Bicycling

Good Ideas Columbus

This afternoon is an event I have been anticipating for quite some time: the Good Ideas Columbus Happy Hour at Seventh Son Brewery.  Transit Columbus, a local, not-for-profit community-based planning organization is sponsoring this event: it is the culmination of a months-long process involving six design teams with six ideas for transforming transportation in Columbus.  Each team has a community leader (such as Mayor Michael Coleman), but consists of citizens who volunteered their time and energy to make Columbus more livable and sustainable.

Other Transit Columbus events have produced creative solutions to transportation problems in Columbus, such as the Design Your Transit event this past Autumn.  We should see some good, perhaps great, ideas tonight as well.  As a relatively recent transplant (re-plant?), I must say that I am very impressed with what I see in Columbus.  There is a great urban fabric to work with, a committed leadership, and great grass-roots energy.  People love the Cbus and believe in its future.

As their Facebook page says, “Trains, bikes, pedestrians, food and beer.”  How can you go wrong?  See you this afternoon at Seventh Son Brewery (1101 North 4th St).

Sustainable Transportation: Columbus and Beyond

Join us next week for Sustainable Transportation: Columbus and Beyond – a public conversation sponsored by the Graduate Geography Organization (GGO) at The Ohio State University.  It will be held Thursday, March 27, 5-7pm Main Dining Room, OSU Faculty Club

This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served.

Speakers will include:

  • Harvey Miller (OSU Department of Geography)
  • Meredith Joy (Yay Bikes!)
  • Chet Ridenour (Car2Go)
  • Scott Ulrich (City of Columbus Department of Health)
  • Brad Westall (City of Columbus Department of Parks and Recreation)
  • A representative from the Central Ohio Transit Authority

For more information: go.osu.edu/2014st

sustainable transportation columbus flier

 

 

Behold the power of bike paths

Newly opened is the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, an eight mile $62.5 million bike trail though the city center that creates “accessible urban connective tissue.”  [In Indianapolis, a Bike Path to Progress].  As the NYT reports:

Residents and visitors from nearby cities like Cincinnati and Louisville, Ky., are using the trail to explore Indianapolis with new enthusiasm, city officials said, and more convention planners are now choosing Indianapolis because of it. Planners from cities including Cologne, Germany; Portland, Ore.; and Miami have also come to take stock of the trail that Indianapolis has blazed.

Continuing:

Before the path arrived, Indianapolis didn’t have a mainstream bike scene — just streets designed to improve traffic flow. Now, children and the elderly have joined the spandex swarms of longtime cycling enthusiasts. The pathway has connected people with the places they want to go and encouraged physical activity in a state with the eighth-highest obesity rate in the country.

Bike trails and lanes also have positive impacts on local business and on residential property values.

Columbus, Ohio (my fair city) has a nice set of bike trails.  However, it is a set, not a system: they are not interconnected (yet).  But progress is being made: witness the Camp Chase Trail – this will connect the Olentangy-Scioto trail to the Ohio-to-Erie bike trail south of Columbus to Xenia and Cincinnati.

If Columbus interconnects its greenway trails together, along with connecting the system to the Ohio-to-Erie trail, I think it will become a major bike tourism destination.  Ca-ching!*

*(old fashioned cash register noise)