BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Top for this week. Kickoff meeting is tonight, but the workshops are Tue-Thurs. Please make it a priority to attend.

I can't go tonight, but I could totally go to one of the open houses this week. Do you guys have any particular talking points in mind? I don't want to show up and end up just mumbling something to the effect of "I want, er, bike stuff, ya know, trails and stuff for bikes, and stuff..."

pearmask - If nothing else, probably nothing wrong with showing up and saying "I use my bike to get around the city, and I want safe bike infrastructure. I don't know what we need, but there are people who do, so listen to them".

Fair enough. I can definitely do that.

I'm already planning on attending one of the workshop days, but are waiting to hear back for the Bike-Counts as well.....

I made it to about an hour of this tonight. Mainly one man up front talking and answering questions from the roughly 20 people in attendance. I saw Steve Patchan there, & a few others I recognized. If there was a slide show, I missed it. Lots of talking with people afterward.

It's clear this is a city thing, though the needs of the county and region do factor into it. We're looking 20+ years down the road as the timeframe for goal setting.

Off-topic: That end of South Side Works is indistinguishable from a suburban industrial park. I didn't see a bike rack, but there are plenty of surface parking lots, and a paved circle in front of the main door for drop-off/pick-up.

Thanks for attending the kick-off, Stu. I had a steering committee meeting there yesterday for the plan and talked with the project team about bike parking. I'm hoping they just let people bring their bikes inside or borrow one of our event racks.

@edmonds +1. You don't need to know how to talk about infrastructure. You just need to say exactly that, "I ride a bike to get around and I want to feel as safe as possible."

@Scott Could we have a page somewhere with these phrase and we could sign up and you deliver it to whom you need to?

It's really about warm bodies showing up and saying these things. Everyone already knows that we represent the bike community, but that doesn't negate the importance of individuals from our community showing up and being counted.

Went to the Workshop today and spent about an hour there. Pretty nice folks very eager to hear everything & all one has to say about transportation and how we can improve it in the city.

To anyone -just go and don't be shy!!!!

I went today not knowing exactly what to expect, ended up spending about an hour.

We met two staffers who "wanted to hear from us", and I asked what that meant and they expanded, "what do you love, what do you hate, what do you want changed, what did we miss, what don't we know?"

wow. it's very unusual for people to ask me what I think, to take notes while I spout off, and then to say "what else?"

they brought out maps and marked them up with our comments.

In fact, it was rather therapeutic and might suggest a mass-market alternative mental health technique - announce a task force that wants to hear from people, have caring professionals listen and take notes, it could be quite cathartic.

It was painless, they gave us coffee, these folks were quite knowledgeable and it was obvious that they were there to listen to "us" rather than talking at us.

I had the impression that they need bicyclists to give a voice to what these experts already "know", and to point out gaps in their knowledge.

It's better that I expected and I'm glad we went. Yinz should check it aht.

Was the coffee any good? (just kidding, being an ass).

Thanks for attending and reporting back Vannevar! These meetings are important for that reason. There need to be residents and visitors to the city weighing in on this. Without that, what could be a great plan will likely be poo-pooed by electeds for lack of participation. We, as the bike community, need to show OVERWHELMING interest in this plan. Please attend.

I went down on Wednesday and talked to someone for 30-45 minutes. I was a bit disappointed that all of the "bike people" were gone when I was there but we did take a look at their map of problem spots for cyclists. I hope it was helpful.