m-bike.org

Author: Todd Scott

  • The Potential Downside to the Economic Stimulus

    There’s been a big push by many groups to get Green projects in the Obama economic stimulus package.  We’ve already mentioned the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s push.  The DNR Parks division has submitted about a quarter-million in infrastructure projects.  The Detroit Greenways Coalition has their trails submitted as well.

    That’s all the good news.

    The fear however is this stimulus package will also fund a significant amount of road expansion.

    From Bloomberg.com:

    While many states are keeping their project lists secret, plans that have surfaced show why environmentalists and some development experts say much of the stimulus spending may promote urban sprawl while scrimping on more green-friendly rail and mass transit.

    “It’s a lot of more of the same,” said Robert Puentes, a metropolitan growth and development expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington who is tracking the legislation. “You build a lot of new highways, continue to decentralize” urban and suburban communities and “pull resources away from transit.”

    And decentralizing/sprawl also hurts bikability and walkability.

    Some local concerns involve planned expressway expansion, notably I-75 in Oakland County and I-94 in Detroit.  Neither project made financial sense long before the recent declines in vehicle miles traveled.  Now they make less sense.

    And they’re certainly not green, but they might get in the stimulus package.

    The I-94 project is especially bad in that it would remove nine bridges over the expressways — permanently blocking bicycle routes within Detroit’s non-motorized transportation master plan.

    And because the highway expansion was planned before the non-motorized plan, MDOT is ignoring the latter.  However, reading their Final Environmental Impact Statement only shows that MDOT wasn’t going to let non-motorized priorities get in the way of an expressway expansion.

    That said, there’s not too much we can do until MDOT’s economic stimulus list becomes public and we see what’s on the list.

  • “Roadie” Book Signing in Royal Oak

    roadieThere will be a book signing starting at 7 PM this Friday, January 2nd in Royal Oak at the American Cycle and Fitness store on Woodward just north of 12 Mile.

    The book is called Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer
     and it’s author is local-cyclist Jamie Smith.  The book is illustrated by Frazz illustrator, Jef Mallett from Lansing.

    With a keen sense of humor and a wealth of experience as a cyclist, Smith explains the wonderfully addicting but equally strange world of bicycle racing, including many of its charming habits and obsessive practices. Training, diet, several of the Michigan courses, cycle repairs, race strategies, and the puzzling question of why cyclists wear Lycra are all outlined in this unique book. Mallett’s comic illustrations perfectly complement the narrative.

    Smith’s book did make the 2009 Michigan Notable Book list.

    For more details, visit  www.americancycleandfitness.com or call the store at 248-542-7182.  Refreshments will be provided

  • DNR State Parks Strategic Plan Seeks Public Comment

    Michigan’s DNR Parks & Recreation Division is asking the public to comment on their 2009-2019 Strategic Plan draft.

    This plan represents the culmination of two and one-half years of extensive outreach effort to the public and other stakeholders who helped define the goals, objectives, and actions identified in the draft plan.

    The draft plan will be available for a 30-day public comment period, and comments may be submitted to DNR-RecreationFeedback@michigan.gov via e-mail, or in writing to: Paul N. Curtis, Park Management Plan Administrator, DNR-Parks and Recreation Division, P.O. Box 30257, Lansing, MI 48909-7757.

    The deadline for comments is 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 30, 2009.

    Too much too read?  The summary: The plan is quite comprehensive and includes plenty of input on trails, both on land and on water.  We reviewed and commented earlier on in the process.  The plan has been added to and improved since then.

    Overall, it looks real good and should help move the DNR Parks Divsion forward.

  • Rochester Hills adds Greenspace

    crtrail9
    A View of the Clinton River from the trail

    Congratulations to Rochester Hills for their recent purchase of greenspace.

    From the Daily Tribune:

    The land, located east of Livernois and north of Avon, adjoins the Clinton River Trail. It was paid for with money from a 0.3-mill 10-year millage passed in September 2005 for the purpose of acquiring and preserving natural green space in the city.

    The land acquisitions are to permanently preserve wildlife habitats, protect woodlands, wetlands, rivers and streams and expand the Clinton River Greenway and other trail corridors.

    If not mistaken, this land is on the north side of the Clinton River Trail and contains some informal deer paths/singletrack.  This land acuisition may allow public access to the Clinton River Trail from the north — a huge benefit to those of us using this trail for transportation.

    This isn’t the last land acquisition so long as Rochester Hills has it’s 0.3 mill greenspace millage.

    They’re inventoried all of the potential greenspace within their boundaries and have prioritized their acquisition.  There is an excellent map on-line showing this.

  • Cyclists subsidize Motorists

    Detroit 1905: A Mural at the Detroit Public Library
    Detroit in 1905, a mural at the Detroit Public Library. This is 21 years before Michigan's first gas tax.

    Most cyclists have heard or read it before: bicyclists shouldn’t have equal access to the roads because they don’t pay for them.

    Those making that claim assume that fuel tax and vehicle registrations pay for all their road costs.

    They’re wrong.

    Perhaps the definitive report comparing the total costs of using the roads is Whose Roads? Defining Bicyclists’ and Pedestrians’ Right to Use Public Roadways by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (2004).

    Although motorist user fees (fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees) fund most highway expenses, funding for local roads (the roads pedestrians and cyclists use most) originates mainly from general taxes. Since bicycling and walking impose lower roadway costs than motorized modes, people who rely primarily on nonmotorized modes tend to overpay their fair share of roadway costs and subsidize motorists.

    The automotive industry sponsored reports in the past have claimed motorists overpay their fair share.  According to Litman, these reports conveniently ignore some substantial road costs.  He concludes:

    Virtually all studies that use appropriate analysis procedures conclude that motorists significantly underpay the costs they impose on society (FHWA, 1997; Delucchi, 1998; Litman, 2004a).

    Some of those ignored costs are external.  One example is all the free vehicle parking.  All taxpayers and consumers pay for that through higher taxes and higher product costs.  Salon.com ran an interesting article that describes this external cost in greater detail.

    To Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, parking requirements are a bane of the country. “Parking requirements create great harm: they subsidize cars, distort transportation choices, warp urban form, increase housing costs, burden low income households, debase urban design, damage the economy, and degrade the environment,” he writes in his book, “The High Cost of Free Parking.”

    Americans don’t object, because they aren’t aware of the myriad costs of parking, which remain hidden. In large part, it’s business owners, including commercial and residential landlords, who pay to provide parking places. They then pass on those costs to us in slightly higher prices for rent and every hamburger sold.

    There’s also another great summary of this very same topic on the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation web site.