Mandatory helmet laws, improving connectivity around the region and tax incentives for bike commuters were some of the myriad ideas proposed at a Saturday summit on making bicycling safer and easier in the Charlottesville area.
The Bike Summit was hosted by the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation and Bike Charlottesville, a group that was founded this year and promotes safe cycling.
“There’s been a lot of energy building,” said Vince Caristo, the alliance’s executive director.
The issue of bicycle safety has recently been front and center in the area, largely because of the death of 23-year-old Matthew S. King, a University of Virginia graduate student, who was hit and killed by a city public works truck in April while riding on West Main Street. The driver of the truck, Ronnie Lorenzo Douglas Jr., will not face criminal charges.
The focus of the gathering was to come up with ideas to boost the area’s rating under the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly Community Program, which evaluates engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation as it relates to bicycle friendliness.
Top projects will now be narrowed down, and action plans will be developed for the select few and presented to city and Albemarle County officials in the fall.
“Think bigger than the city right now. We’re here to think about the region,” Caristo said.
In 2008, under the league’s program, the Charlottesville area scored a bronze rating, the lowest of the four possible awards. The other ratings are silver, gold and platinum, and bicycle activists hope to bump Charlottesville’s rating up to silver when it reapplies in 2012.
The Saturday event was held a day after National Bike to Work Day and three days after a Ride of Silence took place in Charlottesville to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while riding on public roads. Members of Bike Charlottesville organized the local ride.
City Councilor David Brown, an avid bicyclist and a participant of the event, said he also heard area residents say they wanted better connectivity within Albemarle County neighborhoods and ways to get into the city because there are plenty of challenges for cyclists on U.S. 29.
“I think there’s an interest in bicycling and it doesn’t stop at the city limits,” he said.
The last bike summit was held in 2006, and a similar list of priority projects was outlined after that event.
Chris Gensic, the city’s parks and trails planner, said progress is being made on many projects, and there are several bicycle-related projects in the area that, at best, might be built in three years.
They include a trail along the U.S. 250 Bypass, a bridge connecting the two sides of McIntire Park and a path along Meade Avenue.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement