From the Greenville News:
Quote
Greenville city and business leaders got advice Friday on how to achieve a bicycle-friendly community from an expert responsible for getting people to ride bikes in Portland, Ore.
Mia Birk, a Portland-based bicycle transportation expert, was in Greenville as part of the Palmetto Joyride Tour sponsored by the Palmetto Conservation Foundation and the Palmetto Cycling Coalition.
Birk, who also stopped in Charleston and Columbia, said a goal of the tour is to excite, motivate, and energize community leaders and residents about the power of bicycle transportation and to help them take steps to become more bicycle friendly.
Brian Graham, Greenville’s greenway and sustainability manager, said Birk’s visit wasn’t planned to coincide with a City Council vote later this month on a bike master plan, but he hopes the visit will help bolster support for it.
The city now has 13 miles of bike lanes. The bike master plan calls for more than 170 miles of bike lanes, neighborhood routes and greenways.
A downtown bike station, a bike sharing program, some car-free streets, safe routes to schools and the redesign of some commercial corridors are among additional recommendations.
Andrew Meeker, Greenville’s urban designer, said Oregon has had its bicycle community plan in place for more than 20 years.
“They didn’t invent a lot of the initiative that they worked on. They went to the Netherlands, Amsterdam and discovered how Europe had been doing it for decades, so it’s kind of this community collaboration that we’re hoping to have,” he said.
Birk, who was the city of Portland’s bike coordinator for six years and continues to work with its officials as a consultant, is president of Alta Planning, a company that is working with Greenville on the bike master plan.
It was Birk’s first visit to Greenville, but her company has a small office here. “I’ve been hearing and learning about Greenville, and Greenville has got it going on,” she said.
“Greenville has a huge reputation in my world, which is urban planning, urban design, livability and sustainability, for being one of the gems of the Southeast,” she said. “All the initiatives that have gone on so far are really making a difference.”
Birk cited the Swamp Rabbit Trail, leaders and residents who are “really enlightened,” and bike lanes that are already in place.
The city faces challenges similar to what other places face -- reformulating existing infrastructure and the time, cost, and resistance in improving streets, she said.
“I think, overall, Greenville has far more opportunities than the other ones do because you’ve got so much momentum, a population, a thriving economy, and clearly an awareness of the economic leaders that livability matters,” she said.
In Portland, once biking started to catch on and city government invested in a bikeway infrastructure, businesses sprang up, Birk said.
“More people opened up bike shops and bike touring companies, bike rental companies, manufacturing bikes, legal services, encouragement programs and all kinds of activities around biking that were entrepreneurs that set up small businesses.”
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SouthernYankee, on 22 April 2010 - 10:44 AM, said:
