Capital
District Transportation Committee
Bicycle
and Pedestrian Task Force
Record of
Meeting on
Attendance: Don Robertson (NYSDOT -
Region 1), Bert Schou (CDTA), Ivan Vamos, (
Regrets: Henrietta O'Grady, Don
Odell
1.0 AGENDA AND MEETING NOTES REVIEW
There
were no changes to the December Task Force meeting notes. The Mohawk Hudson Cycling Club was added as
an agenda item.
2.0 UPDATE ON ACTION ITEMS
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3.0 PROJECTS/PROGRAMS AND OTHER UPDATES
3.1
Pedestrian
Friendliness Inventory: S. Misiewicz has been working on creating an inventory to rate the
friendliness of intersections in the Capital District. While there is a large number of
characteristics that intersections could be evaluate on, only 20 criteria were
chosen to make the inventory user-friendly and not too time intensive. The inventory was tested this past summer
with the help of a summer intern.
Further work on the inventory will be done this year. The Task Force found the inventory to be
thorough and thought it would be very useful.
Suggestions for the inventory:
-
Add a criteria for distance between crosswalks/signal spacing
-
Add a criteria for good pedestrian access to the crosswalk (especially
from bus stop)
-
Add a criteria for a bus stop near the intersection/crosswalk
-
Evaluate the crosswalk for drainage and snow clearance (may be hard to
evaluate)
-
Include a criteria for Title 6 & Environmental Justice concerns
-
Another criteria could be the operating speed of the roads
-
Street lighting would be another important criteria
The
inventory will be used to evaluate certain intersections at first such as those
on the state route system, those in priority locations and ones that generate
high numbers of pedestrians. S.
Misiewicz thanked the Task Force for their suggestions.
3.2 Schuyler Flats Bike Trail: Deferred until the February
meeting.
3.3
Bikes on Buses: B. Schou would like 100%
of the buses equipped with racks but this may be impossible at the
beginning. CDTA has 58 bike racks to
begin the program and there must be a decision as to which bus routes will be
equipped first. Even though the Central
Avenue corridor is an important corridor to service with the bike racks it may
be a problem because of the limited number of racks available. Other high priorities for the bike racks are:
the university corridor in Albany, routes that service RPI, Sienna and Union,
and a connection to the train station.
There might be a possibility of allowing bikes inside the buses on rural
routes.
The
operators will have to be trained and the program will need to be
promoted. CDTA can do some of the
training and advertising (brochures, videos) with the $75,000 grant. B. Schou would like to see the bike racks
installed before "Bike to Work" week.
A sub-committee meeting was scheduled for January 27 at 3:00 pm at CDTC
office to discuss which bus routes should be a top priority for this program.
3.4 Mohawk Hudson Cycling Club: D. Robertson attended the
January meeting of the MHCC. The cycling
club has a Safety and Share the Road committee who are jointly working on an
education campaign. D. Robertson will be
helping this joint committee on their campaign.
At the April MHCC meeting he will talk about regional programs in the
Capital District. He invited K. Forster
to attend and discuss the MPO program.
4.0 ONGOING TASKS
4.1 Bike Signage Guidelines: The guidelines were discussed with the Staff
Director. CDTC would like to circulate a
draft copy to the various municipalities and counties in the Capital
District. K. Forster will add some
graphics before it is sent out. There
may also be the possibility of reserving a couple of thousand dollars (in the
CDTC UPWP) to do the logo design competition that the Task Force suggested in
the fall.
The Federal MUTCD Chapter 9 is being revised. This chapter discusses bike treatments. If anyone wants to submit comments regarding the revisions comments are being accepted until March 24, 2000. Comments can be submitted to FHWA at the following web page: http://dms.dot.gov/search. Enter the docket number 4720. The Task Force requested that staff provide the current MUTCD Chapter 9.
4.3
Regional Bike
Map: I.
Vamos provided CDTC staff with some sources to look into to get trail map
information. CDTC staff has requested
from the GIS list serve in New York any trails or parks that are already
mapped. There is an Environmental
Clearinghouse that may have some maps.
There should also be hiking maps for all 4 counties.
4.4 1995 Albany County Bicycle
Collision Data:
CDTC prepared the statistics for the 1995 bicycle collision data. A map of the 1997 Albany County Bicycle
Collisions was also available. Some
interesting statistics are: Almost half of the collisions happened when the
vehicle was making a left or right hand turn, 21% of the collisions happened
when the bicyclist was riding against traffic, and 71% of the collisions
happened at an intersection.
This
information will be provided to NYBC to use in their safety program. NYBC is meeting with the Town of Bethlehem's
Pedestrian Safety group to discuss possible "unsafe" intersections in
the Town. B. Schou informed the Task
Force that CDTA collects data on all bus collisions - this data could be used
to find bus/bike collisions and pedestrian/bus collisions.