Friends of the Circle-Heights Bike Network: Meeting four minutes

Meeting date: October 13, 2003
Location: Macs Bacs bookstore
Attendees: Marc Lefkowitz, Ryan McKenzie, Lois Romanoff, John McGovern, Lee Chilcote, and Sally Hanley

Final reports from the Rolling Block Party (hazard ride) divided by community and cover letters to city service directors were shown and approved by the group. The letters will be finalized, addressed and mailed.

Lee suggested making the package into a public presentation, with a letter and information and a five-minute presentation about the group to each city council. The group agreed. Lee agreed to do a little research on the various city councils, starting with Cleveland Heights, and lead the process to prepare a presentation to Cleveland Heights City Council on Monday, November 17. Marc agreed to assist.

Thinking ahead to a future project, Lois suggested focusing the group's efforts on winning a bike lane somewhere in the network. After a discussion, the group agreed that it could put together a formal request for a bike lane if it was located on a street with heavy bike use and that wouldn't require taking a lane or on-street parking. Two locations were identified for further studyEdgehill Road (going up the hill) and Mayfield Road (coming up the hill from Little Italy).

The group decided as future course of action to pursue drafting a letter that requests bike lanes in those two locations. The request will be based on official ASHTO street design guidelines for bicycles. Sally will provide the guidelines to Marc and John who will work on a draft of a letter for review at the next meeting. It was suggested that an on-site survey, including measuring the width of the street, may be needed as well. Research on finding a bike/pavement stencil may be needed too. The goal of the letter and request is to engage the required city department heads in the city of Cleveland and Cleveland Heights in a process to review bike lanes in these locations and gain their approval.

It was also suggested that the group consider future projects studying bike parking throughout the network. Discussion centered on the Friends group studying bike parking best practices. Ryan also shared that he had a discussion with Tommy Fello, owner of Tommy's restaurant and head of the Coventry Merchants Association, about involving the Friends in Coventry's plans to bring bike racks to the street. Tommy invited the Friends group to assist in the site planning for bike racks on Coventry with its consultant City Architecture. Coventry does not currently have funds to purchase said racks, but is confident it can find funding after site plans are done. Another suggested project is to conduct a bike parking inventory in the Circle-Heights network. This would involve another group outing to count bike racks at various locations.

Ryan mentioned that David Beach at EcoCity thinks the Friends group could think strategically about offering support and asking the communities in the Circle-Heights Network to partner and make a proposal to NOACA. One such multi-city proposal might be for a bulk purchase of bike racks to be installed throughout the Circle-Heights Network.

The next Circle-Heights Bike Network meeting is Tuesday, November 11 (Veteran's Day) tentatively at Macs Bacs on Coventry. On the agenda is putting together a presentation of our group and the Rolling Block Party to the Cleveland Heights city council meeting on November 17. Also on the agenda, review draft letters on asking for bike lanes. If you would like to add an agenda item or RSVP, email ryan@www.ecocitycleveland.org or call 216-961-5020 and ask for Ryan or Marc.

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