There are no excuses to not ride your bike to a Detroit festival this weekend.

Detroit International Jazz Festival

From the Wheelhouse Detroit web site:

This weekend, we will happily park your bike for no charge at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. Bike parking is at the intersection of Woodward & Larned, smack dab in the middle of the festivities, which stretch from Hart Plaza to Campus Martius.

Festival hours are 4 to 11 p.m. on Friday; noon to 11:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; and noon to 7:30 P.M. on Monday. See you there!

Arts, Beats, and Eats

KLM Bikes is providing free bike at two locations for the Art, Beats, and Eats event in Royal Oak. This is the easiest and cheapest way to get to the festival. The spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis. It looked like many people were taking advantage of this service.

The locations are:

• South side: Washington St. Just south of Lincoln, 800 parking slots
• North side: Washington Near Second Avenue, 1,000 parking slots

The Hamtramck Festival is this weekend as well. Though it doesn’t seem to have valet bike parking, it does have urban camping. How cool is that?

Did you catch today’s discussion on Detroit’s Complete Street effort? It was on WDET’s Craig Fahle Show.

If you missed it, you can still listen to the podcast. The segment on Complete Streets begins about 54 minutes into the program.

Earlier today, Governor Jennifer Granholm had a ceremonial signing of Michigan’s Complete Streets legislation at the Capitol. We had a roomful of supporters from the Michigan Complete Streets coalition as well as State Representatives (and bill sponsors) Pam Byrnes and Jon Switalski.

The Governor is an active cyclist and pedestrian — and noted how blessed Michigan is for trails.

This is just a reminder that the city of Detroit wants to know if you support Complete Streets in the Motor City.

If so, it’s easy to register your support and you don’ t need to be a city resident. It only takes a minute.

For more information on Detroit’s Complete Streets effort, visit the Detroit Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) web site.

One of DHWP’s main objectives is to support and promote healthy and safe lifestyles; that includes physical activity such as walking and biking. Safe, community-centered roads and streets help encourage these healthy lifestyle choices. Thankfully, Detroit has established a Complete Streets project to build better routes for all Detroit residents.

DHWP is anticipating having a Complete Streets ordinance before the city council before next Spring.

Congratulations to Robert Burns Elementary in Detroit for its recent Safe Routes to School grant.

Here’s the official announcement from MDOT:

The Heritage Newspaper’s Press and Guide had a recent article on greenways in Metro Detroit.

It’s a good article with a focus more on the Dearborn, Detroit, and Downriver areas.

Still, we’re a little unclear about some statements.

Detroit is leading the way in the endeavor, and currently has more greenways than any other city in the country, quite a change for a city that built its reputation on the automobile. In Detroit’s favor, it is a city with many, many miles of unused railways, which advocates hope will eventually be converted totally to greenways.

We’re not sure the city of Detroit has more greenways than any other city, but it could very well be among the leaders from an investment perspective.

And this is a great quote from Tom Woiwode of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

“Ultimately, the goal of the GreenWays Initiative is to connect all the communities in southeast Michigan and to link the system with projects outside the region,” said Woiwode. “In the meantime, watching as greenways are embraced by a region known for the automobile continues to be a pleasure.”

The article does end on a flat note.

“Every day, we are a little closer to being able to travel the whole tri-county area without ever setting foot on a road.”

That’s neither true nor realistic — and not even desirable. Many of the planned greenways in Detroit are partially, if not 100% on the road.

Riding on roads is not a bad thing to be avoided. What we need to avoid is building roads that don’t safely accommodate bicyclists. We need Complete Streets.

Chances are we’re not building a greenway to your front door. Or your school. Or your work. We just need to fix the roads between your starting and ending points.