Have you noticed these City of Redding improvements for your bike commute?  These improvements are planned for implementation for this fall, including:

• Through bike lane treatment on eastbound Cypress approach to Parkview with some buffered bike lanes on Cypress. On the approach to the intersection there will be a through bike lane, double skip striping with green paint to highlight conflict zones where vehicle cross the bike lane to the right turn pocket.  Also westbound bike lanes to just prior to the Pine intersection.

• Bike Box and Green Markings – Redding’s First! Northbound Hartnell to Cypress – through bike lane treatment with double skip stripes, green markings to highlight conflict zone and a “two-stage queue bike box” treatment for safety and ease in making left turns.  How do you use a bike box?  Check out this video for a fun description of how they work.

• Eastbound Hartnell at Bechelli bike lane with double skip stripes and green to highlight the conflict zone

• Westbound Hartnell at Bechelli shared right turn lane and through bike lane treatment

• Southbound Railroad Ave at Buenaventura through bike lane treatment improvements to reduce right hook conflicts

• Segment of Hartnell from Cypress to Bechelli buffered bicycle lanes in some places.

• Quartz Hill Road from Benton to Market Street road diet to a single lane in each direction with bike lane buffers and improvements to the bicycle approach to intersections as well as parking.

Do you have input on these improvements for the City of Redding?

Share your thoughts and ideas with us and we will gather this input and share it with the City of Redding through the Active Transportation Advisory Group?  Send your thoughts in an email to Anne Thomas.

Redding Record Searchlight, 1909

…. – eight miles an hour and four at crossings

also violations for drivers who fail to sound their horns at crossings and corners as the municipal ordinance requires.

Beer saved the world, Bicycles are next!

Hang out with friends, eat, have a beer or two, enjoy the live music—and support better bicycling in our community while you’re at it!  

You don’t need to ride a bike but it’s a great opportunity to ride downtown for a fun evening with other people who love to cycle and are working to make our community a more livable place.

Portions of the proceeds from the evening will be donated to Shasta Living Streets.

Beer Saved the World:   Egyptian texts contain 100 medical prescriptions calling for beer. * Since beer went through fermentation the alcohol present effectively made it cleaner than water. * Beer saved millions from giardia and worse. * Midwives created ultra-strong beer to ease the pain of labor. * Louis Pasteur studied beer and it led him to invent pasteurization and discover the existence of bacteria, which led to treatments for smallpox and polio.  More information:  Beer Facts And How It Saved The World

Bicycles are Saving the World:  

• An opportunity for regional world-class advantage in active living
• Local business, tourism, and strengthening our regional economy
• A lifestyle choice for young people and their families
• Improvements in individual health and lower community health costs
• Safer road conditions for everyone – driving, walking and riding
• Easy, fast commute times that leave you feeling energized
• Friendlier communities and business districts
• Reducing costs of maintaining our road and transportation network
• Independence, confidence, and better school performance for children and teens who ride to school and for errands
• Adding joy to life

We are very happy to announce Keith Williams has been chosen to serve on the statewide California Bicycle Advisory Committee, representing Shasta Living Streets and the issues and opportunities of our region.  Dave Snyder, Executive Director of the California Bicycle Coalition says “Keith plays an important role on the committee and has already had an impact in helping achieve a victory in the recent meeting clarifying standards for bicycle facility design.”

The committee serves to inform Caltrans on state-wide policy, infrastructure standards and implementation, providing input on bicycle facility design issues.  Keith has an academic background in transportation planning, and an understanding of on-the-ground bicycle experience, issues and advocacy from Central California and now from his home and work in the North State.  Keith lives in Redding and currently works at Shasta Regional Transportation Agency as a part-time Transportation Planner.

While the cities and counties of the North State are not the most populous areas in the state, we represent the “other” California, outside of metropolitan-urban areas – with perspectives and issues that are important to include in order to get buy-in and to design comprehensive solutions to drive improvements across the state.

People living in cities and counties like ours are especially dependent on statewide transportation direction, policies and programs.  And the need is great – for example, current context and road conditions across the North State mean that despite strong interest from local families – very few children can walk or bicycle to school or to a friendʼs house or the local business district.  Few of these children have transit options, and we have a high rate of death and injury when people walk and bicycle despite dangers.  It is ironic that in this more rural place children and families generally have less opportunity to walk and bicycle than in metropolitan areas.   We want to share the perspective and need from these types of communities, and help to identify solutions and approaches that work broadly across California.

Shasta Living Streets is very interested in advancing the work of this advisory committee.  We congratulate Keith and look forward to supporting him in this role.

“If your city doesn’t have a protected bike lane yet, it’s being left behind”

“It is no longer just reserved for the Portlands and the Boulders of the world”

“The protected bike lane can make a huge difference, in particular for the average person who maybe doesn’t ride every day,” Klein said. “It will make them feel like ‘I can get on a bike too,’ or ‘I wouldn’t mind if my child rode a bike to school.’”

Impact of a protected bike lane in New York:

• Reduced speeding rates from 74 percent to 20 percent
• Crashes and injuries of all kinds have dropped by 63 percent
• Travel times for motorists did not increase
• Congestion did not increase
• More than 70 percent of neighborhood residents support the improvement

Learn more at MomentumMag.com, by Angie Schmitt:  The Rise of The North American Protected Bike

from NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide

Redding’s first protected bikeway.  Temporary in 2013.

We talk about the inexpensive methods of making our streets better serve people and business and making them safer for people to walk and bicycle in their everyday lives.

What does that look like?

Click on the links below and let google images give you a quick visual tour of the possibilities.

Bikeway

Green Lane Project

Cycletrack

Open Streets

Parklet