Cycling advocates push for better facilities, planning

One-hundred twenty-five cycling advocates attended a meeting of Cincinnati City Council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee last week to discuss how to bring better bicycle facilities to the city and the city's need to update its 32-year-old bicycle plan.

Queen City Bike, a collaboration of several local pro-bicycling organizations, led several group rides to City Hall and supplied many of the hearing's 31 speakers.

"From the overall perspective of Queen City Bike, we're still working on a formal mission statement, but we basically want greater access to walking, bicycling and mass transit in the region; a reduction in bicycle crashes; and a metro that recognizes bicycling and other non-motorized means as a healthy way to get around," Dan Korman says.

Much of the discussion concerned the redesign of Interstate 75 and how it can better accommodate multiple modes of transportation.

"We believe the I-75/Hopple St interchange is an example of how Complete Streets legislation is too often denigrated," Joseph Schuchter says.  "We're tired of bike pedestrian infrastructure being an opt-in.  We want plans for I-75, and all public projects for that matter, to include bike and pedestrian infrastructure.  A fight should not be part of the protocol."

Queen City Bike members agree unanimously that Cincinnati’s bicycle planning is well behind that of competitive cities.

"It's embarrassing that Cincinnati's bicycle plan is 30-years-old and that little has been done to make bicycling a priority in transportation projects," Korman says.

"We're playing catch up, and although alternative transportation is being recognized, I’m still unable to say that we're moving at a pace I’d like to see," Schuchter says.  "Until there is a commitment to update our bicycle plan, merge SORTA and TANK into a seamless and truly Metropolitan system, and stop building highways and adding lanes, the synergies of multiple modes of alternative transportation will not be realized."

Subcommittee chair Roxanne Qualls has said that input received at the public hearings will be considered by highway designers and planners.

Writer: Kevin LeMaster
Sources: Dan Korman and Joseph Schuchter, Queen City Bike
Photography by Scott Beseler