We recently wrote about the Road Commission for Oakland County and their unwillingness to follow the national design guidelines for safe bicycling facilities.

That unwillingness is going to make  Complete Streets a bitter pill.

One doesn’t have to look too far to confirm that. Here’s the text they’ve had in the Oakland County’s Oak Routes Map.

The Road Commission for Oakland County is a member of the Oakland County Trails Advisory Council in order to accomplish two goals. First, our goal is to encourage and facilitate the movement of people throughout the county by non-motorized means as a way to promote healthier living and reducing the number of trips required on the road system. Secondly, the Road Commission wants to create the best possible nonmotorized network by contributing technical expertise to the location and design of the pathway system. This will create fewer conflicts with the motorized network and result in the safest possible trails for all users. Accomplishing both goals is in the best interest of our residents’ health, safety, and quality of life.

Yes, they refer to roads as the “motorized network.”

Yes, they are trying to gets bikes off the road.

Some of their best work is in Oakland County townships such as West Bloomfield. West Bloomfield has partnered with the Road Commission to get bikes of the roads and onto side paths, which they call safety paths.

Township officials have acknowledged to us that these paths are not safe for many bicyclists. That said, they’re still committed to building them.

One of their engineers admitted that these paths do not follow AASHTO bicycle design guidelines, but insisted it’s okay because the township only labels them as pedestrian facilities. That doesn’t explain the path’s bike routes signs or much of their safety path documentation.

Given all this, it is a major disappointment that the League of Michigan Bicyclists is giving its 2010 Community Award to the West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation Commission, for among other things, “activities that support making Michigan a better place to bicycle.”  The Commission has been a supporter of this safety path program and calls for more of them in their master plan.

Safety paths are not making Michigan a better place to bicycle.

And safety paths in nearly all cases do not make a Complete Street.

Beyond their little yellow flyer and a sparce Facebook page, there’s been little information available on Hot Spokes: A lunchtime food delivery service in Detroit that uses bikes.

That changed a little today as the operation was featured on WDET’s Craig Fahle show. They are on the pod cast at 1:26.

So how does it work? According to their Facebook page:

Call the restaurant to place your order and Hot Spokes will ride it to you!

• Cass Cafe (313) 831-1400
• Union Street (313) 831-3965
• Shangri-La (313) 974-7669

And yes, they are still delivering in the winter, so tip well!

Plans are well underway for another USA Cycling race in Detroit this summer called… Criterium Detroit City.

Imagine Tiger Plaza at Comerica Park decked out with banners and flags, both sides of the street filled with thousands of screaming spectators ringing their race bells and cheering on their favorite cyclists as they battle it out lap after lap.

Our primary goals for the race are to promote cycling as an excellent activity for living a healthy lifestyle, recreation, exercise, and transportation and to promote the city of Detroit as vibrant, fun, entertaining and livable, to both city dwellers and especially those new to the city.

Erika Fulk is one of the race promoters. Fulk was very involved in event planning for the 2010 Tour de Troit, so we’re quite confident this will be another great cycling event in Detroit.

It looks like a great course, too.

Of course, we’d love to see this become an opportunity for Detroit’s youth to get a taste for competitive cycling — or just cycling in general.

Criterium Detroit City is also on Facebook.

The other USA Cycling race in the city of Detroit is the Mad Anthony cyclocross race at Fort Wayne.

In November, the Federal Highway Administration announced the 2010 Transportation Planning Excellence Awards. These awards are given to recognize “outstanding initiatives across the country to develop, plan, and implement innovative transportation planning practices. ”

The Dequindre Cut and MDOT received an honorable mention in the Livability/Sustainability category.

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) transformed the Dequindre Cut, a formerly overgrown abandoned railroad corridor, into a 1.35-mile recreational trail for walking and bicycle use. Serving over 100,000 residents, the Dequindre Cut provides a safe and vital non-motorized connection from popular destinations in downtown Detroit to the beautiful Detroit Riverfront and Harbor.

Transformation of the Dequindre Cut involved extensive community input, and involved a number of private and not-for-profit entities. The Downtown Detroit Partnership led a public involvement, visioning, and planning process to gather input from nearby neighborhoods on how the “Cut” could be transformed and opened to the public. Residents toured the site, discussed options, and provided feedback on conceptual designs, including the popular decision to preserve existing graffiti art along the bridge abutments.

Through the efforts of the public, nonprofit, and private partners, this project transformed a forgotten, unused corridor into a natural greenway for public use, promoting physical activity, and offering residents and visitors a unique experience within the urban framework of Detroit.

That’s great, but we wish it not be labeled a recreational trail? That label might lead one to believe it’s just about recreation, which certainly isn’t the case. Generally speaking, trails that are loops within parks are recreational trails.

One of the award winners was New York City’s commitment to build 200 miles of bike lanes.

In June 2009, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) fulfilled its commitment by building 204.8 lane-miles of bicycle facilities in all five boroughs, doubling the number of on-street bicycle facilities and bringing the total mileage of bicycle facilities to over 600 lane-miles.

The 200 lane-mile project is an unprecedented expansion of the city’s bicycle infrastructure that radically improves the quality of the streets of the Nation’s most densely populated city. The 200 lane-miles included the execution of 88 separate projects on scores of unique street segments. To accommodate the vastly different street conditions, NYCDOT’s planning and design staff utilized innovative designs, such as protected bicycle paths, which position cyclists between the curb and the parking lane, the first of their kind in the United States.

Before-and-after data from the protected paths proves their safety benefits: up to 56 percent reductions in all injuries along the project corridors, up to 29 percent reductions in pedestrian accidents, and up to 57 percent reductions in cyclist accidents. Data from the 9th Avenue and Grand Street protected paths shows an 84 percent reduction in illegal sidewalk riding.

That’s so impressive given the value of road real estate in NYC.

While the city of Detroit has a commitment to build 400 miles of bike lanes, there is no time commitment.

Blame the cyclists from the 1890s.

Back then, counties weren’t involved in building roads, but farmers were. That was a problem for bicyclists. These roads weren’t well engineered, didn’t drain properly, and were hub deep in mud during the spring.

But the roads were good enough for horses.

And at that time, a popular sentiment was that county government had no role in building and maintaining roads.

Cyclists began the Good Roads movement and one of their first victories in Michigan (thanks to Edward Hines) was an 1893  state law that allowed the creation of county road commissions. These commissions were separate from county government and had enough autonomy so that they could ignore the naysayers in the farming community and improve the roads.

By the 1920s, according to Horatio “Good Roads” Earle, the cyclist who founded MDOT, the debate over the importance of good roads was over. Even the farmers agreed that building good roads was a good investment.

However, the road commissions that were separate from county government remained.

Unified form of government

All but Wayne and Macomb Counties operate on what’s called a “unified form of government” which is defined by state law. This law allows Michigan counties to hire a county manager to oversee departments for planning, economic development, health, environmental protection, parks, libraries, sewage, airports, garbage collection, human services, and more.

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