For many years now, there’s been a Critical Mass ride in Detroit. It’s always the last Friday of the month and the start time is somewhere between 5:30pm and 6pm.

The attendance has varied with the weather. Sometimes there are fifty riders. Sometimes its just a handful of the usual suspects.

As always, the ride rightfully starts under the watchful gaze of Mayor Pingree, “the idol of the people,” at Grand Circus Park.

Last fall, a cyclist from Toronto was in Detroit for our ride. He was documenting Critical Mass rides from around the world. He was showing photos of thousands of riders taking over streets of other cities.

Detroit’s ride is not like that. Detroit cyclists are not in a David vs. Goliath battle with cars. Goliath moved to the suburbs years ago, leaving behind a great yet underrated place to ride a bike.

It could be argued that Critical Mass rides should be in the Detroit suburbs since bicycles there are often not considered traffic and the roads are not designed to safety accomodate bicycling. It would certainly raise the visibility of cycling and the lack of cycling-friendliness in these communities.

Of course one difficulty in doing a suburban ride is the lower density. To be effective, it would be a good idea having them centered in suburban downtown areas.

The excuse of not having money to make your community more bike friendly just got a whole lot weaker thanks to Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG).

This funding is another a portion of the overall economic stimulus package and it can fund bicycling planning, construction, and programming:

Entities may develop and implement programs to conserve energy used in transportation, including but not limited to:

• Development of infrastructure such as bike lanes and pathways and pedestrian walkways;
• State/locals/regional integrated planning activities (i.e. transportation, housing, environmental, energy,land use) with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled;
• Incentive programs to reduce commutes by single occupancy vehicles;

Nearly $58 million will go to Michigan cities, townships, and counties that already receive block grant funding (see list below.) A minimum of just over $11 million will be awarded competitively among Michigan’s other communities.

The application deadline is June 25th, 2009. Any awarded funds must be obligated within 18 months.

Royal Oak, Novi and Detroit

Both of these cities are applying for EECBG funding to develop non-motorized transportation master plans. These plans would help both cities develop a strategy for making their cities more walkable and bikeable. (Troy is current going through this plannng.)

Detroit already has a non-motorized transportation plan, so we will be encouraging them so spend a portion of this funding on implementing the plan.

What Can You Do?

We are encouraging all cyclists to contact their local government and ask that they apply for EECBG funding to make their community more bike friendly.

If your city doesn’t have a non-motorized transportation plan (and nearly all don’t in Metro Detroit), EECBG funding can pay for one. This is a good starting point for cities looking to become more bike friendly. For cities like Royal Oak and Novi, these plans costs between $40K and $50K

As mentioned, some cities are automatically eligible for a specific amount of funding. Here’s a listing for eligible cities in Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne County. For a complete listing, visit Michigan’s Recovery web site.

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For the first time, the Spirit of Hope is having a Blessing of the Bikes event in Detroit’s North Corktown neighborhood.

The event will be held this Sunday, May 31st during 11 a.m. worship. The church is at the corner of Trumbull, Grand River, and Martin Luther King.

If the weather cooperates, this will be held outside, otherwise we’ll be bringing the bikes inside the church.

This is open to bicycles and motorcyclists.

In fact it was the latter that inspired this event. According to the Reverend Matthew Bode, a member of the church suggested this event last year. Unfortunately it didn’t happen and that member was involved in a motorcycling accident that summer.

Reverend Bode is not sure how many cyclists to expect but is hoping for a big crowd.

As we noted earlier, we think this sort of event puts a much more positive spin on cycling.

“This continent has not seen a transformation like Detroit’s since the last days of the Maya. The city, once the fourth largest in the country, is now so depopulated that some stretches resemble the outlying farmland and others are altogether wild.”

— From “Detroit Arcadia“, Harper’s Magazine, 2007

At nearly 140 square miles, Detroit is a very large city.

The problem is it no longer has enough residents or businesses providing a tax base to support this size. About 40 square miles are abandoned or vacant.

Yesterday’s Free Press featured an article “Urban villages in Detroit’s future?” about recent efforts to make this situation work.

In a new vision of Detroit’s future, a team of visiting urban planners suggests the city might one day resemble the English countryside, with distinct urban villages surrounded by farms, fields and meadows.

The idea may sound improbable, but Alan Mallach, a New Jersey-based planner who led the visiting team, said Detroit is evolving in that direction anyway, with large chunks of the city now largely abandoned.

“In a way, think of it as a 21st-Century version of a traditional country pattern,” Mallach said. “You have high-density development on one side of the street and cows on the other, quite literally.”

Having participated in these conversations over the past year, this certainly seems like the most realistic strategy for Detroit.

So how does it affect biking?

First, having good walkability and bikeability within these urban villages is a key design feature. And since Detroit has “good bones” (i.e. uses the American street grid), we’re mostly there.

Second, the planned connections between the villages and in the lower density greenspaces are great places for building greenways and bike lanes, as noted in the Free Press article.

Preserving Non-Motorized Mobility

One question with creating these larger greenspaces is how do we preserve the street grids and maintain bikability? Creating superblocks disrupts direct routes for cyclists and pedestrians, while concentrating vehicle traffic around their perimeters.

For example, there is a recent proposal for an urban farm made up of 10 square city blocks. How do we handle the public right-of-ways across that property (which could interfer with the farming operations)?

In speaking with Allan Mallach, he really didn’t have any specific ideas yet. And, what he is proposing (and what Detroit is experiencing) truly is unique at this scale, so we’ll need to work out some issues as we progress.

I also raised this question with Ian Lockwood, a renowned senior transportation planner with Glatting Jackson. One thought he had was to maintain the street grid, but return the roads to gravel in order to reduce the infrastructure and make them permeable (for reduced storm water management.)

The Future of Detroit Biking

Detroit will undoubtedly continue its transformation whether its planned or not. It’s already transformed in ways that make it far more bike friendly, especially compared with the surround suburban areas and with other American cities.

And with some perseverance (and funding!), we’ll continue planning this transformation to make us even more bike friendly.

This Model D video was shot primarily from the Lafayette entrance ramp to the Dequindre Cut near Downtown Detroit.