Dayton Moving Faster than Columbus??
Aug 19th, 2009 | By Jeff Stephens | Category: Leadership MusingsLast week, over 300 bicycle advocates and stakeholders from throughout the Miami Valley region of Ohio (Dayton) convened to coordinate their efforts at building a "bike-friendly" region. Jeff Stephens, from Consider Biking, joined national leaders to present successes and facilitae their region’s next steps. The Miami Valley has already created a comprehensive REGIONAL bike plan, and this Summit brought together the planners, engineers, elected officials and advocates from the many surrounding municipalities to educate all these stakeholders about the benchmarks of bike friendly communities. The Summit got everyone on the "same page" and started movement of all the municipalities to a common goal.
There were many highlights to the Summit including a bike film festival on Thursday evening, and most notably the worldwide observations of our cycling movement from Jeff Mapes, the author of Pedaling Revolution. Here’s a video statement for Columbus, from Jeff Mapes.
Lastly, we learned that Dayton has already broken ground on a downtown bike hub/station that will include secure bike parking, showers, and shop needs. Wow….if Dayton can build a downtown bike station…what are we waiting for???
Several key stakeholders form Central Ohio were in attendance (Columbus Transportation, MORPC, Consider Biking members, etc) and we all left with a desire to create a similar regional Summit here in Central Ohio in the near future. Consider Biking will make this happen! If you’re interested in helping, let us know!
Not to throw cold water on the ideas, but Dayton & Columbus seem rather different in their structure. Dayton still has most of its employers concentrated near downtown, while Columbus is much more an ‘edge city’, with large commercial centers out in Dublin & Westerville. Our downtown is evolving more into an ‘urban lifestyle center’ with lots of attractions (COSI, Arena & Brewery districts, Audubon Center) and comparatively few large employers other than State Gov and Nationwide. This pattern is a legacy of our city’s pro-sprawl growth poilcies, and it won’t disappear just because we want it so. It makes a downtown bike hub seem like a bit of a conceit, especially when so few paths reach downtown. It might be better to think about satellite hubs in, say, Dublin, Westerville, and Northland/Easton, to complement a scaled-back downtown hub. We can’t convince people to change their lifestyles by showcasing biking in a place many of them do not go; we need to bring the message to their ‘doorstep’. By seeding this mindset in their ‘home’ communities, where they’ll be more comfortable with biking, we’ll be more likely to find them in a more receptive frame of mind.
To comment on Robert Thorn’s statements, An “urban lifestyle center” is the perfect place for a bike hub. Also, to say that very few bike paths reach downtown is ill informed. Plans clearly show a network slowly connecting most of the routes, both on and off street, connecting to the downtown area. Also, let us not forget that bicycles are a legal means of transport on all city streets whether or not they are a designated ‘bike route’. Any new cycling infrastructure, to include a bicycle hub, would be a welcome change in a “pro-sprawl” city. Why wasn’t it included in the plans for the North Bank Park, Bicentennial Park, the new Columbus Commons, the High Street Cap, the entire Convention and Arena District, etc. Let’s quit letting Nationwide determine how our city is built. The only conceit is the assumption that people only want to drive their cars everywhere. An “urban lifestyle center” is still a place where people come to live and work, so lets make it livable and workable, then start making the rest of the city the same. Dublin and Westerville are far beyond Columbus in this aspect already. If you wonder where the quality of life went in this nation went, just look in your driveway and think about how much money and labor goes into maintaining that “freedom”.