cartky.org

• Improved Bike/Ped bridge for the Ohio River!

• Freight Rail Improvents in Appalachia!

Everyone's favorite stimulus program, the TIGER grants, have been released today. The grant process was very competitive, with $60 billion of requests for a scant $1.5 billion of funding. The great thing about TIGER is that the money is not pidgeon holed for a single mode of travel (e.g. roads), but rather competitive based on benefit/cost analysis across all modes. So you see freight rail projects competing with highway projects competing with sidewalk improvement projects.

Update: No, its not the Big 4 ... added fresh info on the Big 4 below the fold...

Well, another Car Free Happy Hour has come and gone. Whit presented on the upcoming Bike!Bike! Southeast conference, and Zach and company presented on the Louisville Student Cycling Society. Here are some random photos from the event!

Cleveland residents demand a bridge refurbishment include bike/ped facilities. Amazing how they shoe-horned the cantankerous language of transportation into such smooth verses.

• Pedestrians Checklist and Considerations for Temporary Traffic Control Zones - web page
• Accomodating Pedestrians in Work Zones - pamphlet

What do you all think of these?

HB1182 - Complete Streets - passes in house 90-4.  
Next stop: the Senate!

Congratulations, Indiana Bicycle Coalition!!

The Alliance for Biking & Walking's Benchmarking Project is an ongoing effort to collect and analyze data on bicycling and walking in all 50 states and at least the 50 largest cities. They have just released their 2010 report. How does our region stack up?

= top third of states/cities (good)
= middle third of states/cities
= worst third of states/cities (bad)

	Mode Share	Safety	Funding	Staffing	Bike/Ped policies	Advocacy Capacity
Louisville
Indianapolis
Nashville				no data
Kentucky						no data
Indiana
Ohio

My take on this below the fold...

Thank you to Michael Jones, Doric Real Estate, Tom Owen, and Public Works for somehow managing to get the sidewalk clear two and a half weeks early! We really appreciate it!

Photo: Public Works

Update: Mission Accomplished! No one killed or injured at this sidewalk closure on our watch.

If you give people nothing, they will go into the street.

Here's a sketch solution that gives the citizens of Louisville the same protection we give our road workers. This doesn't have to be the solution, but it seems workable based on my four visits to the site:

Updated 1/15/2010!: read below the fold.

The city has issued a permit shutting down walking on one side of Bardstown Road for almost a month. Crossing to the other side of the road is highly impractical - Bardstown is a busy 4 lane arterial. They can require the construction of a plywood tunnel, but they have not. They can annex the adjacent flex lane for people on foot, but they have not. There's a whole library of tools they could employ, but they have not.

They're hoping you take no action and keep quiet.

Call 311 today and tell them you want them to find a way to open this sidewalk on this formerly accessible corridor. Then forward this message to your friends.

Bardstown Road near Edgeland Ave, 1-11-2009

This is not an isolated incident, nor is it an accident that Louisville is always ranked very poorly in walking safety. The city is constantly permitting crass sidewalk blockages - a similar closure recently put 2nd street out of action for months, and Broadway is closed for weeks every year for the Derby.  The results speak for themselves: in 2009 we were ranked the 7th most dangerous city by Dangerous By Design, a study undertaken by STPP and T4America.

At some level the city knows these closures result in people taking risks. But even more insidious is the destruction of walking as a viable means of transportation. When you stand in front of this closed sidewalk, no number of walkability plans will convince you that walking is valued in Louisville. Perhaps that's why "Maintain pedestrian-ways during construction and special events" was listed as a major short-term objective (4.3) of the Louisville Community Walkability Plan of 2008. Clearly we haven't gotten that done, and this goal is absent from the 2009 Community Walkability Report Card.

Lets Fight Back. Call 311 about Bardstown Road. Forward this to your friends.