The photo on the right was taken yesterday while exploring a great bakery in Windsor’s historic Sandwich area.

The lead Windsor Star article is on-line. The synopsis?

Riverside Drive residents angry over losing small city-owned chunks of land fronting their properties to make way for bike lanes have launched a court challenge against the city’s plan.

This Windsor city plan for bike lanes and other traffic calming has already been approved. This same group of residents contested the environmental assessment but it’s been upheld by the Province, so now they’re suing.

Councillor Alan Halberstadt didn’t pull punches when he told the Windsor Star:

“It’s another delaying tactic,” Halberstadt said. “It’s a case of a few rich people holding up a better way of life for the city. It’s unfortunate our court system allows that to happen.

“The major concern is we are taking a part of property they have been using for years. That’s their hidden agenda.”

Besides Halberstadt, Windsor has some very good cycling advocates that are on top of this issue, including Bike Windsor and Embrace the Bike. We’ve got great confidence in them persevering on this matter and making Riverside a great place to bike from end to end.

The Road Commission for Oakland County is widening another road.  This time it’s Tienken between Livernois and Sheldon Roads.

If ever a county road needed bike lanes, this would be it. It would connect Livernois, the Paint Creek Trail, Stony Creek High School, and Sheldon Road (a main access point for the Stony Creek Metropark.)

We need cyclists to give their input to the Road Commission.

A public meeting is planned for January 21st from 4pm until 7pm in the auditorium at Rochester Hills City Hall, 1000 Rochester Hills Drive (south of Avon Road between Livernois and Old Perch roads).

According to the Road Commission, “Public input will help shape the ultimate project design.”

If you are unable to attend the meeting on the 21st, please submit your comments to:

The Road Commission for Oakland County
31001 Lahser Road
Beverly Hills, MI 48025
E-Mail: dcsmail@rcoc.org
Phone: 877-858-4804

If you can attend the meeting, the Road Commission will likely provide their normal technical brush offs.  Here are what you can expect:

Brush off: The Road Commission has a policy of not accomodating bikes on the road.

Answer: The Road Commission mission is “to provide the public with leadership in safe and convenient road.”  Bike lanes are the safest place a cyclist can bike.

Brush off: The Road Commission will build a safety path for bicycles.

Answer: Safety paths are wide sidewalks and are not safe nor satisfactory solutions for for bicyclists according to MDOT and AASHTO.

Brush off: On-road facilities aren’t safe.

Answer: Studies find that bike lanes are the safest place to ride a bike.  Wide sidewalks are the least safe.

Brush off: The Road Commission doesn’t have the money.

Answer: Ask them, “is there no money to make this road safe for cyclists?  Is there money to make this road safe for motorists?”  There is grant funding for non-motorized facilities. No less than one-percent of the Road Commission’s state road funding must be spent on non-motorized facilities such as bike lanes.

Bikes are not allowed on the Ambassador Bridge or in the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.  They certainly aren’t allowed on the railroad tunnel beneath the Detroit River.

If you’re lucky, you might be able to talk the Truck Ferry operator into a ride.

Or you can take the Windsor Transit Tunnel Bus.  But, unlike all the other buses in the Windsor fleet, you aren’t allowed to use the bus bike rack.  You must disassemble your bike, put it in a bag, and carry it on the bus — not a practical solution.

Groups like Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision (SDEV) and MTGA are working to add a better option with the proposed new bridge over the Detroit River.  (The bridge is more properly called the Detroit River International Crossing or DRIC.)

The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) says:

The new bridge over the Detroit River and the plaza will be engineered to accommodate bicycles and pedestrians. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its Canadian counterpart (Customs and Border Services Agency) will determine whether this traffic is allowed.

That’s a great start.  MTGA and others have submitted comments in support of making the new bridge a practical non-motorized connection between Windsor and Detroit.

Imagine the boost to cycling tourism.  Imagine how valuable an international connection would be between two cities both developing bike and greenway networks.  Imagine the Tour d’Troit heading over to Windsor on a new bridge.

The FEIS also includes more good news:

Bike lanes will be added to both sides of Jefferson Avenue and Clark Street, linking the Rouge River Gateway Master Plan Trail and potentially the proposed West Riverfront Greenway. Non-motorized paths will be included in the buffer zone surrounding the plaza.

Some of our friends in Windsor are also pushing for this crossing as well.

In the meantime, efforts are underway to determine if and how the Transit Windsor Tunnel Bus could better accomodate bikes.

EDIT: There is a Yahoo! discussion group dedicated to this topic.

In Boulder, Colorado, the bike lanes are plowed first.  That gives you an idea of where they put their priorities.

And this is from a popular Copenhagen bike blog:

We salt our bike lanes and roads here in Copenhagen. Sometimes the wide stripe of salt on the bike lane is my weather report. If I see the stripe I know that snow is forecast and the city is ahead of the game with a preventive measure to ensure that the bike lane is as clear as possible until they can get out with the bike lane snowploughs.

John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press wrote an excellent article about transforming Detroit’s current road infrastructure to the betterment of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Detroit’s main streets make good highways but lousy neighborhoods.

It’s time to change that.

The local development community is abuzz with talk of adding bicycle lanes, wider sidewalks, new landscaping and other devices to narrow Detroit’s arterial streets — Woodward, Gratiot, Jefferson and others.

Whether it’ll happen is open to question. But the goal is to recapture Detroit’s cityscape for the people who actually live here.

Gallagher also references last week’s transportation week that we wrote about earlier.

Model D also covered last week’s events with this video featuring Ian Lockwood from Glatting-Jackson.