme. The meetings will most likely take place during the lunch hour and each committee will select the dates to meet. I encourage you to read about all six of the Plan-it Greenville themes right here, but I want to point out (directly from the Plan-it Greenville email) the three themes that I think impact us the most as cyclists:

Transportation: The theme committee will address public transportation and providing adequate infrastructure so that individuals have sidewalks, bike lanes and roads for travel options. Also Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) will be studied and transit corridors will be identified.

Healthy Living and a Pedestrian-friendly environment: The theme committee will address creating walkable spaces, green spaces for parks and community vegetable gardens, sidewalks, cross walks, bike lanes, smaller streets with slower speeds, and neighborhood commercial and mixed use areas.

Green/ Environment: This theme committee will look at ways to protect natural spaces such as the Reedy River, landscaping requirements, encouraging Green development, reducing greenhouse gases through reduction of vehicle miles traveled, and sustainability in future development and redevelopment.

I have already expressed interest in participating on the Transportation committee. If others of you are interested in that one as well, I encourage you to email planit@greatergreenville.com and let them know that you would like to participate. I hope that a few of you will choose to participate on the other two committees as well. It would be really great to have representatives from the cycling community serving on all three committees, so please let me know if any of you decide to sign up.

STR update

As I mentioned before, new Share the Road signs are up on Chick Springs Road. In the City of Greenville, signs are soon to be up in Cleveland Park, on Roper Mountain Road, and on Villa Road to name a few locations. As you know, the effort is moving a bit slower in the County, but I did recently hear from SCDOT that they are going to “make up work orders for sign maintenance crews to implement installation” based on the list of locations that the Spinners members helped to put together. The SCDOT district office can’t promise to include every route that we mentioned, but I am glad to hear that they are going to try to “fulfill the current list.” I will continue to post updates on the County Share the Road effort as I have them.

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.