In attendance: Loren Demerath, Kari Brownholland, Caroline Majors, Susan Fontaine, Garrett Johnson, Stephanie Pedro, Carolyn Manning, Maurice Loridans
The group discussed “Velo Dendro” tree tour organization; Carolyn volunteered to be the point person. We’ll start registering people at 8:00. Carolyn and Steph will write the press release. Trudeau knows the route, and Loren will call him and get him to distribute it in prose at least. [Turns out it was Matthew Linn who had it; he distributed it later in the week.] Ian volunteer to set up a bike tune-up tent to be used at the beginning of the tour at the registration area. [It was great to have it there! Really help with airing up tires! Thanks Ian!]
Decided to table the bylaws discussion and vote since Susan hadn’t had time to review them.
BIKE-PED PLAN SCOPE OF SERVICES
Caroline and Steph then talked about the bike-ped plan. They went through a detailed document outlining the tasks and timing of the various steps that would be taken along the way to producing a plan.
The goal is to get a bike plan at an affordable budget, and to do so, they have had to connect a lot of people and partners in different ways. The main goal is to get a list of projects that are time phased; they can then give the list to local governments and it will be their cook book; we can revisit it every few years and hold them accountable; it can also be used to identify funding sources; the plan will help market what each project can be and how to do them; it will save resources for governments because they can open the book and put it out to bid.
Caroline and Steph have already done a lot of the leg work in identifying partners; They’ve suggested we reach out to Bossier City to leverage their resources; to see if they want to be involved.
Need to identify capacity; depends on our partners and how much they want to contribute; could determine if it’s bike-ped or just bike.
Group discussed whether to privilege bike over ped; doesn’t have to be either or. But does need starting point. Bike seems more manageable; ped is smaller systems with smaller radiuses; can get more impact city wide.
But, as some ped concerns are simply paths, could fold in path projects from a team of people that we compose; it’s a pallette/buffet of opportunities; off-road trails can be easier to fold into it than crosswalks, etc.
We’ll assemble an advisory group to represent all interested parties. That group will decide the direction of the plan.
Could have a meet and greet session: here are the people who’ve said they’re enthusiastic about working on this and to help fund the plan. Any professionals involved would be paid by the funds we raise: planners, graphic designers, etc.
We would recruit from who we know who’d want to work on this. We’d get commitments from them for what they’d work on and references for any funding.
Once we’ve secured funding we can procede with the plan. We would research interests of different kinds of users/stakeholders. Might not have many formally organized groups out there now, but they might form as a result of this plan.
Would keep in the loop the committee updating them on what we’ve found are the needs and desires.
Then we find where are the issues and needs for investment. E.g., crash data that the police department has the data and NLCOG holds the data; would identify hotspots, such as schools, retails sites, etc.; as you start to layer the data you start to see a heat map of where the needs are. E.g., households without a motor vehicle identifies where people are and how they are under-served; gets at socio-demographic and socio-economic status variables.
Actual counts and street inventories and photos are some of the data that we’ll need to collect. We’ll then share our GIS analysis with the stakeholders.
Solution wise looking at these projects on a time table will help us leverage the plan with other monies and projects that are occurring.
After vetting our hotspots with the public we’ll look at how to meet those needs using best practices such as are taught at that designing for bikes course that Tim Wachtel sent out the other day and Steph has previously attended in New Orleans.
Can then have charettes by individual groups or one big one.
Every proposal is then analysed for how it will affect our hotspots.
The matrix digests all the criteria and makes it like a checklist of what’s being done, how it’s being funded, implementation of the plan has a timeline.
Interim tasks include those that ABS could do; ABS could serve as a big outreach mechanism for the plan; having events that publicize it; talking up the plan and what it can do.
It would take a period of time to complete this because it’s small cobbled together scale, but the interim tasks would help.
Political leaders need to see how it’s a good investment and will make money for Shreveport in the long run and/or that everyone just wants it.
Caroline said they wanted feedback and Garret says it’s amazing. Caroline and Steph feel like they could sell it.
CONTROVERSIAL “GASLAND” TO SHOW AT CENTENARY MONDAY, 10/25, 7:30 PM
Chris Jay spoke about a little film that’s going to be here next week, “Gasland”; HBO has purchased it and is showing it now. Many people in town do not want it to be shown. It’s about a town getting caught up in a gold rush over natural gas just like we are. Will be free next Monday in Kilpatrick at 7:30 for free. It’s a documentary on no budget.
CRAIGSLIST, SHARINGS, ETC.
Carolyn talked about sharings; Caigslist and freecycle is like it. Mandatory Craigslist could be something ABS could do. Steph couldn’t sell her couch in Shreveport; was the only good couch on craigslist. Took her two months to sell it; would’ve been gone in two or three days in New Orleans; within an hour she’d normally get calls on something she post when she was there.
Next Monday, architect Gregory Free, and members of TACA will be on hand to discuss the Texas Avenue area.
No comments:
Post a Comment