Huntsville Bike Committee

The 2nd annual Mayor’s Bike Ride opens for events and registration on May 15 9:00 am at the corner of Williams Avenue and Fountain Circle. The ride rolls out at 10:00 on a family-friendly HPD-protected 4 mile loop around downtown with a 2 mile bailout option. Helmets are required. Come enjoy goodies from Scallywags Bikes & Coffee and Earth Fare and learn about safe routes to the new store on University. Microwave Dave and the Nukes will be playing before and after the ride. There will be Safety City and advocacy tents where you can learn about what is being done to improve bike safety in Huntsville. At 11:00 there will be door prize drawings.

from Traffic Engineering – We have practically no data relevant to bicycles. Our accident information is good but that is it. We need bicycle counts; good information will help us make better decisions. We need your advise on where to count. Where are the intersections that are most used by cyclist? We’ve all ready counted at Sparkman and Technology. Where should we go next? Note last time they measured from 9:30am to 4:30pm.

One of my class projects for this semester is a GIS tool to help Huntsville, Madison, and the county select roads that will need special bicycle infrastructure the most in the future. An intermediate of this is a road suitability map. Hopefully this turns out well and could be published like the bicycle routes map that you can get in pdf form on this site. I’m looking for feedback on the content of it right now, the labels and appearance and such can be improved later. The levels are 1-5 with 1 being the best, and 0 is no data.

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The Mayor’s bike ride is Saturday May 15 at 10am this year. If you want to participate as a vendor or musician let us know soon.

Here is a picture of the new traffic signal stencil. You can see the metal lines in the road near the stencil. The spot of highest sensitivity to bikes is marked at each intersection. In the following picture, the area where 3 metal lines intersect is a good place to put your bike. You may also find it helpful to roll through the similar area at the back of the intersection and ride up the metal line to the point near the stencil.

The following intersections have been changed and marked so far, just roll up on your bike in a straight path to the stencil of a cyclist:

Governors and Parkway
Technology at Sparkman
Pratt and Meridian
Franklin and Governors
the rest of Queensbury/Chateau at Airport

6 more should be completed in the rest of April. I was told that at least 1 of the intersections changed so far did not work after 11pm, so if you have complaints please post them. The city wants to have all loop triggered lights be bicycle compatible in the future. I will try to get some pictures soon.

What: BASC Meeting

When: Wednesday, 7-April, 2010 at 5:00pm

Where: 308 Fountain Circle (in GIS/Zoning Building meeting room)