Improving cycling aspects discussed

Bicycling advocates gathered at Bloomington’s City Hall Saturday afternoon to discuss ways of improving the local cycling community at the third annual Platinum Bike Summit.

The purpose of the summit was to discuss the city’s progress toward attaining the Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community designation from the League of American Bicyclists.

The League of American Bicyclists evaluates cities in five categories, said Vince Caristo, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the City of Bloomington Planning Department.

“When we reapply in 2014, they will be looking at our improvements in the five E’s — engineering, encouragement, education, evaluation and enforcement,” Caristo said.
Caristo said Bloomington was the first bicycle friendly community in Indiana when they were designated at the bronze level in 2003.

Currently, the City of Bloomington is designated at the silver level. The designations measure a variety of issues from physical infrastructure to cycling injury rates.
In 2011, the city began its journey to platinum with its first bike summit.

Since that time, Bloomington has developed a comprehensive plan to improve bicycling infrastructure in the city.

“The 2012 Bloomington Bikeways Implementation Plan provided detail, design and cost information for all of the proposed projects,” Caristo said.

The improvements the city has made include contraflow bike lanes that allow two way bike traffic on one way streets, traffic diverters, buffered bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections and bus islands on East Third Street to eliminate bus traffic in bike lanes.
“We wanted to focus on improving infrastructure for those who are interested in biking but concerned about their safety,” Caristo said.

One of the measures the city took was to go beyond minimum bike lane width requirement of four feet to provide cyclists with more separation from motorists.
Since 2010, the city has increased their mileage of bikeways by 41 percent.

In addition to the platinum designation review, the summit also served to launch the city’s Civil Streets Initiative.

Jacqui Bauer, sustain ability coordinator for the City of Bloomington Economic and Sustainable Development Department, introduced the initiative.

“The campaign is focused on education, encouragement and enforcement,” Bauer said.

The project goals include reducing bicycle and pedestrian crashes leading to injury or death, reducing unsafe traffic behaviors by bicyclists, pedestrians and motorists, as well as mitigating frustrations and conflicts that result from unsafe behaviors across all modes of transportation.

“We have a shared responsibility for safety and the perception of the bicycling community,” Caristo said. “The best thing that cyclists can do is get involved and be a role model for safe behavior.”

Follow reporter Brianna Meyer on Twitter @brimmeyer.