When Alyssa Blake moved into Richmond’s Fan District last month, one of the first things she did was buy a bicycle.
Blake, 19, rides the single-speed bike from her apartment on West Grace Street to her job at Chipotle Mexican Grill in Carytown Place every day.
“Bicycling just seemed like the better option,” she said. “I can get exercise, it’s better for the environment, and I love it.”
But as a native of Matoaca in southern Chesterfield County, Blake knows it’s not easy to get around the Richmond region on a bicycle — a fact driven home by a new report on the availability of “bicycle infrastructure” in the metropolitan area.
“The streets that have bike lanes are few and far between,” states the report by Richmond Sports Backers, which documented 18.25 miles of bike lanes in the city and counties of Chesterfield and Hanover.
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“This random use of bike lanes has had little impact on bike usage due to the lack of a network connecting bike lanes and trails to allow for continuous safe riding conditions.”
The key word is “safe,” as Sports Backers and other advocates work to turn bicycling into a transportation option for commuters and students, as well as a recreational outlet to stay fit.
“We have to make sure the average citizen feels comfortable getting onto the street and riding their bikes, or taking their 12-year-old out there,” said Champe Burnley, president of the Virginia Bicycling Federation and chairman of the bicycling, pedestrian and trails commission created by Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
The city commission produced its own report on cycling opportunities in Richmond in 2010. The document built on an earlier, comprehensive plan for the region produced by the Virginia Department of Transportation in 2004.
But Sports Backers says what is missing is a master plan for the city and surrounding counties to build the infrastructure of bike lanes, paved and unpaved off-road trails, neighborhood byways, and marked “sharrow” lanes to make cycling a reliable and safe transportation alternative.
“It has to be a coordinated effort,” said Max Hepp-Buchanan, who was hired last month as director of Sports Backers’ Bike Walk RVA advocacy program. “You don’t want a bike lane that just drops off when it hits the county limits.”
The new report is intended as a baseline for bicycle infrastructure and opportunities for improvement as Richmond prepares to host the UCI Road World Championships in 2015, as well the USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships next year.
“Now is the time to take advantage of the momentum in the region and start building out a network of bicycle infrastructure that is safe, convenient and comfortable for all ages and abilities,” the Sports Backers report states.
At the moment, the bottom line of the baseline is that the Richmond region is far behind other cities, such as Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., which has become a West Coast model for community cycling.
“There’s not much comparison,” said Lloyd J. “Bud” Vye, advocacy director for the Virginia Bicycling Federation.
The closest comparison for Richmond is Washington, which has 55 miles of bike lanes, 50 miles of paved trails, and 2 miles of protected bike lanes, most notably down the center of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Half of the bike lanes in the Richmond region are along state Route 10 in Chesterfield County, but they are unconnected from other bike lanes in the region, not well maintained, and badly marked at dangerous intersections with Chippenham Parkway and state Route 288, the report concludes.
The remaining bike lanes are scattered segments in Richmond and Chesterfield, with one 0.6-mile segment on Sliding Hill Road in Hanover.
The Richmond region also has 18.5 miles of paved trails and about 146 miles of unpaved trails, most notably in Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield, Poor Farm Park in Hanover, Deep Run Park in Henrico and Richmond’s James River Park and adjoining recreational havens such as Forest Hill Park.
There are no protected bike lanes or “neighborhood byways,” which have become more widespread in Portland and, to a much lesser degree, Minneapolis.
“The baseline report is about truth — this is what we have,” said Jon Lugbill, executive director of Sports Backers.
“We knew we needed a baseline,” Lugbill said. “We needed to document what’s out there. We needed to see it firsthand.”
When Sports Backers updates the inventory next year, the outlook is likely to be better. The biggest gain will be construction of the Virginia Capital Trail between Richmond and Williamsburg, which is expected to be completed by mid-2015, just prior to the nine-day world championships.
The completion of the trail will provide a big boost to Henrico, which lacks any bike lanes, but leads the region with 7.3 miles of paved trail, including a recently completed one-mile multiuse trail on North Gayton Road.
Construction is supposed to begin this year on two sections of the Virginia Capital Trail from Charles City County through eastern Henrico to Richmond. The sections ultimately will add about 15 miles of paved, multi-use trail in Henrico.
Richmond is working hard to expand its bicycling infrastructure. It hired veteran cyclist and transportation planner Jakob Helmboldt as its biking, pedestrian and trails coordinator, as recommended by the mayor’s commission.
Helmboldt accompanied the Richmond Chamber’s InnerCity Visit to Denver last week that focused in part on the Rocky Mountain city’s bike-share program and expanding cycling infrastructure.
“It was so fantastically easy. … It totally changed the dynamic of transportation,” he said.
In Richmond, Helmboldt and the Department of Public Works are looking at streets that could go on a “road diet,” reducing the width of pavement devoted to vehicular traffic to accommodate bike lanes.
It’s not easy in a city with as many narrow streets as Richmond and planners don’t want a negative backlash by making driving harder, but Helmboldt said the Martin Luther King Bridge has more than enough capacity to install buffered bike lanes between Church Hill and the downtown business district.
Richmond is making biking an important component of Richmond Connects, a nearly complete multi-modal transportation plan that includes creating “neighborhood byways” that slow vehicular traffic.
The city also has installed 120 “post and ring” bike racks around the city, which recently adopted limits on chaining bicycles to trees and other fixtures in public rights-of-way.
And it soon will have marked 50 lane miles of “sharrows,” which let drivers know to share the street with cyclists.
“It’s important as a reminder that many people ride bikes,” Blake said.
For Vye, patience is the key ingredient for progress.
“I’ve been at this since 1992,” he said. “It’s been a slow process, but we’re making some headway. We really are.”
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