Unlike Cincinnati, Indianapolis has wide streets. The streets are so wide that there is room to do some neat things within the right-of-way with regards to non-automobile forms of transportation.
As a result, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard (R) made it a priority of his administration to not only support the eight-mile Indianapolis Cultural Trail, but to create a city-wide bicycle network that he hopes will have 200 miles by 2015.
It’s a steep change for a city that had virtually no on-street bike lanes in 2007, and only 70 to 75 miles of on-street bike lanes now.
“It feels different when you’re riding a bike, because of how it’s been built and what’s underneath it,” Mayor Ballard told Clarence Eckerson Jr. from Streetfilms. “It’s the part about connecting up everything that’s really made a dramatic impact and is getting the international attention.”
The $63 million project was largely funded through private contributions, and has now created a physically separated pedestrian and bicycle facility that connects many of the city’s significant attractions and center city neighborhoods.
As Cincinnati works on developing a bicycle network of its own, complete with physically separated facilities like the Cultural Trail, what do you think the Queen City should do the same or do differently?
On Friday, April 19, UrbanCincy partnered with the Niehoff Urban Studio and hosted an event that showcased student work and included expert analysis and discussion of urban mobility issues in Cincinnati.
Approximately 100 people showed up to the collaborative studio space in Corryville to view the student work, and learn more about the challenges facing Cincinnati today and in the future.
Metropolis & Mobility: Bus Rapid Transit and Bikeway Planning focused on five proposed bus rapid transit and three bikeway corridors throughout Cincinnati. Engineering and planning students were paired together in groups to examine the issues and propose implementation strategies for those potential projects.
Students examining bus rapid transit focused on the Reading Road, Downtown, Hamilton Avenue, Vine Street, and Montgomery Road corridors. The students studying bikeway planning, meanwhile, examined the Wasson Way and Western Riverfront Trail and Mill Creek Greenway.
Those who attended the event were also able to vote on their favorite project, which will then be profiled right here on UrbanCincy.com in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please enjoy the video put together on the Metropolis & Mobility event by our contributing videographer Andrew Stahlke.
UrbanCincy is proud to bring back the popular Bikes+Brews ride to help kick off National Bike Month in Cincinnati on Saturday, May 4.
In addition to Bikes+Brews, Cincinnati’s celebration of Bike Month will include dozens of events over the course of the month. Some will focus on teaching people how to maintain and care for their bikes, others will introduce people to biking, and others will look to celebrate the form of transportation through fun activities and events that enhance the experience of existing bicyclists.
As is tradition with the Bikes+Brews ride, the ride will start at the OTR Biergarten and then continue on throughout the center city. This year’s ride will include five stops along a nine-mile route traversing Over-the-Rhine, Downtown, Covington, Newport, and Bellevue before returning to Findlay Market.
The route is fairly level, and should be doable for cyclists of all ages and abilities.
After taking off from the OTR Biergarten at 12pm, riders will head south to the Moerlein Lager House and then across the Roebling Suspension Bridge to Keystone Bar & Grill in Covington. Following that, the group will head east to The Elusive Cow Cafe in Bellevue, then double-back and head north across the Ohio River via the Purple People Bridge.
Once back in Ohio we will stop at Rock Bottom Brewery on Fountain Square, then head north to Mayberry Gastropub before concluding the ride back at Findlay Market at Market Wines.
Those interested in joining the group mid-ride are welcome to do so, and will be able to track the group’s progress by following #bikebrews or @UrbanCincy on Twitter.
Those who do not have their own bike can rent one from the Cincinnati Bike Center (near our first stop on the ride) for the day for $25.
The 2013 Bikes+Brews ride is free and open to anyone who would like to participate, and will take off from the OTR Biergarten around 12pm. The ride is expected to conclude back at Market Wines around 5pm.
New York City opened its much-anticipated CitiBike system earlier this week, and business is off to a record start. Within the first 24 hours alone, more than 4,000 people signed up for memberships. Cincinnati issued a request for proposals in October 2012 for what city leadership hopes will be a -bike, 35-station bike share system. More from Streetsblog NYC:
Comparing the first wave of subscriptions in NYC to other bike-share cities is tough, since the Citi Bike service area is much larger than the other networks, and other cities launched at different times of year. (Capital Bikeshare in Washington, DC, is currently the largest bike-share system in the country, but it launched with only 49 stations.) Even taking into account the relatively large size of the Citi Bike service area, which will provide 6,000 bikes at 330 stations, the sign-up rate in NYC is off the charts so far.
The $120 million Smale Riverfront Park will celebrate its next wave of progress two months from now when the Women’s Committee Garden and Duke Energy Garden are opened to the public – more than doubling the central riverfront park’s completed acreage.
According to officials from the Cincinnati Park Board, the project is still on-time and on-budget thanks to an influx of private contributions.
Originally, park officials had planned on approximately half of the project’s cost being covered by state and federal funds. While those funds flowed early in the project’s life, they have all but dried up over the past two years.
“We got into this pretty aware of what the challenges were, but the biggest challenges thus far have probably been the state and federal funding,” stated Smale Riverfront Park’s project manager, Dave Prather. “It’s been a pretty big adjustment when half of the funding you were counting on hasn’t come, but thanks to the private funding we’ve been able to stay pretty much on schedule.”
Prather says that the city leadership understands the realities facing both their state and federal partners, but that without the private and local support the project would most likely be behind schedule.
He is, however, optimistic that things will turn around and says that the park board is working on other ways to get state and federal dollars. One such element that could be the beneficiary of such efforts is the planned 1,000-foot transient boat dock which may be eligible for up to $3 million in grants from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Watercraft.
Should such funding fall into place, Prather says that the boat dock could be operational as early as May or July 2015.
“We received $3 million in the State capital fund three years ago, and that’s what we thought we would get as we worked through the phasing plan,” Prather explained. “Hopefully the state will get back in the business of being able to help with significant capital projects.”
That $4 million will go towards accelerating the construction timeline of phase four of construction work which will now include the PNC Grow Up Great Adventure Playground and carousel. According to Prather, both of these projects will now be completed by May 2015 – in time for the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
One of the features that will be open in two months is the new riverwalk, of sorts, that will run from the Walnut Street Overlook approximately to Sycamore Street immediately south of Great American Ball Park. One of the key features of this riverwalk, Prather notes, is that the guardrails will be 48 inches in height instead of 42 inches so that both pedestrians and bicyclists can enjoy the pathway.
“Our observation has been that you can’t tell cyclists where to go,” said Prather who noted that he is an avid cyclist himself. “So we’re going to construct the closest to the river pathway to accommodate both pedestrians and cyclists – right where they both want to be.”
While much work is left to do, both in terms of construction and securing funds to continue construction, the project team maintains excitement for the transformation they are overseeing.
“I’ve been an architect and a planner for the city for years, and a lot of the time you spend a lot of time and energy on plans that don’t get built,” Prather concluded. “This one [project] is different…we’re just on a roll and it’s awesome to have ideas that everyone embraces, you feel right about what you’re building, and you get the resources to actually build it. We’ve gotten a lot of cooperation from the city and county, and I feel like we’re all rowing in the same direction.”
Officials hope to complete the 45-acre park in its entirety by July 2017, excluding improvements to the river’s edge that will need to be coordinated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
