Friday, July 4 was the third monthly appearance for Bike North Penn at Lansdale First Fridays. These have been fantastic opportunities to engage with attendees. Not only have we been able to promote our community rides and explain our efforts for infrastructure improvements, like bike lanes on Broad Street, but we have also been able to hear the ideas and concerns from a broad spectrum of the community.

Here are some of our understandings coming from these engagements:

• There is broad support for bike lanes on Broad Street and an interest in making the North Penn area generally safer for biking. We collected about another 30 additional signatures at the August First Friday from Lansdale Borough residents and could have collected another 30 from people from other municipalities (current petition is for Lansdale Borough residents only)
• We did also talk to a very small number of people who were against bike lanes. We gave these folks time to explain their positions and provide some counter arguments. Most of them boiled down to the opinion that it is not save for bikers to add bike lanes – but of course, their are already people riding South Broad and other major roads without even a defined space that a simple bike lane would provide. I don’t know that we changed any minds, but it is always good to engage on these issues.
• Our community rides, with typical distances of 6-8 miles and casual speeds appeals to many people who are not regular bikers. People also like to idea of getting out and riding in larger groups for safety and confidence. So we will continue to program these types of community rides and try to increase their frequency when we can.
• There is a lot of interest and confusion about the local trails for biking – where they are, when they will be built out and connected and where they can take you. We will try to do a better job of posting this info in the Bike North Penn web site and making sure local governments are aware of this interest so trails can be prioritized in context of other local infrastructure projects.

Bike North Penn will have a tent tonight at Lansdale Borough’s June First Friday event!

We will be promoting our “Bikes On Broad” campaign and the Critical Mass ride we are doing on July 19 to encourge bike lanes be added to South Broad St. We will also be collection signatures from Lansdale borough residents on a petition for the bike lanes. If you have not yet signed this please do so.

We will be collecting feedback from residents for a Lansdale Borough bike safety/street survey.

We will have information on the Bike North Penn organization, upcoming group rides and upcoming meetings.

This is your opportunity to meet and speak with some of our key volunteers. Please to stop by.

Also – Next to our booth (near the Santa house by the train station) will be a Bike Valet space! We are encouraging everyone to ride their bikes to this First Friday event and when you arrive, check our bike in at the staffed Bike Valet space. When you are ready to head back home, just pick up your bike from the valet, and be on your way.

Last Thursday I ventured up to New York City for an afternoon of cycling the streets south of Central Park and to attend an event at the Brompton store to promote the new book by Brompton CEO Will Butler-Adams. In the sections of Manhattan I traversed, there were bike lanes on many of the main avenues and cross streets. Because most of the streets were one-way, the bike lanes typically existed on one side of the street and flowed in the direction of auto traffic.

I rode from Penn Station at 38th Street up 8th Avenue to Cental Park, then took 2nd Avenue all the way down to Chinatown, which generally did not have bike lanes on its neighborhood streets

There was a certain amount of semi-organized chaos in the bike lanes, where I was often a pedaling minority in contrast to ebike delivery riders – who were not even trying to pretend to pedal, motorized scooters, skateboarders, walkers who (I guess) found the sidewalks too crowded, and runners exercising. Thank god – no rollerbladers.

As I was often the slowest person in the lane I tried to stay to the right, but when ebike delivery riders were coming at me head-on, which happened more than once on, what should have been, one-way lanes, other ebikers would zip around me on my right. Oh – and I was also in the minority as a person wearing a helmet – but don’t get me started…

Pedestrians and bike lane dwellers got along reasonably well. Though New Yorkers are still competitive jaywalkers, they paused for on-coming ebike delivery riders who made it clear they were NOT going to stop. Conversely everyone had to watch out for locals crossing the street with their eyes lost in their phones.

One ebike rider came at me, going the wrong way, riding side saddle with one hand on his bars and the other holding his phone up to his face. Sign that dude up for Cirque du Soleil. On cross streets, where restaurants still had covid-era outdoor seating enclosures positioned in parking spaces, the bike lanes ran narrowly between the sidewalk and these structures – with signs, almost always ignored, encouraging those in the bike lanes to slow down.

Through the afternoon and evening, I saw no traffic enforcement against elicit activities going on in the bike lanes. It was a total atonomous zone; almost like cops said, “this is what you wanted – good luck with it…” But for the most part, everyone in the lanes kind of worked it all out while in motion. I witnessed no accidents, no “lane rage” – really not even any close calls. Interestingly the car and truck drivers seem to honor the dedicated bike lane lights and lane street patterns more than than those in the lanes.

Later in the evening, when auto traffic was jammed up in SoHo and cars blocked intersection boxes and bike lanes, those of us on bikes became like minnows zipping between bloated SUVs and sedans, laughing and whooping at our mobility as drivers expressed their frustrations with horns and hollering. I have to admit most of my day of riding in NYC was a thrill.

What I experienced Manhattan may be a preview of the future for every city and town considering the addition of bike lanes to the mixture of traffic design. Without some expectations of rules, and police oversight, no doubt some amount of mayhem will emerge. But how to frame expectations in the lanes without clamping down too hard?

In the Brompton discussion that night with Will Butler-Adams, he noted that London was ahead of New York with bike infrastructure, but could tell that now it was installed in this big American city, no one was going to let them take it away.

In a letter addressed to the governor, the groups cite that trail and active transportation networks are “essential infrastructure for equitably addressing the most pressing issues facing Pennsylvania—economic development, climate resiliency, mobility, and bicyclist and pedestrian safety.”  According to the organizations leading the effort, the pace of active transportation infrastructure development in Pennsylvania is slow and not prioritized by any state agency, regardless of significant consequences for pedestrians and bicyclists who are disproportionately killed and severely injured in traffic crashes each year.

https://bicyclecoalition.org/groups-call-on-governor-shapiro-to-prioritize-pas-active-transportation-infrastructure/

At the Feb. 21 meeting of the Upper Gwynedd Township commissioners, a resolution was passed to apply for a grant of potentially $150,000 for the construction of a segment of the Power Line Trail, along Sumneytown Pike, from the intersection at Park Side Place to Dickerson Road.

This would allow for the widening of the existing sidewalk on the north side of the road into a multi-use trail/sidewalk. This section will also overlap the planned route for the Liberty Bell Trail, so if this grant is secured, it would allow for both trails to progress.

Construction would not take place until 2025.

https://www.uppergwynedd.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif1351/f/uploads/powerline_trail_construction_grant_memo_2023.pdf