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RCA at Greentopia

The Rochester Cycling Alliance (RCA) will have a presence at the Greentopia Festival on September 17 & 18, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.  Admission to the festival is free.  Go to www.greentopiafestival.com for more information.
 
On Saturday the 17th, the RCA is organizing a self-guided Bike-the-Bridges ride to the festival fromGeneseeValleyParktoHighFalls(six miles one way).  Meet there anytime between 9:00 -10:30 a.m. and join other cyclists riding to the event. Free bicycle parking is available at the event.
 
Print ride maps off the web site and sign the ride waiver on- line; www.greentopiafestival.com/highlights/bike.
 
The RCA will also have a table at the festival site. Stop by to get some free educational cycling material, bicycle road & trails map, or just to talk about the bicycle infrastructure in theRochesterregion.
 
The Cycling Alliance is gratefully accepting volunteers to staff the table. Go to https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjwrTZlKE2FLdGw1bmROdXpjZGV0X19JWS04ZXMyaUE&hl=en_US&pli=1#gid=0 to claim your spot or contact Rochelle Bell at rbell@monroecounty.gov.
 

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Bike Lanes Marked on Two Major Local New York State Roads


Bike Lanes now marked on two major local New York State roads.
The recently completed Jefferson Road project, Route 390 to Hylan Drive, now has an approximate four foot shoulder and marked with the bicycle lane logo.
Monroe Ave. from Clover St. to French road was recently repaved. The shoulder was increased from four to five feet and marked as a bicycle lane.
Both are challenging roads to cycle mainly due to a very high volume of motor vehicle traffic. I have seen many experienced cyclist riding on both roads during commute time periods. For those less experienced or fearful there are sidewalks on both roadways to ease your fears.
Ride safely.

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Governor Cuomo Signs “Complete Streets”

Pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders in Rochester (and across New York state) will soon benefit from a new Complete Streets law. Thanks to the volunteers at Reconnect Rochester and outspoken citizens like you! [FLICKR PHOTO: _Yoshi]
Earlier this year, Reconnect Rochester teamed up with Tri-State Transportation Campaignexternal link and other transportation advocacy groups from around New York state in an effort to mobilize support for, and urge Governor Cuomo to sign New York’s first Complete Streets law. Thousands of you and other New Yorkers signed petitions and wrote and called your representatives. It made all the difference, helping to get this issue onto the agendas of elected officials and making sure it passed during a busy legislative session.

Pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders in Rochester (and across New York state) will soon benefit from a new Complete Streets law. Thanks to the volunteers at Reconnect Rochester and outspoken citizens like you! [IMAGE: Reconnect Rochester]Earlier this week Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the billexternal link that will make streets safer for everyone. The law will ensure that major road projects take into account the needs of pedestrians, cyclists, and people of all ages and abilities.

Whether young or old; on foot, in a wheelchair, on a bike, or in a car, everyone is safer when roads are designed so everyone can use them. Roads designed according to complete streets principlesexternal link are safer and encourage walking and cycling, leading to healthier neighborhoods and better quality of life. This is an extremely important reform that will save lives.

Thank YOU for helping to win positive change!

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Mapnificent, Meet Rochester.

Posted by: John Lam

Rochester is now on Mapnificent thanks to Reconnect Rochester!
Scoop one for Reconnect Rochester! Several days ago we noticed Mapnificent.net (a new site for visualizing transit reachability) hadn’t included Rochester among its cities. Clicking into its support forum led me to a post also seeking support for Rochester. A quick search told us our bus company had just announced the public availability of their General Transit Feed Specification, so in response we posted the location of this feed and within an hour Rochester debuted in Mapnificentexternal link.

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Bicycle Day at the Brighton Farmers Market Sunday August 21, 2011

R_Community_Bikes_Photo
Bicycle Day at the Brighton Farmers Market (www.brightonfarmersmarket.org/)
Sunday August 21, 2011
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Brighton High School parking lot
1150 Winton Road South
Rochester, NY 14618.
R. Community Bikes will be collecting used bicycles at the Brighton Farmers Market. Bike donations are tax deductible.
Please bring your used bicycle to the market to donate to a wonderful community organization.
10:00 a.m.  – Brighton Police Dept. bicycle safety talk.
Free helmets kids donated by Brighton Police Patrolman’s Association.

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Brooks, Rochester General Hospital Host Wheel Sport Safety Contest Ceremony

Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, in collaboration with the Office of Traffic Safety, the Rochester General Hospital Association and the Twigs organization, hosted the 23rd annual Wheel Sport Safety Awareness Contest Awards Ceremony. The event, which took place at Greece Ridge Mall, honored local schoolchildren for their participation in a coloring and writing contest.
“This annual contest is a great opportunity for our children to be advocates and raise awareness of the dangers of riding a bicycle, rollerblading, or skateboarding without proper protection,” said Brooks. “By educating the public on safe wheel sport practices, we will certainly prevent countless injuries to our children and in turn, will save precious lives.”The coloring and writing contests promote all forms of wheel sport safety including bicycle, in-line skates, roller-skates, skateboards and scooters. Fourteen children were awarded first place, earning them new bicycles and helmets, and 357 contest participants received new properly fitted helmets, all of which were donated by Rochester General Hospital and Twigs.
Nearly 2,600 entries were submitted this year from a total of 84 local schools.
“The Twigs of Rochester General Hospital are a proud co-sponsor of the Wheel Sport Safety Contest,” said Trudie Kirshner, Rochester General Hospital Association and TWIGS President. “We invite children in grades K-6 to submit colored pages, drawings and essays addressing safety issues. This important event is a fun and educational way for children in Monroe County Schools to learn about safety as it relates to wheeled vehicles.”
Twigs was founded as a grassroots organization in 1887 and supports Rochester General Hospital through fundraising and donations. There are currently over 600 members of Twigs in the Rochester area.
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NYC Biking is Up 14 Percent From 2010; Overall Support Rises

By Andrea Bernstein | July 28, 2011 – 12:31 pm

The Prospect Park West bike lane in Brooklyn (photo by Kate Hinds)

Biking is up in New York City by 14 percent from last spring. The NYC Department of Transportation says it recorded 18,809 cyclists per day, up from 16,463 in spring 2010.  Word of the increase in cycling comes the same day a poll shows a widening number of New Yorkers support bike lanes.
Read the story.

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City of Rochester has portable Event Racks for loan

Event Rack
Move it and stack it
The Event Rack is an innovative design that addresses the needs of any game, festival, or event requiring temporary and secure bike parking. It is easily moveable, stackable and requires no assembly. When your event is over, stack the Event Racks in a pick-up, van, or trailer, and store in a minimal amount of space.
User friendly, too
The Event Rack is the first rack of its kind that is completely user-friendly: it’s fully U-lock compatible and supports the bike frame in two places. This means that volunteer staffing and tickets are not required and your staff can focus on other tasks.
The Event Racks are available for loan by the City of Rochester for City located events.
See – http://www.dero.com/products/event_rack/event_rack.html

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Help Stop Devastating Transportation Cuts

Rep. John Mica says the transportation sector will 'do more with less.' [PHOTO: Orlando Sentinel]
Yesterday morning House Transportation & Infrastructure Chairman John Mica unveiled his proposal [PDF, 3.6mb] for t-bill authorization, which amounts to a 33-35% cut to federal transportation spending. Below is a quick thumbnail sketch of his proposal, responses/reactions from other lawmakers & advocacy groups, and three things YOU can do to help stop this train wreck…

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Active Transportation attitudes in Rochester, NY

There is a transformation occurring on active transportation (mostly walking and bicycling) attitudes in the Rochester, NY region, but we’re still waiting for the tipping point.  The tipping point will occur when both vehicle drivers and active transportation folks actually share the road, and obtain ‘complete streets’:

“Instituting a complete streets policy ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind – including bicyclists, public transportation vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.” Complete Streets

Many in our region want active transportation to happen:

Riding into the future: Bicycle master plans encourage two-wheeled travel around Rochester “The city wants to make it easier for people … to hop on a bike rather than in a car. It has begun implementing its Bicycle Master Plan, as much a mindset as it is a blueprint for creating a bicycle-friendly community. (June 23, 2011) Democrat and Chronicle

I believe, as chair of the Rochester Regional Group of the Sierra Club’s Transportation Committee, that we here in Rochester can pass the tipping point and have active transportation become a major component of our transportation options.  You can get a whiff of that movement from this report:

Bikes in High Demand this Summer” R Community Bikes’ volunteers are having trouble keeping up with an increase in demand for bikes. The non-profit is on track to give away 100 more bikes than last year. The group gave away 1,300 bikes in 2009, 2,400 in 2010 and they’re still getting inundated.” (June 2011) RochesterHomePage

We have an incredible amount of trails that help close the distance between streets and destinations, making it easier and safer to walk and bike to important destinations.  We have bicycle groups, enthusiasts, universities, public health departments, and transportation authorities who all want to make our citizens healthier and reduce the negative effects of our present transportation system.   A major government report emphasizes the importance of this matter:

“… a factor in rising obesity rates is a sedentary lifestyle and automobile dependence; 60 percent of Americans do not meet minimum daily exercise requirements. Making cities more walkable and bikeable would thus have multiple benefits: improved personal fitness and weight loss; U.S. Global Change Research Program 98 Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States reduced local air pollution and associated respiratory illness; and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.”  (Global Climate Change Impacts in the US (2009) page 97).

However, no amount of enforcement, education, and engineering can move us beyond the tipping point if the public, in and out of their cars, doesn’t change its attitudes.  What are some of the attitudes blocking our way to the tipping point?

·         Many environmentalists who do not ride bicycles themselves fail to grasp the profound implications of our local transportation, which accounts for the release of 27% of greenhouse gases, and thus fail to join the movement for active transportation.  Moving a large component of those who now drive their gas guzzlers for short distances to active transportation alternatives would accomplish a sizeable quotient of their goals—combating Climate Change in our region, improving our air quality, and making us healthier. 

·         Our media reports on the occasional collisions involving walkers and bicyclists, but won’t take a moment from their agenda to remind the public that bicyclists have a legal right to be on the roads—and how to do that safely.  Imagine the change in attitudes that would occur if mainstream media put out 30-second reminders each day that our streets, which all of us pay for, can be navigated safely if we all followed the rules.  Believe me, there are organizations that will help the media find things to fill
those 30-second spots. 

·         Bicyclist should be more aware of their profile on and off our streets.  When a bicyclist fails to understand the rules of the road, they frustrate and annoy drivers by suddenly appearing in places drivers do not expect.  Speeding down the sidewalk behind pedestrians who cannot possibly hear their silent machines often startles those who would otherwise love to share their space.  The bicycle community should see the big picture, that Climate Change is really occurring, and their passion should be embraced as a major solution to it.

·         Drivers must respect the right and the vulnerability of those not (at the moment) in their vehicles.  Our vehicles, which are polluting our atmosphere, are not only costing us a sustainable future, they are absorbing much of our earnings— car costs, taxes for road and bridge repair and snowplowing, insurance, car repairs, inspections—you name it.  Add on the distractions we enjoy while driving (radios, texting, cell phones, GPS’s, and that coffee we’re drinking) to a negative attitude towards someone on a bike or walking, and it makes for an unsettling environment. 

Last weekend, while biking along the canal, I got talking to a couple who have been bicycling across the country for seven months about their experiences (Nomads — Benson and Ashleigh’s Bicycling Adventure).  Some communities, they said, were very bicycle-friendly and some that purported to be friendly were not so much.  Attitudes of drivers in communities they passed through made a big difference in the safety and quality of their travels.  Here’s one of their ideas about improving community attitudes towards bicycling:  in some communities, the bicycling community takes on the responsibility of policing themselves by reminding each other to obey the traffic signals.  How close are we to that?

Here’s why there’s so much hope about our region’s commitment to active transportation.  Recently, there was a major conference on how to make our community a better place to ride and walk: The Greater Rochester Active Transportation Symposium, check it out: Rochester Cycling Alliance: Active Transportation Symposium: 

Walk, Bike, Smile, Thrive: a report on the first Greater Rochester Active Transportation Symposium. By Jon Schull, Ph.D. Interim Director, RIT Center for Student Innovation, and  Scott MacRae, M.D. Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Flaum Eye Institute, University of Rochester.  Walking and biking is good for your health, good for your state of mind, and good for Rochester. And it’s about to get better. more…

Our community leaders, our educators, our universities, our public health officials, our governmental officials, and even our grant writers want us to get over the tipping point and become as bicycle-friendly as the platinum winners of the League of American Bicyclists * Bicycle Friendly America.  We need to remember that this push to increase bicycles use is not limited to Rochester, as many communities have successfully taken on their vehicle dominated culture and achieved a synergy of safe and healthy motion in their communities.

How do we get beyond the tipping point, where a majority changes their attitudes?  Here are some of my recommendations:

·         We go into neighborhoods and talk about bicycle boulevards, which are now in the City of Rochester’s Bicycle Master Plan.

·         We educate continually about riding safely in our streets and obeying the rules.

·         We remind bicyclists, pedestrians, and vehicle drivers that the existing rules can keep us safe if we take a moment to observe them.

·         Report on those who are not obeying our laws, thus increasing enforcement’s awareness of specific issues.  A cell phone and a license plate number can deliver a reckless driver a powerful message.

·         Encourage our communities, via neighborhood associations, to help ensure that they have an active transportation network, which will probably increase the value of their homes.

·         Remind bicyclists how quiet and fast they are, so oftentimes their movements startle pedestrians and vehicle owners.  Get the proper lighting, know the turn signals, wear a helmet, and obey the rules of the road.  If you look and act as if you know how to bicycle through our streets, drivers will be more likely to respect you.

Sure, few of us would actually give up our vehicles and just walk and bicycle in the Rochester area—though some do.  But I leave you with this thought: for all that elegant insularity that our cars give us, we are paying a very high environmental, health, and economic price.  We can do something about that; we could be changing our attitudes and moving towards a planet that will be sustainable.
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Riding into the future: Bicycle master plans encourage two-wheeled travel around Rochester

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20110623/NEWS01/106230330/Master-plans-encourage-bicycling-around-Rochester?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Home|p
See the article in Thursday June 23, 2011 D & C Newspaper online.
This year several City of Rochester streets will be stripped and signed to designate bike lanes.
Also, the use of the cycling road sharing symbol, sharrow, will begin to appear.
What does the Bicycle Master Plan do? – Cycling accommodations should be included in all future City road projects.

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Reconnect Rochester Speaks with MCC Faculty

Members of Reconnect Rochester speaking to MCC faculty on the Court Street bridge about Rochester's transit future.
This past weekend the Department of Chemistry and Geosciences at Monroe Community College (MCC) held its annual Professional Development Field trip for faculty members. This year’s theme was “Seeking a Greener Rochester” and Reconnect Rochester was invited to give a brief history lesson on Rochester’s transit history and a perspective on the future.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous this Saturday as we all gathered outside on the Court Street bridge. This was a fitting location as the very spot where the Genesee River, Erie Canal, the old subway, two extinct railroads and Interstate 490 all meet. And the story we told went something like this…

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Take Action – Complete Streets NYS, Call your state representative today!

Great News, Assembly bill A.8366 (Complete Streets) was introduced yesterday. However, we only have a couple of days left to get the Assembly to pass it. Please call Assemblyman Gantt and ask him to move this legislation through the Transportation Committee and help bring it to the Assembly floor for a vote. His local district office number is 454-3670.

Also call the other members of the Assembly in the area and let them know that A.8366 has been introduced and we would like it brought to the assembly floor for a vote before session ends.

Dan Burling – 585-786-0180
Sean Hanna – 585-334-5210
Steve Hawley – 585-589-5780
Mark Johns – 585-223-9130
Brian Kolb – 315-781-2030
Joe Morelle – 585-467-0410
Robert Oaks – 315-946-5166
Phil Palmesano – 607-776-9691
Bill Reilich – 585-225-4190


This legislation is expected to pass the NYS Senate this week and the Governor has also introduced Complete Streets legislation


Bill Armbruster
AARP – Associate State Director
435 E. Henrietta Road, Rochester, NY 14620