Complete the Streets initiative

[CarolinaSouth]

^^^^

I know what you mean about "having bike lanes" on streets "just to have them"...it's a road here in Savannah that has to be the most useless bike lane i know of. I've been here nearly 2yrs and {not including myself} the same 2 adult people use it...and about 1 child who lives next door to me. What makes it worse is it's location. It's so far away from downtown, colleges and any jobs [except for wal-mart and a couple of hotels] that it's not used much and on top of that it's on the wrong side of the road b/c most of the residental areas are on the southbound side and nothing is on the northbound side but a Tile store and police substation....i've even seen the city council meetings on t.v. here talk about how that was a waste of money...lol...

But yeah....Cola-town needs comple streets with bike lanes included....A.S.A.P

[krazeeboi]

My perspective is that while I like bike lanes, it is not appropriate to stripe them just for the sake of having them. For a quality bike lane you need at least 4 feet of width, but ideally 5 feet. There is more than likely plenty of room to accommodate them on Hampton/Taylor, but I just don't think those roads make any sense for bikers to be on. Its much better to have a signed alternate route for bikers to follow. If you are biking in downtown Columbia I would think that you would use the narrower, slower, low volume streets to get around.

[CorgiMatt]

Columbia has just been designated a bicycle-friendly city. There are improvements yet to be made, but cyclists and city leaders went to work on a goal of attaining bronze status for starters, and they have succeeded.

http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bicycle...ca/communities/

[CorgiMatt]

Here's a better article about the newly designated cities. Columbia's bicyling education initiatives are cited in this one.

http://www.bikeleague.org/news/092408bfc.php

[CorgiMatt]

And here's WIS's take on it.

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9326750

[krazeeboi]

Definitely a step in the right direction. Here's the relevant excerpt from that last article:

Columbia, S.C. teaches bicycling education at every school in the city (within physical education classes). The city also distributes hundreds of bicycle bookmarks that include bicycle safety tips and South Carolina bicycle laws in English and Spanish.

[Spartan]

Thats good news. That makes Columbia the second city in SC to receive this designation. I know others are working on it too.