Idaho State-Wide Mobility Plan Visions

The Idaho Department of Transportation is working on a state-wide mobility plan and is gathering visions for the Bike/Pedestrian mobility portion of the plan.

These are due to Mark McNeese at ITD by Jan 31, 2008

Local
I'd start with the vision of BicycleCity.com

"Bicycle City is a planned car-free communities project. Our vision is a future with sustainable cities and communities that are eco-, people- and animal-friendly.

We are interested in promoting bicycle- and walkable-friendly cities anywhere in the world and see the importance of the energy, land and ecosystem saving city at this crucial and auspicious time in history."

I continue by saying, energy security is an important goal which can be assisted by reducing the energy used in transportation systems, and at the same time reducing the alienation produced by large scale auto use (road rage, large parking lots, pedestrian unfriendly spaces, neighborhoods where people don't know their neighbors) .

Moscow is working on revising its Comprehensive Plan and we have been discussing the mobility chapter and moving the language away from "streets" to "thoroughfares" with the intention of recognizing multiple and mixed modalities of transportation. So, just as there is a street hierarchy, street, collector, arterial, I am wanting a hierarchy of non-motorized thoroughfares, and that these be given equal priority in the language and organization or the Comp Plan.

My vision extends to the notion that bike paths are used for multiple purposes. They are linear parks and as well as transportation corridors, and need to be treated in both ways by planners -- recognizing that, just as with car travel, we have multiple goals and values in planning a trip: pleasure, exercise, transportation, etc. Consequently, in addition to planning being multi-modal (park & transportation) signage and public understanding needs to meet multi-modal uses.

In addition to routes, destinations need to be part of the planning. Specifically, parking/storage for bikes is needed, and this should not be second-class "chain-to-a-tree" solutions but offer amenities that are incentives to bike use (such as covered bike parking or secured bike storage (both of which are seen in many european cities))

Destination planning needs to occur at all major employment and commercial destinations and at mode-transfer places, such as bus stops and rail stations.

Snow removal needs to be considered in this planning as well. There are days in Moscow when bike/ped activities would be pleasant enough, but due to poor snow/ice maintenance of the routes is too hazardous.

Regional
Many of the comments above I would apply to my regional vision. Inter-city trails need to be seen as multi-modal (ped/bike) and multi-purpose (recreation/transportation)


State
If the visions above are well implemented, the state-wide vision is probably to have uniform and rich information available online about each regions bike/ped systems and how the regions articulate.

Reducing my carbon footprint

By way of developing a New Year's resolution, I have been thinking about how I might reduce my carbon footprint by 25%. That's an arbitrary figure, below what is being said the world needs to accomplish in the near future, and high enough to be challenging and thought provoking. Broadly, there are a couple strategies: invest in conservation or change lifestyle.

Option #1, Invest. Buy a Prius and continue driving. The invest option either needs to produce a big impact in one area of my carbon footprint, or I need to invest in multiple areas of my life with modest gains in each. Since my family does considerable driving in town, we might do better to add Zap electric car at lower cost than a Prius.

Option #2, Lifestyle. Use 25% less of everything. Drive less, heat less, eat less. Or, substitute smaller footprint options (eat local food with less embodied carbon from transportation). Doing with less is cheaper and faster than investing, but may be harder to implement (or harder to keep implementing). Substituting might be more expensive (in time or money) but easier to choose. The problem is, finding enough substitutions to make the desired level of savings. Some substitutions (using a clothes line rather than a clothes dryer, walking vs driving) are going to take considerable change in how I organize my life and have impacts on (require consent of) how my family organizes its life.

Last summer's high gas prices and current talk of carbon taxes could make some of these choices clearer, and they also point out that the two types of strategies may be chosen differently by people of different economic means.

I looked at the payback on an electric car. If it replaced 5000 miles driven by a gas car getting 25 mpg and gas is $1.60, that is $320/year, not much of a payment on a loan. At $4/gallon its $800/year.

Resolutions
(Small) Investment. If big investment is out, because the payback is long and/or going into more debt seems imprudent right now, there is another option -- small investment. Small investment can feel to the psyche and wallet more like an operating expense (and payback time may be less important). An example in this category could be replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFLs even though the old bulbs are still good (Better yet would be to start into LED lights that promise to have lower power consumption per lumen.) Another example is to get a home energy audit and spend some time with a caulk gun.

Cut Back. I'm looking into putting a timer on my hot water tank. If it could be off 6 hrs/day, that should save something. Shorter showers, low flow shower heads are some other moves, but they require life style consent from others in the family. Changing lifestyle is probably better done slowly or it will likely feel like deprivation.

So, while I don't see making the 25% reduction this year, I'm making a New Years resolution to start some small investments and explore learning some new lifestyle habits.