Morning of Trail Scouting

Jon Soul, Feico Kempff, and Loren Demerath spent a couple of hours last Sunday morning scouting a possible trail that would go between the Montessori School for Shreveport and Veteran's Park.









It was fun. One thing about hiking. It can be athletic!

Of course, if our goal is to entice people into walking and biking for transportation, we would probably want to eliminate such obstacles as the trail develops. For the record, Loren went under the tree.

Could students at Caddo Magnet High School someday use this school to get to school? Could this be part of a route that one could bike from Spring Lake to Veterans Park and the Riverside Bike Path? It's possible.

Trail Scouting the Morning of Sunday the 22nd

Jon Soul and Loren Demerath are diving into the forest Sunday morning to scout a possible trail between the Anderson Bayou and Veterans Park. Anyone who's game is more than welcome to join us. We're meeting at the Montessori parking lot (2605 Galloway Blvd and Washington) at 7:15 and plan to be out by 9:15. It'll be a bushwacking adventure, so we recommend wearing long pants, a long sleeve shirt, etc.

Also, although yours truly couldn't attend due to flu in the family, I've heard we had a good meeting yesterday. Details to come.

Bike Routes and Signs

One of our discussions at our last meeting was about bike routes in the city, and we seemed to settle on the idea of having signs that would designate particular routes. This would avoid the problem of posting signs that say simply "bike route" and could imply that cyclists aren't fully welcome on roads that lack those signs--which is not true, legally.

So, we'd be creating signs LESS like this:












and MORE like this:














I'll be bringing Maurice's map of best routes for biking to our Tuesday meeting so we can plot specific routes. We'll need to consider common destinations and the layout of the overall network.

Also, for those who've heard Ian or I talk about them, here's a photo of a "conference bike". They say it's the world's best social lubricant, and that it works well for parties, tourists, as part of team building exercises, even for meetings. In my line of work, they might work well for urban sociology field trips!


Sure are pricey, though, at about $10,000. Guess that's why now they're mostly seen as rentals. Austin has 'em, wouldn't you know.

Next meeting is Tuesday the 17th at 8:20 a.m.

Our next ABetterShreveport meeting will be Tuesday morning at 8:20. Since all those at the last evening meeting were the same as those who'd attended in the mornings previously, and since several said they preferred mornings, we'll go back to our every other Tuesday morning at 8:20 schedule.

At the next meeting we'll work on identifying streets for particular bike routes, as well as naming them and identifying landmarks. We'll also review changes to Barbara's draft of the letter for construction and planning standards for biking and walking. And, we'll hear about the offer of some professional planners to help us with the greenways network. (Sound exciting? It is!) And, as always, there'll be more than that, including thinking about a new head for our greenways committee since Ian will be having to give up that position.

Join us!

Check out a radically green lifestyle, Thursday, March 12 at Centenary

From Centenary College's P.R. Department:

Adventure journalist and NPR contributor Doug Fine will present a funny and engaging talk and slide-show about his efforts to live carbon neutral on his ranch in southern New Mexico, Thursday, March 12 beginning at 7 p.m. in the Whited Room of Bynum Commons. The event is free and open to the public.

At age 36, Fine decided "to see if a regular guy who enjoyed his comforts could maintain them with a reduced oil footprint," and bought a parcel of land, dubbed it the Funky Butte Ranch and dug right into his greener lifestyle. During this presentation, Fine demonstrates with humor and perseverance the hard-won benefits of his new lifestyle in rural New Mexico.

Fine started with four simple goals: to use a lot less oil, to power his life with renewable energy, to eat as locally as possible and to not get killed in the process. In this memoir, Farewell, My Subaru, Fine shares his mishaps and lessons learned during his yearlong trek to turn his newly bought New Mexico ranch into a green and sustainable environment with as little carbon fuel as possible. From using two very lovable goats for his organic food production to transitioning into a biofuel engine for his truck and even installing solar panels, Fine balances the troubling decisions Americans must consider while also revealing a host of unexpected benefits.

An adventure journalist, Fine has logged time as a reporter in such places as Rwanda, Burma, Laos, Guatemala and Tajikistan. His first book, Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man, documents a year roughing it in the wilds of Alaska. He is also a regular contributor to NPR, and has written for U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post, Salon, Sierra, Wired and Outside magazine.

Next meeting: Monday night at 7:00

The Greenways group, headed by Ian Webb, is off and running. They're meeting and working greenways as group devoted to that particular purpose. (If you're interesting in helping them, e-mail me at ldemerath@gmail.com and I'll put you in touch with Ian.)

That frees up our ABetterShreveport meeting to work on other projects we've discussed already. Two of the most prominant are establishing bike routes with signs and/or street repainting with bike lanes. And another is facilitating and coordinating business and residential downtown revitalization efforts.

Centenary College is on Mardi Gras break this week, and a number of people are out of town, so we're going to push back our meeting one week. We're also going to try meeting for the first time in a while at night. We'll meet Monday night at 7:00, Centenary Square.

Meeting Tuesday at 8:20: Making the first greenway trail...

Continuing our every other Tuesday meetings, we'll meet this Tuesday the 10th, regular time and place: 8:20 a.m. at Centenary Square, room 206.

We'll talk about what we need to do to make our first pilot greenway happen.

We'll hear reports from the Bayou Cleanup project that took place this past Saturday, where many hands made light the work of removing much trash, including over 120 tires!

I'll also report on the feedback I got down at Tulane's Prevention Research Center on the greenways project. Jobs creation was an interesting topic that came up, as was ditch-covering on Canal Street!

Centenary Square is across the street from George's Grill. Enter from the back parking lot and you can't miss us. The coffee will be fresh and ready.

The Bayou Cleanup as part of the bigger picture...

Below is part of the Times' article on the bayou cleanup. Note Jon's reference to the bigger picture. This is really the first large-scale on the ground effort on what is likely to be the site of a future greenway. It's the beginnings of a beautiful path right now.:

"...The cleanup was the first step toward making the bayou an outdoor eco-classroom for students at Montessori and Stoner Hill Elementary as well as a more accessible public resource with walking trails.

"For years, Montessori Middle School teacher Jon Soul, who helped spearhead the event, has been observing the bayou and doing his part to pick up trash. As a Montessori parent and instructor, he felt it could be a great extension to the school. Among its inhabitants are blue herring and wood ducks, which is rare, Soul said.

"And they're striking. As far as wildlife goes, it's a valuable area. It's not really common knowledge in Shreveport that this bayou exists, so we would like to see there be a history trail that goes from Montessori to Caddo Magnet High that would connect us to Stoner Hill Lab and Valencia Recreation Center. There's so much to be learned from this area and connecting these four entities.

"We hope to be setting the groundwork for years of collaborative work and learning and for use as a place for locals to continue using with a sense of pride."

To echo Robert's post below, it was a wonderful event. Many thanks to Jon, Ian, Maurice, Andy, John, and all the others that helped. It's likely this will mark the beginning of a wonderful trail.

125 discarded tires were part of the Clean Up haul at the intersection of Montessori, Anderson Island and Stoner Hill

125 discarded tires, etc etc
Originally uploaded by trudeau

At the intersection of Anderson Island neighborhood and Stoner Hill lies a bayou and a confluence of streets and Montessori of Shreveport, where a mass of people participated in a woods and bayou Clean Up on Sat, Feb 6. A splendid day was had by all, from the diggers, haulers, draggers, baggers, cooks and photogs to the musicians.

One index of the success: over 125 tires dragged from the underbrush between street and bayou. The city supplied the take-away container and Montessori parents supplied parking, music, hot dogs and much of the labor.

See more photos at ShreveportFaces.blogspot.com.

Tulane talk, Bayou cleanup, next meeting...

I wanted to report to folks that giving my talk at Tulane's Prevention Research Center was a good experience, in that I received a number of helpful suggestions for how we might move things forward. One of the highlights was chatting about capping the bayous after the talk and one person gestured outside the window to Canal Street, as evidence that it can work well. The trolleys now go up and down Canal Street over what was once an open drainage ditch. So, while it's not appropriate everywhere, capped bayous can work, and they manifestly have on one of Louisiana's most famous streets.

Our next meeting will be Tuesday the 10th, holding to our new 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month schedule. As usual, it'll be at 8:20 in Centenary Square's room 206.

One of the things we'll hear about is the Anderson Bayou cleanup being conducted by the Montessori School there in partnership with the Stoner Hill Neighborhood Association this Saturday. I recently hiked in that area with my family and it's a potentially beautiful area.