April 18, 2012 - NTPP Update: A Bold Experiment in Four Communities
Overview
· 4 Communities were given $25 million per community! 4 years ago (no matter size)
· Most $ went into infrastructure (89%)
· Common methods for data collection and evaluation were established
· Bicycling up 49%, Walking up 22% (baseline?)
Columbia MO (Getabout) - 108,000 pop, hills, weather extremes, sprawl, University
· Focus on Improved marking and marketing
· Focus on “Heavy” marking - 2M lanes and sharrows in middle on Bike Blvds
· Wayfinding on streets and University (not very successful on campus)
· BLIP (bike lane with infrequent parking) (looks horrendous to me, they claim it resulted in fewer car parks since they didn’t think they could when the political battle)
· Pedway (8 foot sidewalk on one side)
· Green merge areas
· Back in angled parking (negative driver feedback)
· Loop detectors with signage
· 2.6% to ~3.5% bike usage, they call a success
· Seemed willing to innovate, despite risks
Sheboygan County, WI (Emily) (114,000, 3 cities, fairly rural, 30% of households own 3 cars)
· Small communities see bikes as recreation, cars are easy to use (no congestion, easy parking)
· Sidewalks, bike lanes, SRTS
· Lots of events, building partnerships at local level with schools, businesses, etc., typical TDM programs
· Diluted funds across many local communities (good or bad?)
· Traditional approach, moderate results in my opinion
Marin County (254,000, well to do, mixed use N of SF)
· Local control, leveraged funds
· Only 40% complete since they focused on leveraging into other federal projects, so early yet to really evaluate
· Bike lanes, sidewalks and a big tunnel project
· Bureaucratic inefficiencies (freeway or bike rack takes similar paperwork)
· Might have biggest impact, but is slowest to develop
Minneapolis (Large urban community, 3 million people, Bike Walk, Tony Hull)
· Already at 4% mode split
· Led by NGO (TLC)
· 63% infrastructure because more went to fairly sophisticated community education and outreach
· Advisory bike lanes (shared space), bike blvds, lots of paint
· Access (bike sharing)
· Neighborhood marketing
· Good measurements, open data sharing
· Cycling up 52% walking 17% over 5 years
· Sophisticated, long term approach, really just getting started to overcome numerous challenges
Evaluation (Ben Rasmussen, Volpe Transport Research Ctr)
· Enabling legislation required evaluation
· Project (process) and community evaluation, latter is counts, bookend surveys, household and mode share model
· Overall 49% increased counts across all pilots for bikes, 22% ped (no control community!)
· Mode share model was used to estimate decreased miles travelled and modeled pollution and economic savings (used HEAT for health cost savings)
· First report out this week, contact Ben.
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