Bike Signage

 Seeing people riding on the sidewalk in downtown reminded again that the town could use some signage directing riders to the various bike paths around town. If nothing else, one at the town square and another at SIUC pointing riders to the path connecting the two locations. Seems a shame to have spend so much money building the path and not making sure riders know it is there.

National Bike Month Events

Once again, Carbondale pedals furiously into National Bike Month. Here is a list of the events the city has planned.

Bike Lane #2

As noted in the comments on yesterday's post, there is a bike lane striped on Illinois Avenue as well. Both lanes end at West Mill on the south side but while the University Avenue lane runs almost all the was to West Willow, the Illinois Avenue lane ends at the West Walnut and University intersection.

Bike Lane

The recent resurfacing of University Avenue by IDOT came with an added bonus:  a bike lane.  The lane starts just south of the intersection of West Willow and N. University on the north side of town and ends I am not sure where. I imagine we will get a northbound lane on Illinois Ave. sometime in the future.  Now if the city would just put some sharrows on streets like N. Poplar, we would have an even more bike friendly city.

Bike Lane

Noticed that the recent resurfacing of West Main has included a bike lane on the north side of the street.  Given the number of people I see biking along West Main and cars either swerving or slowing down to avoid them, this is a good addition to the street.

Unfortunately, I am not certain how much use the lane will ultimately prove as it peters out half a block west of the intersection of Main and University, forcing bicyclists to merge back into westbound traffic

Bike Path Grant

The city announced the receipt of a grant of almost $330,000 to go toward the construction of the planned bike path from the SIUC campus to the town square:

This grant will be used for the first phase of construction of the planned downtown bicycle and pedestrian pathway.  The path will run from the SIU campus, just south of Grand Avenue, along the east side of the Canadian National Railway tracks to the Town Square, just north of Main Street. Funds from this grant are designated for the main section of the pathway from Mill Street to Main Street.

Mayor Fritzler stated, “I want to thank Governor Quinn and the Illinois Department of Transportation for seeing the value of this project.  Once completed, this new pathway will be a great addition to the downtown for the residents and visitors of Carbondale.  The development of this bike path linking the SIU campus to downtown businesses and neighborhoods will improve the accessibility of both Carbondale’s residents and SIU’s students.  In addition, this new pathway will encourage physical activity and healthy lifestyles by providing a safe place to walk, jog, and bike within the center of town. It is our vision that this new pathway will set the standard and be the hub for future interconnecting pathways throughout the City.”

The Illinois Department of Transportation received applications for 328 projects. Carbondale was the only community to receive a grant from IDOT’s District 9 which encompasses the 16 southernmost counties of Southern Illinois.

This amount almost totals the  $500,000 expected to come from the sales tax enacted by the city several years ago that also funds the bonds for the public safety center and the new fire station, as well as the university's Saluki Way project.

Bike to Work Day

is coming. From the city:

Mayor Joel Fritzler and Lt. Governor Sheila Simon invite you to join them for Bike to Work Week. On May 14, 2012 there will be a Bike Rack Ribbon Cutting & Breakfast at 8:30 a.m. at the IDOT Building, and May 18, 2012 is Bike to Work Day.

George Maroney Was Right...

...at least about downtown Carbondale becoming an entertainment district. Took a walk through downtown last week and saw  at least three new businesses ( Evelyn's Restaurant, Kelly's Irish Boxy House, and the unnamed rumored micorbrewery), the new location of Cristado's and one expansion (Mary Lou's) going int.  All food related. Almost all the store fronts that have opened in the area in the past year, with the exceptions of Sew A Lot and Esther's Clothing, have been entrainment/food oriented ( various tattoo parlors and spas, Practice Pad, Crossfit Gym, La Unica Bakery).

Most of these serve as entertainment for their customers. they come in, eat, get a tattoo, work out, then leave.  They don't promote shopping by their customers, nor do their customers have a reason to move from one location to the other. The places where customers can buy "things" are quite limited, most of what you buy in downtown Carbondale are services. Generally, once the customer purchases the service, they leave downtown or, in the case of the bars, move onto another one.

Even in the case of purchasing things, there is no inducement to convince customers to remain downtown to shop as most of the stores, the bike shops excepted, are dissimilar from one another. A customer at Priority Sports is not likely to move on to Sound Core to shop nor will a purchaser at Old Town Liquors move on to Univeristees.  There are no clusters of similar stores, or "strings' as they are called, save for the group of bike shops, spas, bars and restaurants, ergo no reason for customers to engage in the traditional shopping behavior of moving from store to store,looking for the perfect, or at least satisfactory, product.  People come downtown for entertainment and find it in the form of bar and restaurants (and the Varsity).  The question is, does Carbondale accept that it does not have a viable shopping district for a downtown but does have a lively entertainment district or does it put in the extensive (and expensive) work needed to change this.

Sustainability Commission

Either it's a slow news day or there is more interest in the chicken ordinance than I thought, as both Asst. City Manager Kevin Beatty and Councilman Joel Fritzler reported gettting contacted by various papers and television stations regarding it.

Meeting started with an update on the Koppers wood treating site cleanup, which is progressing glacially slowly, mainly due to continued revisions in the plan by the EPA. Then the commission moved on to the fun stuff, the chickens.

One local landlord showed up to argue against the ordinance, saying that the provision not allowing renters to keep chickens discriminated against renters and that chickens should be treated like dogs and required to get re-licensed every year, rather than the one time license proposed in the ordinance. When the commission asked if she would be OK with changing the ordinance to allow renters to keep chickens with landlords having the ability to say "No Chickens" as they can with pets, I found that renters abuse landlords horribly, as she indicated that, despite her policies, renters brought pets into her properties all the time and it was almost impossible to get them out once they did and she expected the same thing to happen with chickens. Both provisions remained in the ordinance, however, and it passed. The commission will send it on to city council, hopefully to appear on the March 22 agenda.

The meeting ended with after a discussion of bike paths and trails in Carbondale. Beatty mentioned several grants the city had applied for, however many of them required matching funds, which the city does not have available, despite the $500,000 included in the Saluki Way tax proposal. The commission decided to look furthen into sources of funding for bike paths and the feasibility of creating one running along the railroad tracks from North Oak to the University.