The Town of Carrboro has created a new bicycle plan with the hopes of improving people’s health and fitness, decreasing automobile dependency, improving environmental conditions, and developing a greater sense of community.
Back in 2009, the Town of Carrboro developed its first, official bicycle plan despite having bike lanes since the 1970s.
More than 10 years later, the town has created a new plan, built of the foundation of the one created in 2009, to continue its mission of ensuring that biking in Carrboro is safe, fun and accessible for all ages and abilities.
Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle said the town has been working on this updated plan for about two years now.
“What we expect is that at our first meeting back in January, which will be on January 12, that we’ll be adopting the bicycle plan,” Lavelle said. “It’s finally, nearly complete.”
Lavelle said the town will use this 2020 update to reassess existing conditions, identify new projects and provide updated design standards to account for advancements in bicycle facility designs over the past 10 years.
As a part of their mission, the town has set a vision statement for the plan which reads, “Envisioning Carrboro as a place where biking is accessible, safe, and convenient for everyone between the ages of 8 to 80.”
“It’s a nice, clean looking bicycle plan,” Lavelle said. “It’s meant to engage riders from eight to 80. It has a plan for how the networks in Carrboro currently exist and how they may grow over time – and just a lot of other good data.”
Almost all of Carrboro falls within a two-mile radius of its town center, meaning that many of the town’s centers of employment, recreation, education and shopping are within a reasonable bicycling distance of one another.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, biking two miles, rather than driving, avoids emitting two pounds of pollutants, which would take 1.5 months for one tree to sequester.
Carrboro’s Town Council hosted a public hearing on October 27 to receive comments from residents on the Updated Bicycle Transportation Plan prior to its adoption.
Around 77 percent of the survey’s 500 respondents said they would be more encouraged to bike if designated bike lanes were installed. Seventy-one percent of respondents wanted better access to trails and greenways and 60 percent wanted safer intersections.
To make some of these responses a reality, the Town of Carrboro will use money awarded from the state’s Division of Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation as well as provide a local match to fund the project.
Lavelle said, while the vision and ideas are there, once the new bicycle plan is implemented in the New Year, it will take great strides to make all of these wants and desires a reality.
“The key to any plan is, once it’s there, implementing it and trying to work on the initiatives in the plan and trying to get the funding and budget and support around it,” Lavelle said. “So that is what we’ll be working on for the next several years.”
To learn more about Carrboro’s 2020 Bike Plan, read the agenda from the town council meeting on December 1 here.
Lead phot via Mark Losey/Town of Chapel Hill.
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The Link LonkDecember 10, 2020 at 05:03PM
https://chapelboro.com/news/local-government/town-of-carrboro-to-wheel-out-new-bike-plan-in-2021
Town of Carrboro To Wheel Out New Bike Plan in 2021 - Chapelboro.com
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