Planning is underway for a rail-trail project just east of Mt. Elliot. Unlike the Dequindre Cut, most of this railroad is not below ground, except for a portion at Jefferson.

Below is information on a public meeting to discuss this potential greenway project —

Gleaners Community Food Bank is hosting a community forum in Detroit on March 3rd. The forum is to discuss the concept of developing a greenway on the abandoned rail corridor connecting the riverfront to Gratiot Avenue between Beaufait and Bellevue streets. The presentation portion will provide an overview of the project and its connection to similar projects in Detroit and lead to an open discussion on the feasibility of this effort and the opportunity for community member input, questions, and concerns.

Refreshments will be served.

When: Thursday, March 3^rd 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
6:30 PM presentation followed by questions/answers

Where: Gleaners Community Food Bank, 2131 Beaufait Street, Detroit, MI

If you have any questions, please contact Guy Williams (guy@gowilliams.net or 734-395-9836).

The Detroit Works Project — the city’s plan for re-imagining itself — has scheduled the next series of public meetings.

But before talking about those, let’s admire this graphic taken from the front page of the Detroit Works web site. No, we didn’t create that graphic nor did we bribe anyone.

And, the Detroit Works team has summarized the comments given during the first round of public meetings.

If you thought Detroiters were indifferent about their future, you’d be wrong. The first five meetings had 4,500 people and produced 1,916 verbal comments and 1,451 comment cards.

Our favorite statistic?

There were many comments on transportation with 42% of those expressing a desire for light rail and 31% making suggestions around improvements for bicycles.

Apparently Detroiters aren’t indifferent about their bicycling infrastructure either!

The next series of public meetings are listed on the Detroit Works web site. They run from January 27th through February 16th. Unlike the first meetings, these are geographically based. They are asking that you attend the meeting that is closest and most convenient to you. Note that space is limited.

The Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance has written summaries on greenways and Complete Streets for the Works Project. The plan is to distribute these summaries (and others) to those attending these upcoming meetings. Doing that should help help build community awareness.

The city of Novi has posted the initial draft of their non-motorized master plan.

The City of Novi is now poised to take its bicycle and pedestrian facilities, policies and programs to the next level. This document, funded by the Federal Energy Efficiency Block Grant program, lays out a systematic way to support non-motorized transportation.

It is anticipated that the environmental changes will result in a greater number of individuals choosing walking and bicycling as their preferred mode of transportation for many local trips. These choices will lead to healthier lifestyles, improved air and water quality, and a more energy efficient and sustainable transportation system.

We haven’t had a chance to fully review the plan, but it looks very impressive so far.

This plan and more will be discussed at their Walkable Novi Committee meeting this Thursday at 6pm. The meeting is at the City of Novi Administration Building, 45175 West 10 Mile Road.

The meeting originally scheduled for 1/20/2010 has been moved back a week to January 27th.

There is a very informative transportation conference in Lansing next week called the Transportation Bonanza 2 — Creating healthy, mobile, and livable communities through innovative planning, design, and construction.

THE MICHIGAN ASSOCIATION OF PLANNING’S second annual Transportation Bonanza (TB2) is the most comprehensive, multidisciplinary training program this year and provides the curriculum necessary to integrate our land use and transportation planning policies with health and mobility agendas.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Professional planners | Citizen planners and elected officials | School officials from principals, to administrators, to teachers | Community health professionals | Transportation planners and engineers | State agency employees with a stake in transforming the built environment (DEQ, MDOT, DELEG, MSHDA, MDA, MDE, and others) | Design professionals like landscape architects and architects | Representatives from the development community

December 8, 2010 Lansing Center
8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

A full day of national experts and local perspectives

Day 1 highlights the emerging connections between planning, health, education, engineering, and design, and provides everything you need to know about integrated, multimodal transportation systems from philosophy to planning to practice.

December 9, 2010 Radisson Hotel Lansing
8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

High level ITE manual training with national and state authorities

Day 2 provides “how to” technical information from new ITE/CNU national engineering standards that authoritatively support walkable, bikable, community supportive streets.

The event brochure contains many more specifics.

The Charter Township of West Bloomfield adopted an updated master plan on September 28th.

Mike Reuter from American Cycle & Fitness and myself (Todd Scott) met with their planning department earlier this year. Our discussion was about making West Bloomfield bike friendly and how we might reflect that in the master plan.

We were successful in getting Complete Streets language added.

One challenge with townships is they do not own any roads. The Road Commission for Oakland County does and they are this area’s biggest impediment to safe cycling.

Despite referencing Complete Streets, the master plan still ignores national design guidelines (AASHTO) by promoting side paths (called safety paths in Oakland County) as bicycle facilities.  (Note that the latest draft of the forthcoming  AASHTO bicycle design guidelines devotes a couple pages to explaining why side paths are not safe for bicyclists.)

Given the political and operation momentum with side paths, one cannot expect West Bloomfield — or any similar Oakland County townships — to be a bicycle friendly community any time soon. Right now, with few exceptions, if you really want to live in a bicycle friendly community, you’re easiest, most reliable option is to move.