There’s a meeting tonight at MORPC to comment on a draft of a bicycle level-of-service (LOS) map for the Columbus region. LOS is a concept in the Highway Capacity Manual used by many departments of transportation to design roadways to minimize traffic delays. Recently, there has been work on bicycle LOS and multi-modal LOS as a way of providing adequate facilities for all roadways users, not just cars.
Cycling map a safety guide
County’s roads graded for biking suitability; public input sought
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 3:15 AM
By Dean Narciso
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCHThe head of a bicycle-advocacy group thinks a new color-coded map will shepherd more bicyclists onto Franklin County’s safest streets.
Jeff Stephens, director of Consider Biking, said Columbus has a lot of work to do to become a cycling utopia, where kids pedal to school, families ride in lines down streets and bicycle commuters are common.
“We know when you put more cyclists on the road, it becomes safer for the cyclists,” he said.
The public can review a draft of the map from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. today at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission offices, 111 Liberty St.
The bicycle-suitability map grades the county’s major streets based on a cyclist’s experience: Green is safe for all skill levels; yellow is moderately safe; and red is for only the most experienced cyclists. The free map will be available in May.
“One of our hopes from the cycling community is to identify some of the better routes along the many corridors so that we can drive more cyclists to the safer roads,” Stephens said.
MORPC, the city of Columbus, the county engineer, the Central Ohio Transit Authority and Consider Biking collaborated on the project.
A computer model determined safety based on traffic and truck volume, speed limits, pavement quality and lane width. Several dozen cyclists of all skill levels also rode many of the streets.
You can see Adobe (.PDF) drafts of the bike LOS map at Car Less Ohio. The regional map is divided into a north section and a south section. The map key is on the south section. I think it looks great.
Great news! Anyone interested might want to check out ‘milwaukeebybike.org‘ to see what they came up with as a total program. I divided and laminated one of my 2005 county maps it was so accurate.
To see how we are rated by the League of American Bicyclists along with reasons for the rankings and lists of bicycle friendly communities, visit http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bicyclefriendlyamerica/
My thoughts, cut and paste, from the discussion at YB!:
Looking at the north section, which contains most of the roads I ride, I have to question some of the color coding. Bryden a yellow/orange? At least Oak is green.
There are a handful of streets that have very easy alternatives: Michigan/Pennsylvania for Neil and Sheridan for College. Instead of marking the main roads, why not some of the clear alternatives?
Another thought that occurred to me: isn’t the common advice given to new cyclists to look at roads you typically would not take in a car? Seems the opposite mentality here.
Looking further: Are the darker grey lines alternate routes? [loading the second piece, with key, shows they are] Seems a poor contrast choice and more of an after thought.
My experience has always been that Columbus is a great, and easy, city to bike. Looking at the maps you would not readily come to the same conclusion.
It’s a noble effort to get this going and I look forward to future projects.
[Mike thought I was being too nice. In response:]
I’m not being nice to be nice. There are good people that gave their time to be there and help put this together-several who post here [on YB!]. I don’t want to diminish their work. It’s a first step and a good first step to making cycling a serious pursuit and a respected form of travel in this city.
I think what would make this better (and far more usable) would be a greater focus on the bike friendly roads we have and actually use a contrasting color to set those roads apart. Of course when you are utilizing a highly subjective grading system that is rigidly contained in a green, yellow, red system it’s hard to do that. I can understand the intent behind the system as it’s so rooted in our minds: green=go, yellow=caution, red=stop.
Another thing would have been a better balance of cyclists. I would be interested to know if there was any survey done of the participants to get an idea of where people where coming from. First glance shows the map to be somewhat suburban centric, which I think leads to some of the misconceptions. If a significant population, say downtown or campus area cyclists, were missing from the pool it would be in MORPC’s et al. best interest to halt the publishing in an attempt to get the information right. Maybe a few more open houses for those unable to attend Tuesday’s?
[Overall a good effort. At least we are seeing bikes talked about here. Probably the most usable portion of the map is marking the COTA park and rides and area bike shops.]