Envision a Cincinnati where ‘every point is connected by a bike lane’

Two Cincinnati initiatives under consideration could improve the safety of local cyclists.The first, a dedicated bike lane connecting Downtown with Spring Grove Village, could be up and running by this summer.At a press conference last week, council member Greg Harris proposed the addition of the bike lane as part of this spring’s Spring Grove Avenue rehabilitation project. Harris’s council motion has been referred to the Department of Transportation and Engineering (DOTE) for further study.”One of the central things we need to do is leverage our considerable assets,” Harris said.  “And among our major assets is our uniqueness environmentally as a city, our compactness as a city.  If we want to leverage assets like these, we need to do so by making every single point in the city accessible by a dedicated bike lane.”Gary Wright of Queen City Bike said that the project would be a step in returning our neighborhoods to their human-scaled roots.”We are committed to make our neighborhoods and our streets livable and green, environmentally friendly and safe,” he said.  “Today we’ve got the opportunity to renew those neighborhoods by making them as friendly to human-powered transportation as they were when they were originally built.”The second initiative is a pilot program taking place this spring to evaluate the use of pavement markings called “sharrows”, or shared lane arrows.Consisting of an outline of a bicycle beneath two arrows, the markings are used on streets that are of insufficient widths for bike lines, reminding motorists to share the road with cyclists.Cincinnati has received approval from the Federal Highway Administration for the pilot program and is hoping to be the first Ohio city to use the markings.”We want to do everything we can to encourage bicycling as a viable means of transportation in Cincinnati,” says Michael Moore, interim director of DOTE.  “That means making our streets as safe as we can for cyclists of all skill levels.”Until April 15, citizens can go to http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/sharrows/ or e-mail sharrows@cincinnati-oh.gov to vote on several proposed sharrow locations.Writer: Kevin LeMasterSource: Meg Olberding, Cincinnati Office of the City Manager