With the first large-scale electric streetcar system, Richmond was once a leader in transportation technology. Local business and community leaders believe that Richmond can lead again, in transportation and economic development — by embracing modern, sustainable transportation.

To this end, the Sustainable Transportation Initiative of Richmond, aka Project STIR, is co-sponsoring a panel discussion on Monday, April 12, 7pm, at the University of Richmond’s Jepson Alumni Center, along with the University of Richmond, and Leadership Metro Richmond. See the press release for details. All are welcome, but please register ahead of time.

Bicycling must be a part of this vision, and VBF will be there to help make the case. Richmond has a small but growing number of regular bike commuters, and a thriving bike community and culture.

The Virginia Capital Trail and other corridors running through Richmond are poised to become backbones for an extensive bike-ped network — tying together local paths, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roadways. A Portland for the east coast? It’s not too far-fetched! In fact it may be necessary for attracting tomorrow’s industries and workers. Note how Portland and Milwaukee have weathered the recession better than most.

Screenshot of Virginia's new GIS application for trails and bike routes

The Virginia Department of Transportation, Department of Conservation and Recreation and Virginia Tech have collaborated to create a GIS-based tool to provide a “snapshot” of existing and planned trails and bicycle routes within Virginia.

“The objective is to represent the state as a whole statewide database and to develop an online decision making tool for VDOT and DCR,” said John McGee, one of the project initiators at Virginia Tech.

While the current database is still in development and is not intended for real-time, public use, a glimpse of what could be a great tourism and public health portal for Virginia is available to raise awareness of the project’s potential and to generate more interest and investment in Virgnia’s self-powered transportation infrastructure.

A new version of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices has been released, with a lot of new bike-specific signage and road markings — especially sharrows. Thanks to Elijah Sharp from the New River Valley Planning District Commission, we have the MUTCD bicycle section (PDF) available for download.

Rails with trails: San Francisco Bay Trail (photo: Rails to Trails Conservancy)

The Rails to Trails Conservancy has just released a new report, titled, “California Rails-with-Trails: A Survey of Trails Along Active Rail Lines.” This report was designed to update data collected for the RTC’s 2000 rail with trail report.

Some conclusions from the 2009 California survey:

• Safety:  there were no incidents between a trail user and a train.  In fact, using a rail-with-trail may well be significantly safer than walking or cycling next to a busy main road and it may serve to keep people from walking on active rail tracks.
• Growth:  California now has 21 RWT projects, up from 7 in the 2000 study.
• Dual benefit:  constructing a trail along an active railroad doubles the value a community derives from the rail corridor and provides citizens with an extra transportation choice.
• Liability: the survey revealed the vast majority of rails-with-trails are insured by existing city or transit district insurance coverage in a similar manner to other trails.

Despite opponents’ rhetoric against rails with trails, this study seems to reinforce what many already know: rails with trails make safe and practical bike and pedestrian trails, and communities across the United States should include rails with trails as part of their comprehensive transportation infrastructure.

The New York Times has named Virginia’s cul-de-sac ban one of their design ideas of the year for 2009. We agree! While cul-de-sac neighbornoods are perceived as safer, they force cyclists and pedestrians onto busy arterial roads, and make trips within the neighborhood much longer — undoubtedly contributing to the decline in biking and walking over the last 30 years. We’re very pleased that Virginia is taking the lead with this issue.

Where cul-de-sacs already exist, cut-through paths can greatly improve bike and pedestrian connectivity.

Note that bicycle highways was also named as an idea of the year. We’re very pleased with that, too.

Update: Tom Bowden’s editorial explains why rethinking the cul-de-sac is such a good idea.

A Sharrow - Shared Lane Arrow or Shared Lane Marking

The Federal Highway Administration has released the 2009 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), the national standard for traffic signs and road markings.

Cyclists can rejoice at the inclusion of sharrows, or shared lane markings, along with “bikes may use full lane” signs. Now that they’re in the manual, local engineers can feel comfortable using them.

Cyclelicious has a great write-up, with pictures.

Establishing national standards is a slow process (nearly 10 years to get sharrows included). Many thanks to Richard Moeur for sticking with it, and advocating for cyclists in committee.

Update: more from BikePortland, with info and pictures about the new bike route signs. Also from Bike Pittsburgh, and BikingBis.

“How many people, right now, are stuck in traffic on their way to ride a stationary bike in a health club?”

Congressman Earl Blumenaur posed this question to a packed room at the launch party for Cities for Cycling, a new project of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Conceived by former Portland city bike planner Mia Burk, and current city traffic engineer Rob Burchfield, the purpose of the new project is to highlight and promote the world’s best bicycle transportation practices for American municipalities.

BikePortland and Streetsblog have great write-ups, along with WashCycle’s excellent report from the launch party. Check ‘em out.

A local bike club and some researchers at Virginia Tech have teamed up to build a web-based mapping survey to gather data on cyclists’ trips. Cyclists are being asked to enter their everyday routes. The data collected will be used by the Town of Blacksburg to plan bike and pedestrian infrastructure improvements.

The survey website was created by the Center for Geospatial Information Technology, with strong encouragement and support by the New River Valley Bicycle Association, who will help rally cyclists to enter their data.

VT News has the full story, “Geospatial researchers assist local planners through participatory mapping surveys.”

Heavy trucks obviously cause more road damage than cars, but how much more? According to a GAO study, Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Afford, road damage from one 18-wheeler is equivalent to 9600 cars (p.23 of study, p.36 of PDF).

The study assumed a fully loaded tractor-trailer at 80,000 pounds, and a typical passenger car at 4,000 pounds. That’s 20 times difference in weight, but the wear and tear caused by the truck is exponentially greater.

Food for thought: a bicycle and rider at 200 pounds is the same 20 times less heavy than a 4000 pound passenger car. Similarly, the wear and tear caused by that bike and rider would be exponentially less than a passenger car’s.

Virginia has already figured out that it’s cheaper to move trucks off our highways and onto trains, than to support those trucks on our roads. Let’s also think about getting motorists out of their cars. Wide shoulders, wide outer lanes and bike lanes, and off-road paths and trails for bicyclists may seem like extra expense, but they’re cheaper than supporting the car trips they can eliminate.

Recently we reported on another crowdsourced mapping project in Blacksburg, but now some Virginia Tech students, and free culture enthusiasts, have a mapping project of their own — putting all the campus bike routes into Open Street Map. To make it more of a party, there will be a raffle with some nice prizes, including an Android G1 phone. Here are the details, from Christopher Covington:

In order to improve and publicize untethered community infrastructure, an OpenStreetMap mapping day is being held tomorrow (Saturday) from 11:00am to 4:00pm with 1020 Torgersen Hall as a base camp. We would love to see you there. An Android G1 phone and several *nix books will be raffled off amongst interested participants.

See http://vtluug.org/osm for details. Longer descriptions of OSM and
the event goals follow.

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps. Everyone can freely use, copy^, add to, and edit OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, while OpenStreetMap began with just streets, it has grown to include almost everything map feature imaginable.

Specific goals for Saturday’s event include:

• Complete coverage of campus paths
• Complete coverage of University Mall
• Parking and addresses in major apartment complexes
• Additional bicycle and pedestrian ways and points of interest
• Additional street updates (new roads, closed roads)

If you cannot make the event but are still interested, we encourage you to make additions and edits to OpenStreetMap independently. It is an open project that anyone can edit at any time.

OpenStreetMap is “copyleft” meaning copies and derivative works (such as OpenCycleMap) must allow others to copy and make derivative works of them, too, under the same terms.

This event is hosted by Free Culture at Virginia Tech and the Linux and
Unix Users Group at Virginia Tech.