Summer of cycling update

DOWNEY – Downey’s summer of cycling continues on the heels of June’s successful all-day “Rock N’ Ride” event, which featured the city’s first annual “Tour de Downey,” at which nearly 300 riders participated in two rides on Saturday, June 14. A marvelous aerial video of the event, focusing on a local ride through parts of the residential Downey community, is available on the City of Downey website.  (You can find it at www.downeyca.org:  Homepage > About Downey > Healthy Downey > Rock N’ Ride.)

In addition, development of the City’s Bicycle Master Plan (BMP)—officially unveiled with great enthusiasm by several City Council members at “Tour de Downey”—continues apace.  Last Saturday, for example, a booth was provided at the downtown Farmers Market, not only to offer information on BMP development, but also to solicit public input regarding bicycle needs within the city.   In addition to several interactive exercises and individual Q&A, the booth also conducted a presentation “identifying the plan process, components, and objectives,” according to Miguel Nuñez of Fehr & Peers, the transportation consulting firm engaged by the city to create the BMP.  Information collected through this process will help inform Fehr & Peers’ recommendations to the City as the BMP takes shape.

The City’s ambitious goal is to have a draft BMP in place in time for a public meeting planned for late August.  That meeting will focus on review of “the proposed facilities for the Downey BMP,” says Nuñez.  The term “bicycle facilities,” incidentally, applies to any and all tangible aspects of bicycle infrastructure within a community, anything from signage (which might say “Bicycle Route” or “Share the Road”) to bike racks, bike lanes, or even dedicated bike paths.

Bicycle Master Plan development in Downey can also be followed on the web at www.bikedowney.com.  One especially critical aspect of BMP development is public input, and that need is being addressed not only in person, as described above, but also through the bikedowney.com website.  There, a “Downey Bicycle Needs Assessment Survey” is offered for citizens to express their views regarding bicycle development in the community.  In addition, the site provides access to images of all the bike development exercises that were available at both Tour de Downey and last Saturday’s booth at the Farmers Market.

Moreover, the site also offers safety tips for bicyclists, including many fundamental safety points for cycling that are far too often overlooked. These safety points include not only simple common sense, but also aspects of state and local law that are all too often either not known or misunderstood by the public. But that is another topic, to be addressed in our next bicycling article here in The Downey Patriot.

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Published: July 17, 2014 - Volume 13 - Issue 14