Subcommittee Meeting Minutes
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Bicycle Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes
October 18, 2007
Noon
Attendees: Jim Hagerman, Jay Nevans, John Witherspoon, Caroline Cooley, Monika Miller, Keith Webb, Roger Macklin, Kelley Segars
Kelley announced that there would be a new BAC member as soon as Technical Committee meets in November. Donna Hubbard will be our representative from KnoxRevolution, since Susie had to step down. So that will bring us back up to a full committee.
1. Outreach
Kelley reminded everyone about the Neighborhood Bike Ride coming up on Saturday, and that planning needs to start soon after for the Christmas in the City bike ride planned for Dec 19th at 7 p.m. The Christmas in the City brochure with the ride listing should be coming out next week.
2. Education
The Street Skills class got rescheduled for Nov 10th. Please spread the word so we can get more people there.
3. Policies
TDOT is advertising for the bike/ped coordinator position so it will be at least a month before someone is in place.
4. Bicycle Plan Update
Kelley passed around the results of the action steps prioritization. Because there are so many action steps, she thought it would be best to divide into task forces/subcommittees based on which action steps people said they wanted to work on. These are based on the chapters from the plan. Monika, seeing that she ended up on too many task forces, asked to be taken off the Education & Safety one. Kelley pointed out that the top two action steps were unanimously put first, and that they were more goals or mission statements than action steps. Each task force should keep those in mind when deciding what action steps are going to be most effective in accomplishing what we want.
There was some discussion about what a bikestation is versus what a checkout bike program is. A bikestation is a place where people can take their bikes to be stored all day (valet bike parking), so a staff person is there to accept the bikes. There are usually shower facilities, lockers, and often a bike mechanic or at least a place where you could fix your own bike. A checkout bike program is what most communities are doing now rather than the yellow bike programs. Paris is the most recent and large-scale example of checkout bikes. Kelley saw a demonstration of a new program that Dero Bike Racks and QI Systems offer. Apparently Louisville and Tulsa have them in place. Kelley would like to pursue this with UT and the City. Monika wants to work with UT on the Make Orange Green efforts so that they promote biking. She said the UT Outdoor Program rents bikes, but they only have mountain bikes so it’s not a good riding around town experience.
There were questions about where we stand on discussion from a few years ago about whether bicyclists have the legal right to ride in the shoulder—whether that is technically the roadway or not. Kelley will look back at old emails and forward them to Mike, who will look into it. Mike mentioned VeloNews’ legal column and suggested we may be able to get him to investigate this. Someone asked if a bike route sign changes whether the shoulder is legally part of the roadway.
Mike suggested finding out who in the state legislature bicycles so that we can approach them about theses issues. Kelley will check with people in Nashville who were going to look into legislative issues a few years ago.
The dog issue came up. Mike will check on whether the legislation passed. Kelley suggested bringing this up when we meet with bike clubs, since they would likely want to help work on this. We’ll probably need to meet with Animal Control agencies in each county/jurisdiction. Someone asked what number people are supposed to call, and Kelley reminded everyone that there is a list of phone numbers for each jurisdiction on our website, for road problems, animal control and enforcement.
Kelley will send out a meetingwizard request so that we can get the task forces to start meetings and going through action steps.
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Knoxville Regional Bicycle Program