Bike/Walk Central Florida Newsletter #58 — March 16, 2012

Looking for a chance to give back to the cycling community? Winter Garen Bike Fest needs volunteers, and Bike/Walk Central Florida needs volunteers to help run the bike valet. The first annual event will include three (3) recreational rides leaving at 7:00 a.m. with options for 30, 60 and 100 miles.  At 11:00 a.m., there will be racing on Winter Garden’s brick streets downtown.  Add to that a big tent sale from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. with vendors from all over the U.S. and raffles, this should be BIG fun!  Ride, of course, but help out if you can. Click here to see how you can help.  Click here if you are interested in helping us with the bike valet.

Pedestrian Safety Initiative

Great progress this week on all fronts! Monday we met with a potential major sponsor. Tuesday we traveled to Tallahassee to meet with a team at the Florida Department of Transportation, which shares our mission of improving pedestrian safety and is tackling the particularly thorny issue of high-speed State-maintained arterial roads. Wednesday, after our regularly scheduled steering committee meeting, we were told that engineering improvements are moving forward in Orlando, Winter Park and Maitland. We reached out to the Orange County Sheriff’s office and Florida Highway Patrol and on Thursday we addressed the Police Chief’s Association and got their commitment to distribute informational flyers on pedestrian safety and crosswalk law at all traffic stops. Volunteer Laurie Brown is making great strides taking the message of WalkSafe to elementary schools in Orange County. And Friday (today) we will be presenting a progress report to MetroPlan’s Pedestrian Safety Subcommittee. Our consultants have identified several signalized as well as unsignalized crosswalks for possible enforcement actions and we are moving ahead toward our public unveiling in May.

It’s Back!(?)

Met with a group from the Congress for New Urbanism and a representative of the City of Orlando interested in resurrecting plans for an Open Streets event in Orlando sometime this Fall. Way too early at this point to have too many details, but we just wanted to go on record supporting this initiative and say that Bike/Walk Central Florida will do everything we can to help make it succeed.

TIGER II

Speaking of back, The City of Casselberry in partnership with the City of Altamonte Springs is making another run at federal funding for bike and ped improvements tied to SunRail. The plan calls for bike-friendly upgrades to 28 miles of local streets, major upgrades to over 28 traffi signals, and installation of one of the first bike-share systems in Florida, with locations at key bus stops and the Altamonte Springs SunRail Station. asked us this week to endorse It’s Great progress this week on all fronts! Monday we met with a potential major sponsor. Improvements will also include more than five miles of new sidwalks, construction of shared-use paths, narrower streets and the planting of hundreds of street trees in existing neighborhoods to create more livable/walkable/bikeable streets while promoting environmental sustainability. Bike/Walk Central Florida has sent a letter to Florida Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood endorsing this effort.

Register Now for Cycling Savvy Class!

Go and register for the March 23 & 24th weekend course before it fills up! April class will be held April 20 & 21. Attendees will learn how to drive their bikes safely in the streets and will learn the rules of the road as they apply to bikes.