Imagine Austin—Compact and Connected

By Jen Reel

Garner Stoll is the Assistant Director for the Planning & Development Review Department for the City of Austin. He oversaw the development and completion of Imagine Austin, the city's official comprehensive plan on dealing with growth population and development over the next three decades.

Q: Why does Austin need Imagine Austin?

A: Imagine Austin is the city's official comprehension plan. It's required in the city charter which says it shall contain the city council's policies regarding growth and development.…

Portland: What makes a great neighborhood greenway?

By Michael Andersen

Part of a two-post series about neighborhood greenways. Yesterday: Should greenways count as quality bikeways? Today: Wisdom from Portland for building great greenways.

Making a low-quality bike lane is simple: paint a white line five feet from the curb of a busy street.

Low-quality neighborhood greenways are simple, too: find a…

Portland: Should greenways count as quality bikeways?

By Michael Andersen

Part of a two-post series about neighborhood greenways. Today: Should greenways count as quality bikeways? Tomorrow: Wisdom from Portland for building great greenways.

An odd thing happened in Portland last month: Its political leaders lined up to celebrate a fast-growing 59-mile bikeway network that everybody in town seems to like.

In a city where the generalist media regularly imply that…

Washington, DC: Road Diet would connect city’s waterfronts

By David Cranor

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) recently presented to the public three alternatives for integrating transit, bicycling and walking with motor vehicle traffic on M Street SE/SW in order to better serve the neighborhoods in this burgeoning section of the city. M Street has long been recognized as over designed for the motor vehicle traffic it gets and this is the latest, and perhaps most serious, attempt to better utilize its space. One of the three alternatives presented includes a green lane that would connect the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail, the Anacostia waterfront and a major bridge on the…

Memphis: The Overton Broad Connector

By Anthony Siracusa

Memphis' first Green Lane Project, The Overton Broad Connector, will link Overton Park in Midtown Memphis to Shelby Farms Park just east of Interstate - 240.   Below is the "30% design," a block by block narrative of the project's first draft assembled Fuss & O'Neil for Livable Memphis and the City of Memphis. 

The Overton Broad Connector is among a small number of two-way cycle tracks on two-way streets in the United States, and it may be the only two-way cycle track in the country protected by…

Can Chicago hit 30 miles of green lanes before the snow flies?

By John Greenfield

No one can accuse Mike Amsden of being lazy. Amsden, project director with the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) bicycle program, has the job of implenting Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan of building 150 miles of green lanes (110 miles protected and 40 miles buffered) by 2015. This first struck me as a Herculean task, but the CDOT team has made significant traction already and Amsden says that if all goes well, by the of the year they’ll be on track to meet their…

Portland: Time-lapse video shows a beautiful intersection at work

By Michael Andersen

What do you get when you combine a separated green lane, a streetcar stop, a free bike valet service and a 3-minute-long aerial tram ride that goes over a highway and up a big hill to the city's largest employer?

A multimodal paradise:

The video shot on Wednesday by Kiel Johnson, owner of the Go By Bike shop and valet service in Portland's South Waterfront, shows what a hub of activity served by great infrastructure looks like. In the first shot and various others afterward, you can see…

Washington, DC: Work begins on the L Street Cycle Track

By David Cranor

In early August, Washington, DC's  District Department of Transportation (DDOT) started work on a new green lane that will make it easier and safer for people to cross Downtown DC on bicycles. The L Street Resurfacing and Cycle Track project will install 1.37 miles of "cycle track," bike lane and sharrows from 11th Street, NW to Pennsylvania Ave NW crossing most of Downtown's Central Business District with a continuous and protected green lane. The cycle track will cover most of the distance, running from 12th Street NW to New Hampshire Ave. 

The L Street green lane will…

NACTO releases second edition of Urban Bikeway Design Guide

Transportation commissioners and directors from America’s largest cities have announced the release of the second edition of the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a toolkit for designing safer streets for bicyclists published by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Bikes Belong supported development of the Guide.

NACTO, an association that shares transportation best practices and experience among its members and represents cities on national transportation issues, launched a comprehensive update to this groundbreaking manual less than a year after U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called the Urban Bikeway Design Guide “an extraordinary piece of work…

How Portland won its crown – and how to keep it

By Michael Andersen

Portland has been the country's bicycle capital for less than a decade. Claiming that crown took serious work – and retaining it will, too.

Today, no major U.S. city is better at putting butts on bikes. With 6 percent of commute trips by bike as of 2010, it's the bikingest metro area in the country by a wide margin – Portlanders are about 67 percent more likely to bike to work than Seattleites,…