Recently, the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) received ARRA (economic stimulus) funding for Michigan to support local efforts to pass Complete Streets policies.

The purpose of this grant opportunity is to fund local health departments and one of their communities that are ready to work on passing a local Complete Streets ordinance. This is to support Michigan in having safer and connected communities in Michigan, increase assess to daily physical activity for transportation and recreation, and increase the physical activity levels in Michigan to reduce chronic disease and obesity in communities.

Grants up to $12,000 were available to five Michigan communities this year and another five next year.

The Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) applied for this funding. We learned this week that Detroit was among the five chosen.

There are many grant requirements, including passing a Complete Streets ordinance by January 31, 2011.

DWHP also applied for Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) funding through the Centers for Disease Control — also available through ARRA.

In Detroit’s application, much of that funding would go towards obesity prevention through building “Healthy Zone” neighborhoods which included active living and transportation. Unfortunately, Detroit was not chosen.

Nonetheless, it’s great to see another city department recognizing the need for better biking and walking in Detroit.

Below are photos taken from various projects around Detroit that are key components to a more bike friendly city.

Also, M-Live/Associated Press has published a more thorough story on the Midtown Loop, which is set to break ground this Thursday.

Construction starts next week on the Midtown Greenway, which by the fall will be an improved route for pedestrians and bicyclists around Detroit’s Cultural Center area and Wayne State University’s campus.

It’s the first part of a four-phase project that by 2012 is expected to link the area with Eastern Market and the Detroit riverfront. It will widen walkways, as well as add landscaping, bike racks, benches and small park areas.

“We wanted to create a more walkable district … and to beautify the neighborhood and to really help spur on more economic development,” Susan Mosey, president of the University Cultural Center Association, which is spearheading the project, said Friday.

Read the entire article

Today’s Free Press has a very good article outlining some of the exciting progress being made towards making Detroit even more bike friendly.

Detroit is embarking on an ambitious plan to create bike lanes on roads across town, giving cyclists like Jon Koller designated space for riding as city leaders and community groups rethink street and land use in a shrinking city.

It’s a big change. Although the city is starting with about 30 miles in a handful of neighborhoods this year, there eventually could be as many as 400 miles of bike lanes in Detroit.

“I think it’s going to encourage more people to get out there and take biking as a serious form of transportation,” said Koller, 25, who lives in the city’s Corktown neighborhood and commutes by bike to Wayne State University, where he’s a doctoral student in transportation engineering.

As per usual, the Free Press comment section certainly inspires this area’s least informed yet most opinionated. It’s apparent that those writing the most negative comments have never ridden a bike in Detroit.

As of this posting, there were 167 comments about painting these bike lanes.

Click on Detroit has a similar yet very brief article. Their photo shows someone riding a off road path that clearly not in Detroit.

First, NBC is in Detroit today for an upcoming national story which includes biking in Detroit. It is expected to air later this month….

Detroit on Two Wheels: Wheelhouse

A short article from Papermag gives some love to the Wheelhouse Detroit, which is now open for business.

Not every form of transportation in the Motor City requires an engine. Wheelhouse Detroit, a bicycle shop in downtown Detroit, that offers rentals, retail, and service. They also offer tours that help make little-known tourist gems more accessible in a city that is spread across many miles.

Detroiters Kelli Kavanaugh and Karen Gage opened Wheelhouse two years ago and they emphasize the ecological practices of their business, including the t-shirts and sustainable water bottles they sell. “Our store is an opportunity to get to talk to people about road safety and spread the word that cars need to share the road with riders,” said Gage, who also works as an urban planner in the city.

Real Detroit also ran a nice article on the shop.

Big plans for the future Detroit

The Detroit Free Press published a big article which compiles the various plans for Detroit — including the greenway and non-motorized plans.

The city plans to put up about 30 miles of bike lanes and more than 12 miles of routes designed for cyclists starting in September in southwest Detroit, near Wayne State and on the east side. The aim is a network of hundreds of miles of biking and walking paths connecting neighborhoods and attractions across the city.

There’s also updates on the RiverWalk and Midtown Loop. The Free Press did a find job creating a map showing bike lane projects planned for this year.

The same issue included an editorial.

For all its troubles today, Detroit is also a place brimming with hope for tomorrow.

When you assemble all the proposals, plans and dreams that have been advanced in recent months, the city of 2020 looks dramatically different than it looks today: smaller, smarter, greener, more mobile, with more job opportunities — and once again the pounding heart of a metropolitan region.

You see thousands of kids attending schools that work for them. You see people using light rail and boarding buses in a transit system that serves them. You see a gleaming, growing medical complex; banners being hoisted to the rafters of a new sports arena; and people tending little farms that nourish their neighborhoods in more ways than one. You see convention-goers strolling a crowded RiverWalk and bicyclists coasting the downhills of a new trail network.

Bicyclists coasting the downhills? It’s a nice thought, but with Detroit being built on a former lake bed, there aren’t going to be many downhills of note.

Michigan residents are winners under new state parks passport law

Howard Meyerson, a columnist with the Grand Rapids Press, has covered the state park funding situation for years. His latest column celebrates the passage of the Recreation Passport legislation. He also shined some light on those that opposed or at least delayed these bills.

It wasn’t an easy passage. The Chamber of Commerce and transportation lobby opposed it. Speaker of the House Andy Dillon held it up over the holidays, reportedly to help an old college buddy, now a transportation lobbyist.

But in the end, wiser heads prevailed.

Yes, wiser heads did prevail. The new payment system begins this October, so everyone will still need to purchase their 2010 Motor Vehicle Pass stickers.

Detroit was represented well at the 10th annual National Bike Summit in DC

And, Model D just published an article on the recent National Bike Summit. They referenced our review of the event. Thanks, Model D!

We’ve documented how the bicycling industry helped birth the automotive and road building industries. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that bicycle racing helped birth auto racing — and the Ford Motor Company.

In 1902, Henry Ford worked with two famous professional bicycle racers, Tom Cooper and Barney Oldfield. This partnership was instrumental in the creation of the Ford Motor Company.

The below story by Anthony J. Yanik was originally published in Winter 2009/2010 issue of WHEELS, a journal of the National Automotive History Collection, located at the Skillman Branch of the Detroit Public Library.

Barney Oldfield Meets Mr. Ford

YEARS AFTER HE HAD BECOME a famous racing star, Barney Oldfield would kid everyone about the day he “made” Henry Ford. “Henry Ford said “we made each other, I guess I did the better job of it,” he commented in 1915.

That he helped add to the reputation of Henry is indisputable, but the truth of the matter was that Henry Ford launched Barney Oldfield on a career that made his name a household word on the racing barnstorming circuit prior to World War I.

In April 1902, having been let go by from his second auto company, Henry Ford had become enamored of the racing scene. He asked Tom Cooper, then the most famous professional bicycle racer of the day, to join him in a new project: the build a race car and enter it in the Manufacturers Challenge Cup that would take place at Grosse Pointe, Michigan on October 25.

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