 know anything about that? How's this work? Okay, I'm not gonna touch that. Alright, we have less than one minute to go. It is Steve Clark, right? Good evening. Good afternoon. My name is Dale McKeel. I'm the Bicycle and Community Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator for the City of Durham. Welcome to the city. This afternoon we have a presentation from Steve Clark. He is with the League of American Bicyclists and his title is the Bicycle Friendly Community Specialist and he told me he is probably the only person in the world with that title. So, Steve has a very interesting job this year. He's traveled to 70 cities across the country working with them to become more bicycle friendly. And the League of American Bicyclists is a great organization if you're not familiar with them. If you're a bicyclist, I would encourage you to become a member because they do so many different, they promote bicycling in so many different ways. One of their programs is the Bicycle Friendly Community Program. And for someone like myself who is in a position of trying to improve conditions for bicycling, it's a great program because they have a very specific application process. They ask a lot of questions about what you're doing in your community and it really gives you a checklist of things that you can do to improve conditions in your community. Durham was first designated Bicycle Friendly Community at the Bronze level back in 2010 and we just completed an application a couple months ago to be reconsidered. We have some materials in the back of the room. The Durham Bike and Hike Map is one of those materials. These are also available at local bike shops. So, without further ado, I'll introduce Steve and welcome him to Durham. Thank you. Well, being a bicyclist, I just have to move, right? So, I'm going to hold the mic and move around. Hopefully the camera can keep track of me. So, I've had the great fortune of being able to be employed in this work. Pretty much my entire adult life, I started out in Boulder, Colorado as their first Bicycle Program Manager back in the early 80s. And then I worked also, actually before that, I worked for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as a community bike safety program specialist. And then I worked as a consultant. My most recent job was as the non-motorized transportation pilot program manager with this, well, I wasn't with the City of Minneapolis. The focus was Minneapolis, but I worked for a non-profit organization. And we had the fun job of deciding how to spend $25 million to improve conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians. And when we pretty much had spent all the money, I saw that this job with the league had opened up and I went for it. And here I am today. But now I have indisputable proof that the world has really changed. So, about three years ago. So it changed about three years ago. And here's why. I'm talking to my dad. And he says to me, you know, Steve, this bicycling thing, it's not just a toy anymore. People are starting to take this seriously. You might have a future in this. Thanks, dad. So I don't know what he thought, you know, what I was doing before three years ago. But, you know, now I have a future. All right. So the world has changed. But I mean, I think my dad does reflect kind of, you know, mainstream America in that all of a sudden there's this huge interest in bicycling and people are starting to embrace it as something that truly is, if it's not a societal solution, it certainly is being embraced as an individual solution to health issues. And I mean, you know, you can't open the newspaper routes without seeing something about, you know, crazy weather patterns or energy vulnerability congestion. I mean, there's all these complex problems that we face. And here's this little thing that was invented back in the 1880s or before that, where the organization I belong to and work for, the League of American Bicyclists, we were the League of American Wheelmen, there was a bicycle boom back in the 1880s. We were actually, you can blame us for all the paved roads, because we were the people that we, as if I was there then, no. But they pushed lobbied for the good roads movement, which allowed for the emergence of the automobile, you could say, because now we have good pavement. But anyway, I digress. But so this thing that was a pretty simple invention, it's got the amazing potential to transform communities. And we're seeing that everywhere now, where it's being embraced, because it really does make sense. It's the most efficient way to move a human being. Actually, it's a most efficient form of locomotion ever created by evolution or man's invention or by God's creation, whatever you want to, however you want to spin it. Nothing matches the bicycle, a human being on a bicycle for efficiency. Of course, you have to have maybe some smooth, smooth roads too, to make that efficient. So, and it doesn't take up much space. So anyway, I'm really happy to be here in Durham. This is, like Dale said, my number 70th, my number 70th city that I'm visiting. So that's kind of cool. And by time I'm done with this trip, I will be done with my commitment for 2014, which is to have visited 75 cities. I'm one, I'll be one above that, so nobody can say I didn't do my job. And then we'll be doing another 100 cities next year and another 100 cities in 2016. So this is made possible by the support of Trek and normally I would be riding, who rode on the ride today? Great. It was a good ride, right? In fact, you recognize, this is who rode on the ride today, right there. And Trek is allowing for these travels to take place. And normally I would be riding a Trek, but I couldn't bring my bike on the Amtrak from, I started in New York City on this trip. And because of all, you know, these have too many, too many people, passengers. So I, I've been borrowing and begging for bikes and using bike share where it's available. I finally got tired of, of all that and I bought a $100 bike on Craigslist when I was in Raleigh on Saturday. So, and I was able to ride my $100 bicycle from Raleigh to Durham. So it was a lot of fun and, you know, I try to, for my travels I really try to incorporate as much bicycling as possible. So I'll get, I'll take my bike out of the box at the airport, put it together, and then ride to wherever my hotel is. And that way I really can see, you know, what's happening and is bicycling a viable, safe means of transportation. And some cities of airports are very bicycle friendly and all the way into downtown. It's wonderful. And other cities, it's, it's almost a nightmare experience. But I'm a pretty assertive rider and so far I've survived. So it must be okay, right? Actually, we should go back to this because it is not the greatest photo. Sorry about that. But this really, when we're talking about what makes a bicycle friendly community, ultimately it's people, the people who are here, the people who are on this ride. And one thing that I've learned from these travels, the communities where, that are truly on a momentum that are doing things that, you know, 10 years ago people would have said, oh, there's no way this will happen here. It can't be done. The reason why those things are happening is because of the right people coming together and making a difference in their community. And I call it the three-legged stool where you have your, first of all, citizen advocates or proponents, right, that say this is important. This is, this is the kind of community that we want to live in. This is, we want a high quality of life here. This is important. So you have that and normally there's some kind of advocacy group. So there's bike Durham now, which is doing some great things. There's a bike co-op here. People, the bike shops are kind of on the front, the front lines of this movement. Seeing customers, new people who want to get into bicycling. So there's that component, that leg of the stool. And then you've got your dedicated staff like Dale and, and Phil, the traffic engineer that just, you know, they work at this. They, they study what makes good design, the best education programs, et cetera. And they're willing to implement those things. But they need elected official support. So there's the staff, the dedicated staff, the citizens. And then people like, we've met Steve, what's his last name? Shul. Great guy. Is he here? No, he couldn't. Okay, there he is. Yeah, yeah. All right. So TV can aim right at that. Councilmember Shul. But truly, people who understand that these, when we're talking about this public space, that sometimes we call roads, that it's, it's about political decisions. It's not about, oh, we can't do this because capacity won't allow us, right? These are political issues. It's who are we prioritizing on these streets and why does this reflect our community values? So again, that's a three-legged stool. That's reflected in, in the people who came on the ride today. It's reflected in this room right here. And when you have all those three things to combine, the advocates that will make Dale look moderate, you need that so he can do his job more effectively. The elected official who's willing to use their political capital, some political will to get the job done and understand that these are policy issues and not just something to be left up to the conventional traffic engineers who were trained just for sort of really one mode, but that's changing now. And you've got a great traffic engineer here. Phil, are you here? He doesn't want, where are you? All right, never mind. Yeah. And so that's what, that's, that's the difference, why some cities are moving forward and some aren't. So the Bicycle-Friendly Community Program, which I'm part of, really started like 2000. It didn't get off the ground in a major way until 2003. And by 2007, there were a handful of communities, really a good representation from around the country that were, had become Bicycle-Friendly Communities through our designation, our recognition process. But by 2013, it really has taken off. But as of last year, 2014, as of spring of 2014, we had received over 700 applications. 304 communities are now recognized as Bicycle-Friendly. So it's not like, oh, you send an application, you become Bicycle-Friendly, even though it's a, it takes a long time to fill out those applications. There are over 100 questions, very, some of them are pretty involved. And so a lot of communities, I mean, more than half do not get the designation and they're a little bit upset with us because it's like, hey, we did all this work, come on. Well, it's not so easy. But we do give them lots of feedback. So the next time they'll be more successful, we have, right now, four categories that cities are, can be in one of those four categories of Bicycle-Friendliness. Bronze is the beginning level, which is where Durham is at. Then it's silver, gold, and four communities in this country are at platinum. Anybody want to guess what four those might be? Minneapolis, yes? No, actually, I'm from Minneapolis, but unfortunately no. Gold is Minneapolis. Portland is one. Boulder is two, yay, Boulder. Davis California, well, you guys are good. Davis, California, and there's one more that people, it's the newest one and mostly has to do with the new Belgium brewery that moved into town in Fort Collins. Yeah, they've done so much in terms of bike culture there and events, and now infrastructure is quite good, too. So those are the four platinum, but they're all aspiring to be the first community in this country to get diamond, and that hasn't happened yet. So this is not something you want to study. Wait, okay, yeah. So the program, yes, you do want to study this, the five E's. The program is based on a comprehensive approach and not just what's on the ground, but your education, that's one of the E's, your evaluation. So how many are these treatments working that requires evaluation? Where are the crashes happening that requires evaluation? Another E, encouragement. So what kinds of events are happening? Why are you doing bike to work days? Are you giving incentives when people bike to work? The last place I worked at, I received three bucks every time I rode or rode my bicycle or walked to work, and that wasn't why I did it, but it was kind of nice that, you know, when I wanted to buy a new bike and my spouse was like, hey, you have already got, like, how many bikes? I guess, hey, this doesn't really cost us anything because, you know, this is like, I get three bucks every time I bike and, you know, that added up to, like, over $200 or more. No, yeah. Anyway, I don't remember. But anyway, it was a good way to, you know, justify spending more money on my bicycle habit. So, yeah, so encouragement efforts, evaluation, education, engineering, that's what we looked at today when we were out on our bike ride. What's another E? Enforcement. So we had an officer at the pre-ride meeting, and it's great to see you've got officers on bikes, but we're also looking at, you know, what the whole justice system is like, and, you know, when a cyclist gets a ticket, which we encourage, is there a way to, you know, have a diversion program where they can go to a safety class and maybe have that fine reduced those kinds of things? Some places, cities, in some cities, the police officers give out free lights, and other places, they do a positive reinforcement campaign where they give kids that are doing the right thing, tickets to the movie theater or something. So that's, there's all kinds of things that we promote in our bicycle-friendly community program. But those are the five E's. Now we're actually talking about a six E. Anybody want to guess what that might be? Equity. Very good. So there we're trying to incorporate equity into all the other E's so that we're making sure that the investments made are really being equitably distributed into the neighborhoods that sometimes get ignored. So, you know, on my way from Raleigh, I was on Angier Street and Pettigrew, and I thought, you know, these would be some great corridors to really make bike-friendly. And I have some ideas that I'm going to share with you today, how to turn those narrow roads, high-speed roads, into something that would be more bicycle-friendly. That's hard. So, again, quality bike products, you know, I talked about the $3 a day that I got when I was employed with the Transit for Liberal Communities folks. This manufacturer of bike parts and just mostly a distributor paid their employees also $3 a day to walk or bike. And it was such a success that they actually found out they save money in health care costs. So this is a, this is another reason why people are paying attention to bicycling as a solution. People become healthier, they become more productive workers. It really works. And we know also that cities that start investing in infrastructure and programs, they do see a dramatic increase in bicycling. So let's talk about, and this is the one that you can ignore because it's too hard to read. It's just to prove to you that we have a set of metrics that we're using when we decide if a city is bronze, silver, gold, or platinum. And basically, you know, it's looking at all those 5E's and then looking at the outcomes. And when you have, we really like to think of our program as being this blueprint for how to get the kinds of positive outcomes that a community might be looking for in terms of increased ridership, decreased crash rates, and decreased fatality rates. And as you look at those platinum communities, their crash rate is very low and their fatality rate is very low and their ridership is very high. So we know it works. So here's what, in terms of the top, these are the largest cities in the country, top 70 largest cities. And, you know, so Portland's leading the pack of the largest cities with 6.1% ridership. DC just replaced Minneapolis as number two. Of course, you know, there's a little bit of margin of error in the ACS. This is just the trip to work, right? So, and it's the longest part of that trip to work. So if in fact you are, you know, commuting by bus for four miles and then, and riding a bike three miles, you have to count that as a bus trip. But this is the only metric that we have that's consistent across all communities. Therefore, we use it. What do you suppose Durham is at? Any ideas? Probably Dale knows. Well, here's another, you're not in the top 20 yet. Chicago's got you beat a little bit. You're at 1%, all right? But look at this, 144% increase since 2000. So you are on a rule. The average community, I mean, nationwide, we're seeing increases like about 60%. So you're more than double the national average. And even among the bike friendly communities, that average increases about 85%. So you're above that as well. So congratulations. So this just shows you that what you're doing is working. And it's going to continue. You're going to continue to see more people using bicycles to get to work. How many people actually right now commute to work with a bike? Well, so you guys are the anomaly in this city. Congratulations. Yeah, well, we there should be a separate category. I mean, until you bike to shop, you bike to go to the restaurants, you bike to meet people socialize and for fun. Yeah, and and we unfortunately, ACS doesn't include any of that good stuff. So I'm going to show you a pyramid that that's kind of represents how we look at a community and what we're what the priorities are. And normally I have you guess what the different like if what's the most important thing when you come into a community to work on. And for the longest time, the most important thing would be to just to get rid of the legal impediments to bicycling, because in a lot of places where I when I started doing this work, a lot of places, the main street in town was ban to bicycling. And so the whole emphasis was to say, let's make bicyclists have the same rights as or the same privileges. I guess you could say as motorists to be able to use these this public space. And that was a big battle. But now in all 50 states, the operator of a bicycle has the same rights as the operator of a motor vehicle and responsibilities for the most part. Once you get that legal access, then you start making it as safe as possible, right? So that's, you know, safety is really huge. And making it as pleasant. That's that becomes the next phase. So anyway, if all you did was make it legal to ride a bike everywhere, you'd have a very small what this pyramid represents or triangle, the very top thing, even though that might be the most important thing to work on. At first, if that's all you do, it's going to be a very small percentage of your population actually using bikes. You make it legal and safe. A lot more people will start riding bikes. You make it legal, safe and pleasant, like your trail system, the American Tobacco Trail. A lot more people start using bikes. But the key, and this is what the Europeans have discovered long ago, is that if you really want to get people bicycling from point A to point B, especially, you know, for transportation, you make it easier, more convenient, advantageous to bike than to drive a car. And we're not quite there yet. And a lot of, I mean, we do a lot of things and I'll show you some examples. But, you know, I mean, what Copenhagen has done to create incentives for bicycling and what you could call disincentives for driving are things that most people in our United States cities would never go for, like 180 percent sales tax on buying a car. $20,000 car costs, but $58,000 in Copenhagen. That's a disincentive. But here's an example of the, you know, of a trail, a corridor, facility that actually does provide safety, legal access, very pleasant. And in some places it actually makes a shortcut, too, right? So, good example. And to make it additional, to enhance the safety, there's a wonderful bike, bike watch, but what do you call it? Yes, the trail watch, folks. And it was great. I'm sorry. Your, Mike, Mike was there explaining just how that operates and all the volunteer hours that goes into that to make it the best experience for people possible. So we like to see those kinds of things. So here's, the other thing that I'm finding out when I travel is that some of the cities that you least suspect to be really into bicycling are just, they've embraced this incredibly, and they have these wonderful signature projects, like the bike bridge at Overland Park. This is in Memphis. You can't see this very well, but maybe on the TV screen, if you watch this again, you'll see just how incredible this bridge is, or it's not really a bridge, but you go on the arch. It's really cool. Who's seen, who's been to Memphis and has seen, yeah, it's pretty cool, isn't it? And this is actually, Overland Park has an interesting history. It's the first place in this country where citizens were able to stop the construction of a freeway, part of the interstate system, and now it's a park instead of a freeway, and with bike access through the park. So I'm going to show you some other examples of just neat things that are going on around the country. Here's, in Lexington, Kentucky, another place that you won't really think of as bike-friendly necessarily. This is a bridge that connects two off-street facilities together. This was kind of a gap in the system, but rather than having people cross over on a kind of a busy area, now basically you access both parts of the trail on what's just been divided from the roadway space. So it's a seamless connection using green paint, bollards, very inexpensive, but it worked. It works. Oakland, California, they were one of the first cities to really embrace road diets. So in this case, this had been a four-lane configuration, like your club road. You've done some road diets here. You all are aware of the main street in Chapel Hill. Wonderful example here, because this is an area where people said, no way, you can't do a road diet here. It's 26,000 cars a day. You're out of your mind. They did it. It transformed this street, Lakeshore Drive, and now, well, used to be a very hostile place for walkers, joggers, bicyclists, has been transformed. The neat thing about these road diets where you do a four-to-three conversion is when you don't need that center lane for a shared left-turning lane, you can put in the pedestrian refuge islands. So that's what you have here, a place now people can cross the street and wait until it's safe to cross again. So there's so many good things about road diets that FHWA, the Federal Highway Safety Administration, they're now encouraging, promoting, I said safety, there's no safety in there. But in there, they have a website called the nine proven safety countermeasures. Road diets are one of the things that they feature very prominently because 29% crash reduction, all types of crashes. So you don't even have to sell them as a way to provide bike lanes, but they do that, too. But you can sell them just because four-lane configurations are inherently dangerous. And you know why? I mean, you have all driven on a four-lane configuration. You're constantly jockeying for position, go from left lane to right lane, especially if you're late for a meeting. And there's lots of side swipes, rear and collisions. There's no place for, you know, to actually make those left turns from, separate from the through lanes. So people just do crazy things and speeds tend to be kind of erratic. You do a four to three. Typically you can still accommodate the same number of vehicles. Sometimes you have to tweak the signals and look at what's going on at the side streets. But now you have, you make it safer for pedestrians, safer for bicyclists, you have your own dedicated space. You can actually argue that because now bicyclists don't have to take the full lane and they have their own space. That space in Copenhagen, a single cycle track, is supporting 22,000 bicyclists a day. You know, just the narrowness of a bike lane on both sides of a street. 22,000. So you could argue that actually by doing the four to three, you're increasing capacity because now bicycles can be in that mix. And that has happened, Chicago has shown. In fact, some of their road diets, capacity has increased when they start counting the increase used by bicyclists. Pretty cool. Speaking of Chicago, they're also doing some things that are pretty innovative with what's called these protected bike lanes. And this happens to be a two-way protected bike lane on a one-way street. Remember that one thing about advantageous? When you do two-way facility on a one-way street, that gives bicyclists advantages that people driving a car don't have. And you know, let's face it, bicyclists really don't want to go an extra block out of the way. You have still quite a few one-way streets here in Durham. And those one-way streets work well for motorists, but they are a barrier to bicyclists and people on foot. And if you can get some of those converted to two ways, that would make a big difference. I would also suggest Watts has at Trinity, you know, it's a lovely street as a bike boulevard kind of a street. Very, very comfortable for bicycling, but then suddenly it becomes a one-way at Trinity. And let's, you know, that would be a good place just to allow bicycles. And this could just be done by signs. Bikes exempt or bikes accepted from the one-way. But then at crossings, you have to make sure that people realize that bikes might, you know, there's this catch of flow going on. In Copenhagen, every one-way street for cars is automatically two-way for bikes. It's just part of their ordinance. Now again, safety is more important than advantageous, so you have to make sure doing something like that was actually safe, right? Okay. Say Lewis doing some great things. These are buffered bike lanes now. So the buffer in this case is, and this is just paint, but kind of painting a no man's land next to the door zone so that people are safer, they're more visible being out in the traffic, not in the traffic, but just further from the door zone. In some cities, the buffer zone is on the traffic side of things, and some places where they have a sufficient room, they'll do it on both. Seattle, another example of a two-way cycle track. So Dale, I didn't ask you this earlier, but are you looking at any protected bike lanes in Durham? It's a possibility. So it may be happening. Dale says yes. And again, this is another, you know, both Seattle, where this is typically done, the two-way configuration is going to be where you have a one-way street, and you're doing it so that the Contraflow bicycle lane really is on the right side. So these are always typically on the left side of a one-way. I don't know if you can understand what I'm saying, but basically so that the Contraflow movement makes sense that you're on the right side of the road using your bike in the Contraflow movement. And then you have to treat the protected bike lanes really as a separate roadway to do it right. You can't have motorists thinking they have the right to turn at the same time, bicyclists think they have a green to go through because that can add problems. Market Street in San Francisco, one of the most famous streets in the country, now you have, this is a great shot because it shows the bike sharing going on, green bike lane that's buffered and then further down it becomes protected with physical vertical elements. And just ahead of the person in this photo is this, but this is actually from Portland, which is a counter that every bicyclist that passes in motorists to see this counts what number you are that day and this was at about eight o'clock at night in Portland it was already at three thousand six hundred and sixty and I mean that is like wow you and this is just one of their bridges in Portland. So when you cross that as a bicyclist you it's like this immediate sort of feedback that you count and that there's lots of biking going on in your city. So we like to see that they tell me that by the end of the evening or night time it's going to hit five thousand every day that's that's a lot of bicyclists and that you know when that happens motorists can't say why are you doing all this stuff for bicyclists you know there's there's not nobody bikes in this town well obviously they can't say that. So Minneapolis I had the again I got to work in Minneapolis quite a bit and we we were able to bring in some neat things from Europe to try in Minneapolis and one of one of the things we kept hearing on some of the key corridors is sorry Steve there's just not enough space for bike lanes and we can't possibly get rid of on-street parking. So and in some places you don't even have on-street parking like your Angier and Pettigrew it's just it's a narrow roadway right. So what do you do when you don't have space for actual solid lines to demarcate a bike lane but you want to have you want to suggest that hey this is a this is a place where bicycles are welcomed you do advisory bike lanes. So what about campus drive. So the way this works first of all the manual for uniform traffic control devices MUTCD says you don't need the center stripe if you have fewer than 6,000 cars a day. So you get rid of the center stripe that's number one and they're actually doing this in England now in places up to 10,000 actually I've read 15,000 cars a day because they're finding safety benefits of getting rid of the center stripe. This is what it looks like in Europe. Alright this is a two-way roadway bikes but it feels so different than what Angier felt to me yesterday or even campus drive. Now campus drive is like a two-foot shoulder and then it and then it's gone completely but imagine if there wasn't that yellow center line at all and instead you had five or six a five or six foot dash bike lane. The way advisory bike lanes work the dashes allow motorists to use that space when there's not a bicyclist in that space. All it really does is reinforce traffic law traffic principles. You can't run over a bicyclist when they're in front of you right and if they're not in front of you you can be in that space. This all this does though I mean what it what it what we have found is that it changes driving behavior dramatically. So in the case of Minneapolis we had to study this because this is an experimental treatment. FHWA said yeah no we've never done this in this country you have to study it. So we had video cameras. First of all the rider the bicycle numbers doubled. This is in just on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. Secondly bikes got off the sidewalk. We had like a 30% sidewalk riding rate before this was tried. It went down to 2% on the sidewalk which is good because sidewalk riding we know that leads to increased bike crashes. Three motorists gave more room when passing bicyclists which was we didn't know that that would happen at all. That was an unexpected victory. Four bicyclists stayed further out of the door zone which is huge because that's what we're teaching all the time. Stay on that door zone. But the thing that was most surprising of all is that we had on average eight to ten crashes per year along the seven-block stretch on East 14th Street in Minneapolis. Mostly car car crashes. A few were bike bike car crashes a few car ped crashes. But but on average just around ten ten a year. This went in and of course we thought this could really kind of like be crazy because motorists might start running into each other with being confused. Zero. Zero crashes since this was put in. So I and nobody can explain really why except that people are driving differently. They're more careful. And then yeah they're probably confused. Maybe that's a good thing. And there was a lot of luck. OK because between those dashes there's only 14 feet remaining not not everywhere but in some of the areas it's between 14 and 17 feet that remains. And so you can't have the center line and and you know you can't have seven foot travel lanes. But this is taking away the travel lanes. That space is still available to the motorists. So it really is like this incredible. And you know again the Europeans discovered this long ago and now more and more cities are doing this. But I think it'd be a great thing for you know streets like and your pedigree where you don't you just can't maybe you don't have the money money or the right of way to widen the roadway. You don't need more payment. You just need to have the visual cues that tell people this this is where we welcome bicyclists. They're more effective than Cheryl's is what we found. So and you know so the the question was what about slowing down traffic. Most studies have shown that yes you do slow down traffic in Minneapolis. That wasn't the case. I mean the the it got rid of the highest some of the outliers but the average speed still remain around 29 miles per hour which seems strange to me because it just seems it I don't know. That's but that's what the studies show that the speeds that really really decrease at all. But then there wasn't really a speeding problem because this is a fairly I don't know. It's short blocks and people weren't going terribly fast. But I would I would think that yes and probably were in here in Durham it would you'd see some slower speeds especially when you have bicyclists. I mean and sometimes it's confusing right because people think they shouldn't be in that space ever. So you just have to have this education that no dash a dash line means you can move into that space and there's not a bicyclist there. So there's a good video you could Google Minneapolis bike advisory lanes and see a nice video that they produced to educate people about it. So Madison is a you know we talked about giving advantages to bicyclists. Madison is a place where they just recently started doing bicycle boulevards or neighborhood greenways is what Portland calls them. And what to make them work you really the goal is to optimize these these streets for bicycle and pedestrian movement. And one way you optimize it for being on a bicycle is to get rid of as many stop signs as possible because let's face it bicyclists really don't like to stop at stop signs. Every time you stop at a stop sign and actually come to a complete stop and start out again for the average bicyclist you use the same amount of energy as going across an entire entire length of a football field. So you know there's this thing called inertia you just want to keep going. So yes the best bicycle boulevards have very few stop signs. So like Watts is a great candidate for a bike boulevard because instead of some stop signs you've got traffic circles and you know they work great for bikes because you can just keep your same speed and they work good for traffic calming because motorists have to kind of slow down if they're designed right to move around them. But oftentimes we reverse the easy thing to do when you don't have a ton of money to build traffic circles is just to reverse as many stop signs as possible get rid of them. And when you do that you run into the situation where now all of a sudden more people want to drive on those streets because hey not too many stop signs I'll go fast on this nice little residential street and avoid the busier street that's congested next next to it. So to prevent that you do what like Madison has done what Portland has done in Minneapolis and other places which is to divert traffic. And this is a very simple diversion is simply a sign that says do not enter which is actually what you have on Watts right where it becomes a one way. But this isn't actually a one way here on this bicycle boulevard it's just you cannot enter that particular spot but it's then it's two way again. So I don't know what the people who live right next to that where their park if they do serve a U turn when they get to the end or if they just sneak through and hope that there's nobody no officer to give them a ticket because certainly I mean emergency vehicles and people can get still get through there they did put a big elaborate curb extension. But anyway that's that's kind of a trick for bike boulevards. But Madison also at the same time they're doing these very low stress neighborhood streets making them as pleasant as possible and optimizing bicycle movement. They're not saying OK that's all we need to need to do now and we can ignore the arterials. This is Highway 51 151 it leads to the state capital. It used to be three 13 foot lanes in each direction 35000 cars a day using this corridor and they decided that it and it was in no bike lanes. They nailed down the lanes 10 feet added a six foot lane bike lane. They still had extra room to now put a boulevard between the sidewalk and the bike lane. And it's totally trans they still still 35000 cars a day using Highway 151. It's the main drag it getting into the city. But now for the pedestrian and the bicyclists it's totally it's made all the difference in the world. And what we what what we find is oftentimes even the even people when I when I went out to Madison I talked to like a bike shop owner that had a shop right on Washington Avenue. I was saying well this is going to be great. Right. No nobody's going to ever bike on Washington Avenue. That's that's such a that's such a dangerous street. You know they just could not imagine it being different than what it was. But but later on when they do count they find wow not only now are lots of people using this street to bike on because it was there was really no alternative. But the crash rate has gone down dramatically. Again you get cyclists into dedicated space get them off the sidewalk crash rates drop ridership increases. It's a win-win for everyone. So it's again you know these we we when we when I go into the city is oftentimes I find the only way I can get from point A to point B are on these busy streets. I wasn't Glenwood Avenue for a while. Not a fun place to be. But it's like that doesn't mean you don't do anything. Those are the streets that you really need to figure out. I get kind of upset when I see on my Google map that if I drove it's twenty two miles to get from point A to point B. But on a bicycle it's going to be 40 miles. It's like that's not fair. Right. And I'm always running late. So I'm usually going to just do the auto trip map say avoid highways which for Google that means avoid interstates. So I still have the legal right to use these streets. But it's not very pleasant. But I'm not going to go twice as far because I'm using my bike for transportation. Even though I love bicycling I only have so much energy I want to expend every day and I can't I can't always take the scenic route. All right. Now we're going to go into some of the other ease primarily education. Tucson has done more than anybody that I can tell in terms of really advancing the knowledge of how to use a bicycle proficiently. And they understood long ago that you can offer lots of classes but people won't show up. So what they've done is they have these pop up tents bike stations. They go to the farmers markets. They go to campus. They go to where people are already going to be. And they set these things up. They give away maps. Maybe you've done some of that already here too. Because you're smart people. So yes. The answer is they have you have done it which is good. And but then people do stop even people who aren't into bicycling might stop just out of curiosity. And they find out they look at the map they find out wow it wouldn't be that hard for me to bike to work or bike to the farmers market or bike to the bulls the bulls game. You know whatever that this could work out for me. So just going where people are at and providing this educational these educational materials and talking to people makes a big difference. Most people the reason why they start biking isn't because suddenly there was a bike lane that was built in front of their house. Although that helps. But think of yourselves how many people would how many people in this room were influenced by somebody else who just sort of like say hey this you should try this. It's not it's kind of fun. Raise your hand if you were influenced by somebody and not got you thinking about bicycling. All right. So about half of you and then the other half you just always sort of knew right. And then you've been influencing probably the half that raise their hand. I don't know. So but but is people is having this engagement face to face encounters. That's why I have to think trek for letting me do these travels because before it used to just be people submitted their application. We never saw who was submitting their application. We never actually saw what was on the ground. And now I get to go around meet people face to face actually see all the energy in a community. All the wonderful people working on this stuff. And it's the whole program has kind of come alive. So anyway it's all that that would actually help this this program. My job actually case you were wondering is to help cities get to the next level and granted spending a half a day somewhere even a full day. It's it's a challenge to say oh here is what you need to do. But bringing people together does seem to make a difference right. So today before the ride people people met others that they hadn't met before and realize oh wow you're doing this. This is great. Let's we should talk about that. That's how things happen. That's how change happens. People make change happen and that requires interaction. All right. So. Palo Alto when we had a great. Visit at one of the Apollo school showing the bike to the bike to school day and the impact that's having. If you really want to see how to have an impact on children I know Palo Alto sort of a different demographic in terms of you know size and that's Stanford University. Hey come on Duke University ought to be as good as Stanford anyway. One of the schools 70 percent of the kids this elementary school 70 percent of the kids bike to school across the entire school district K through 12. It's 50 percent and they've got this documented. I would not have believed that except that I was there in the morning seeing all these kids. I mean the streets are filled with children biking to school. I have never been so blown away from a bicycling scene even including my travels in Europe than what I saw in Palo Alto. How do they do that. They have two people employed at the city working with PTAs teachers mostly it's mostly a volunteer effort though they get parents involved just like what you're doing here but it's just you know it's just been going on longer and they do every child at third grade actually gets on bike safety instruction they learn all the rules if kids don't have a bike they're provided with a bicycle part of the school fleet or the city fleet of bikes folding bikes I believe and and they learn at third grade and there there's a at some of the busy intersections they have crossing guards to help the kids this is actually a place where it's a four it's a scramble you could call it where or a barns dance where all you know every direction is a walk motors have to stop so some of the kids are taking advantage of that crossing diagonally the crossing guard is helping them do that but it's just amazing and more bike parking at these schools and you couldn't even imagine so so and again Palo Alto has a link on their website about their safe routes to school program and how it became as successful as it is so pretty cool again remember that triangle yes it seems to because you know so here's the deal and Palo Alto so the question was does this also contribute to overall kind of bike culture that that makes biking to work more likely to happen and I would say yes you first of all one of the ways that they got so many kids to bike to school is they were able to start a program to get parents to bike with their children to school and parents that could not do that there would be a parent in that neighborhood that would volunteer to bike with six seven eight kids and there they call them a bicycle train you know there's a walking school bus there's a bicycle train it got to the point where it became an institution really and so now parents I you know there are some parents that still drop their kids off at the school but they're so sheepish about I'm sorry I you know I just you know it's like they're apologizing because you know what is the norm in most American communities is now like something that people in Palo Alto are sure like you know if you were to throw a plastic bottle into a trash can you know it's like I hope no one saw me do that you know so yes so in so some of those parents that continue on I saw a number of them they would ride with their child to school and then continue biking to their workplace so absolutely and the other thing that we know is this has kind of been for you know 90s and into this decade that missing link you know we we've seen good growth and bike commuting but a real decrease in kids biking to school because of a lot of his you know parents are afraid to let their kids bike or walk to school not just traffic but but you know other things even my kid could be kidnapped etc so what has happened is we we've a lot of children just don't have that ability and and confidence that a lot of us had when we were growing up it's really a shame so in Palo Alto they're building that foundation so we can expect that in 10 years 15 years these kids will you know they're never gonna give it up they're gonna just know the sheer joy of cycling like all of us right so you remember this largely I want to focus on how do you make it advantageous because that's if you really want to see the increase happening soon you know that's the thing to focus on but even a bike lane on a road diet provides advantages you think about how many of you've been on a bike lane during rush hour and all the cars are going about five miles per hour if that and yours is like it's kind of fun isn't it right and do you sometimes feel sorry for the people in their car no not too much so so that's an advantage we're having dedicated space and not having just share the road type situation you're getting an advantage that people can't ignore but the other thing are creating shortcuts so wherever you can find a place to put in a shortcut this is from Vancouver but it's a good example a lot of bike boulevards exists where there's already like you know a dead-end for motorists on a street and then they work getting the easement to get a shortcut for bicyclists and pedestrians going through you've got that here in a couple places already and it's just make sure you mark it as you know dead-end for cars so many places I'll go I'll be riding it'll say dead-end and I think well is that really a dead-end or is that just for cars you know and then I'll maybe waste my energy going a full block to find out oh there isn't a cut through for me but sometimes there is and then kind of nice when that exists but please make sure people know that you have this advantage to there is a trail this is a you know maybe not the most ideal sort of grade to get to the campus drive but it still works right so other things you know bike sharing makes bicycling more convenient in an area oh yeah I forgot to tell you that and you're doing this already but if you do have questions or comments just this is supposed to be interactive but you know I get going sometimes I don't let people you know raise their hand but please do and if anything you want to talk more about we can go back to we this will be done in about 15 minutes but I do want to have time for for discussion and if you want to actually make sure people hear what you have to say I'll give you this mic so the TV land can also hear what you have to say otherwise I'll just repeat your your comment or question and if I don't do it justice you know let me know so it's up to this point any I mean any comments or questions that you've been dying to ask yes in the back protected bike lanes yes that yeah it's an excellent question the question was in discussing protected bike lanes versus just regular bike lanes paint on the street do we have guidance when you do one versus the other and the gentleman also was saying that you know if it's just a bike lane it's not going to be enough to want for him to want to bring his children out there but even any kind of you know physical separation or a poster you know he could even maybe be plastic bollards can increase that level of comfort and especially on busier streets you had mentioned busier streets and that's really so what we're what we're recommending is they do well first of all they are about 35 times on average more expensive than just paint painted lane and that's even true if you're talking about paint that's creating a buffer zone because you really want to do it right the devil's in the details and you want to make sure like I said before they almost have to be treated and when you have that protection you've got to you've got to really work out the details at the intersections and typically it means more of a downtown kind of street where you have a separate signal for the bikes as separate phase because you don't want turning motorists especially from the left side of the street you don't want people thinking they have the the ability to make a left turn or a right turn same time because the sight lines are as good when you have it whether it's so a lot of protected bike lanes or cycle tracks the way they do it is with parked cars instead of the cars being on the right side of of you as a cyclist they're on the left side and you've got this space now the car provides a buffer from the moving traffic well that also reduces the visibility the sight lines aren't as good and you so in fact you know we know there have been situations where fatalities have occurred because of right turning motorists or left turning motors not not seeing the bicyclists bicyclists going really fast thinking they were in a safe place thinking they had the green and they did have the green so we've got to get so you really have to treat them a separate roadway so they're more expensive so what we recommend is these become signature projects like San Francisco you really do it right you spend some money but they are transformative and they are necessary you know the higher the speeds the more traffic the more it seems like yeah this really makes sense here but it's always you know you got away all those things between but you know my feeling is you it's better to do something than than wait for when you have the resources to do something that's really wonderful right I don't want perfect to be the enemy the good and sometimes you just you get what you can you take advantage of the opportunity so when resurfacing projects are happening that's an easy time to do a road die it doesn't cost anything additionally to restripe that street and add bike lanes either by narrowing the travel lanes that exist or by reducing the number of travel lanes so so now you have space for those bike lanes that's the first step maybe you find out okay wow people are really liking this and we're getting a lot of demand here and people want something even better so then the next phase becomes the protected bike lanes I guess if I if I spend that much time answering every question it's we're going to easily go into the 115 mode but that's okay yeah actually there were a couple people before you and you and then I'm sorry I have to say you because I don't know you but this is what this is one of those situations where I probably should have handed the mic over because how am I going to do justice so that comment but basically there is a concern already there's some some pretty strong incentives to want to bike to like Duke University because parking is a huge problem and yet there are no good routes safe streets in your opinion to allow that to happen in an easy low stress way so I mean that's again that's I Dale can maybe respond to this but I think that's part of the planning that's going on now is how do we make these connections happen how do you build that on-street network and it might also include some off-street trails to really make this viable for more and more people you know I'm showing you some examples again a campus drive it doesn't need to be widened to change how people view that street and make it seem more comfortable but when you get more resources and you get there's money of there is money available to do it take it to the next level and I know Dell is aware of some of those and you've been successful in getting some of that some of those dollars to I'm going to show you some more examples I but first I want to yeah so the question is you know you can have a community bicycle friendly but you know actually getting from one community to another it might not be so easy or you can have a bicycle friendly campus and yet the connections to downtown or other places it's not so easy to to transverse and we do have so we do find in some places like Tucson they don't do the application it's it's the East Pima County Metropolitan Planning Organization that does the application and they really are working regionally to make all those connections happen you're fortunate here in fact that Dale is half time with the city of Durham also half time with the the MPO unfortunately that MPO is separate from the MPO or over in Raleigh right so but I'm sure you know Dell works with with that MPO too but yeah this is this is the challenge that we see everywhere you know it's like there's gotta be this dialogue and planning efforts happening that that transcend city boundaries yes so the question is are we working with State Department of Transportation the answer is yes we also have a program under our bicycle friendly America program called the Bicycle Friendly States and we rank states from 1 to 50 in terms of their level of bicycle friendliness and we provide you know the rationale why so right now Washington State is number one in the country I don't remember what North Carolina is but we're looking at policies we're looking at how much money is being spent at the state level on infrastructure we're looking at you know just how responsive state DOTs are to local concerns all that kind of stuff goes into the rating system and states are really starting to they really hate it when they're like you know number 48 or 49 or 50 or even 30 so they're paying attention to that ranking and I think we're seeing the bar continuously raised up Dale do you want to say a few words yeah I guess I did want to this on to address the question about the connections to Chapel Hill briefly the the MPO has been working on a connection to Chapel Hill for almost 10 years now to an older on Chapel Hill Road and that project should be under construction next year between it will begin at Garrett Road in Durham going over to about the Blue Cross building in Chapel Hill and the Chapel Hill section will probably be a little bit lagging behind but the right-of-way is being acquired right now on the road should be under construction the other road you mentioned is Irwin Road and that's certainly a request that other road that was mentioned by someone that's been a request that we've gotten hundreds of times and our MPO board we have a representative from our MPO board here and that's a project that we continually request when we are making our submissions to the to the state for the improvements to our facilities but but it has not risen to the top of it certainly is on our radar thank you yes you by Dale might introduce some of our elected officials yeah yeah I'll let Dale introduce the folks that's a great idea Dale will introduce the elected officials are in the room and also city staff and other agency people it'd be nice to actually have time to find out everybody's name and who you represent and what your interest is but to answer your other question on specific recommendations yes in fact we should once we once we do the introductions of who's who I'll finish the PowerPoint here and that actually talks about some of my recommendations that I have and also provides kind of a scorecard so and we can have more discussion than after that but it would be good to get through the most important part we the TV people come here no should I go through that again okay anybody else have a quick comment your question before I move on yes you know there's a lot of neat things happening around the country the question was what about the bike repair stands that you see around in some places and with pumps you know 24 hour basic self-service that you can that you can access and yeah I think I think all that kind of you know like covered bike parking the bike repair stands that you can access bike corrals in basically using an on-street car parking space but instead of having the car park there now there's room for 10 bicyclists actually 12 for some of the designs and this isn't about getting rid of parking this is about expanding parking in in the business community that wants this so all those things kind of create more bike culture and just makes people feel like this is a city where they care about bicyclists and and make and every time somebody sees something like that it makes them think about well maybe I could ride a bike you know that's the other thing that's really nice about the bike share program is it's this constant advertisement that bicycling is a legitimate form of transportation in this community so all those things we like to see and it does make a difference it builds bike culture expands awareness legitimizes bicycling and it also is nice when you have a flat tire or something or brakes aren't working so well so so yeah just some so so think about ways to to and that's something that's an advantage that you're giving bicyclists that motorists don't have I mean they can pull into a service station do they exist really anymore not really it's an oxymoron right but they're gonna pay somebody some big bucks to fix their car whereas a bicycle is very simple and most people can learn it might want to go to a bike shop first but learn how to do some basic repair on their bikes so here's your scorecard it's not again a very good easy thing to read but we're looking at the 5e's this is largely based on your last application that was submitted I forget now yeah just in August since then there has been you got 15 points for not having any fatalities but I know there has been a fatality since the application was actually submitted or at least but the five-year period that that the crash report was based on so you might not get all 15 points really for that but but basically you are between a bronze and a silver level right now 20 20 out of a hundred points is typically where bronze communities are at 40 is a level of a silver community 60 is a level of a gold community but this is kind of a dumbed-down version of of the actual feedback that we provide this is more based this is more of a snapshot of where you are right now it's been tweaked a little bit to reflect some of the things that you've done since most recent application but your growth is great and the the outcomes I mean you're seeing good good you know pretty good number in terms of of just yeah you're out you've got good momentum so but here's the really fine print is what we want to focus on but fortunately you don't have to try to see what that says it's right here so number one is you really do need to make those major quarters work for bicyclists club road Main Street is you've you've got a good start on that roads like Angier and Pettigrew I mean Washington's a good example of just a nice collector that's got bike lanes now just creating that comprehensive network because of you know it's one thing to have a little you know bike lane here bike lane over there bike lane down there but if it's not all connected it doesn't really do the job and I would not ever say oh well don't do anything until you can get everything connected take advantage of the opportunities when they come up but then work really hard on the gaps and and anytime there's resurfacing there's got to be somebody paying attention to the fact that that resurfacing project's gonna happen now's the time to see if we can make this work for bicyclists better and usually the answer is I would say not usually always unless you've already unless you've already got something and even like when you've got something you can usually improve it so like in Chicago now they used to have most a lot of their bike lanes were five feet and then they had a 11 foot travel lane and then a seven foot parking lane and now what they've actually gone back to grind out the five foot marking to allow for a six foot bike lane that one foot means that a huge a lot huge a means a means means a lot to bicyclists and it doesn't really do anything negative to the motorist in fact having a 10 foot travel lane instead of 11 feet just means people might drive a little bit more prudently so it increases safety for everybody so so that's what they're doing so you can always improve things to all right number two the shortcut thing I'm really big on you know finding ways to make advantages really make some of these streets neighborhood greenways like Watts just make it that make it an official bike street and maybe selling it maybe that's not how you sell it in Portland now they're getting away from bike boulevard terminology they're saying neighborhood greenway these are streets that people want to live on because of the traffic calming influence and what they found in Portland now these bike boulevards are neighborhood greenways more people are bicycling on them than driving in fact it's like five they can get 5,000 bicyclists going down these residents residential streets and maybe you know 500 at most motorists so number three is really continue the momentum you've got with the connections you've made with the school district and schools work with those PTAs build that foundation with the children get something going you know I mean it's really a shame that kids feel like they can't bike to school I know with the magnet schools that makes a little bit more problematic but you know you do what you can and just having that training you know being able to we in Minnesota now the physical education teachers are learning how to teach bike safety and a fleet is being provided and there's grants for that kind of thing so those are my recommendations but again I was here shortly now I'd like to open it up to what people you know what people think and that really that really was my last my last slide so my question is more around what support is provided perhaps to local businesses you mentioned for Collins being you know very bike friendly because of the Fat Tire New Belgium company there and that they they supported cycling within their their community of their business therefore they'd help provide infrastructure again with a certain unnamed local university that may or may not they may do a great support internally on campus but externally getting to campus or providing support for employees who don't want to be right throughout the whole day without a shower after cycling in you know are there are there education programs materials provided such that employers in the area could help be more supportive of employees who want to commute and not and not do without some basic essentials like a shower. Well that's a great question you know it's her question was are there programs in support that can be provided to entities like the university to encourage them to become bicycle friendly businesses and in fact this would help elevate the bicycle friendliness of the city of Durham and yes absolutely the first the first recommendation is that the city of Durham can lead the way and be the model for other businesses workplaces and I know they they are doing a lot of good stuff here at the city you're a silver bicycle friendly business we encourage so some of the things we look at in the application of the bicycle friendly community application is how many bicycle friendly businesses do you have and by businesses we were looking at workplaces separate from that we also have a bicycle friendly university program and people I mean it's it would be worthwhile for like a task force to be formed to help more businesses become bike friendly you know the university become I forget if Duke ever applied I think they have a bike friendly yeah and you know bike sharing is happening on Duke University's campus a lot of good things are happening but we can do more there is an effort in Long Beach there was an effort to create a bicycle friendly district and and that basically like a person was hired a contracted by the city to go to all these different businesses and talk about the value of becoming bicycle friendly what that would do to their customer base increase their sales etc. it was a huge success and then they become proponents for more you know for like the protected bike lanes downtown it's usually the business community once they become aware of the impact this can have that they take the lead on this so yeah it's a synergy that happens I don't know if that answer your question but it's really important and and that's that's the need for what we had today you know in the all these different people coming together and meet and talk and and trying to figure out what can we do together how can we make this better for everybody it's all about partnerships I have maybe two more time for two more they told told me that after after 1.30 we're all gonna turn into what is it pumpkins yeah have you gathered any data on general safety increases in communities after there are increases in bicycle traffic and my thinking here is that people on bicycles are traveling more slowly through the community and are more eyes on the street in a more effective way and I'm so I'm wondering if anybody's been able to do any study on that and capture any data yeah yeah that's a great question and in fact what we know from Long Beach and Tempe Arizona when they did bicycle infrastructure and New York City has been doing some of this now too that in both situations their number one retail district in terms of sales tax revenues are those places where they in the case of Tempe Mill Avenue Google Mill Avenue it's the number one most successful retail district mostly bars and restaurants in the Phoenix area before it was four lanes actually in some places five lanes fast-moving traffic they did a road diet two lanes with a beautiful little boulevard and nice wide bike lanes totally transformed that whole district people exactly what you were saying that now they're going slower they're stopping it's it's just it's it's a place where people want to be and before I was just like here's a place that we want to get through it because it was just a commuting route Long Beach Billmont Shore they did the green actually just a green sort of Cheryl down the down the right lane they said that made all the difference in the world and the sales have never been better and now even families are riding down they basically the right lane is like has turned into a bike lane for the most part and they just use the entire lane so great question and then we also know when ridership goes up there's a safety and numbers phenomena that's been proven now where crash rates go way down okay two more minutes it's you have worked at all with communities about you know public service announcements you know for the non-cyclists I mean I've been in this industry for a long time it's it's allowed me to travel the world you know living a lot of cities around the country and I haven't seen the kind of I hate to use the word animosity towards cyclists as I do here I mean I grew up in North Carolina but there is an animosity from non-cyclists towards cyclists and I'm one of what you guys have seen from other communities so yeah that's a great question too first of all I will say that I had I wrote in some pretty busy streets yesterday it was a Sunday nobody honked at me everybody gave me lots of respect so so I want to say that so far my experience has been motors are pretty decent here that being said we Orange County is a great example of a place and LA County where they've done these wonderful PSA's it's not coming from bike advocates it's coming from the Metropolitan Planning Organization basically billboards and bumper stickers that say every road is a bike lane every lane is a I mean and they have this these pictures of basically bicyclists in the center of a travel lane saying sometimes there's not room for a bike lane sometimes bicyclists can use a full lane that's their right respect their right I mean it's like really effective in some of my PowerPoints I have that billboard it's on buses to every every road is a bike lane and that goes a long way towards creating that legitimacy all these things work I mean I mean I could come up with other examples but our time is up thank you everybody for being here and keep keep up the good work