Albany wants to jump on cycling (Comments: 0)
Author: Jason Crane
Date: 19 September, 2008
Category: Albany, Car-free Living, Commuting, Jason Crane
From Tuesday’s Albany Times Union:
Albany wants to jump on cycling
Consultant sought to develop master plan for bike lanes, routesBy TIM O’BRIEN, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, September 16, 2008ALBANY — With high gas prices and a constant fight for parking spaces, Albany is examining ways it can promote two-wheel travel.
“We are an older city. We have a really great network of streets that lend it to be a really bicycle-friendly city,” said Doug Melnick, the city’s director of planning. “If you build good facilities, people will use them.”
The Capital District Transportation Committee is providing $75,000 for a consultant to develop a master plan to make it easier for bicyclists to ride through the city and commute to work.
“Bicycling is a viable mode of transportation,” said Mary Lou Nolan-Gillham, a member of the Albany Bicycle Coalition. Three generations of her family have been bicyclists. Her son doesn’t own a car or have a driver’s license, yet has lived and worked in Philadelphia, Brooklyn and now New Paltz.
“On any given day I’ll see six or seven bicyclists pass me while a year ago it would have been one or two,” Nolan-Gillham said.
She also works with the Troy Bike Rescue, which has moved to Albany, and lets people fix donated bikes that they can then keep.
Nolan-Gillham sees two major issues that must be addressed: fixing pot holes and getting drivers to stop treating bicyclists as obstacles.
Read the rest of the story here.
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