Bike Walnut Creek and Bike East Bay are jointly pushing for protected bikeways (i.e cycle tracks) on California Blvd as part of a new Plan. Find out how you can help.

Walnut Creek is planning many bicycle and pedestrian improvements for the West Downtown area of the City and Bike Walnut Creek and Bike East Bay are jointly pushing for protected bikeways (i.e cycle tracks) on California Blvd as part of the Plan. Our goal is for Walnut Creek to build a physically protected bikeway, either a 2-way cycle track on the west side of California Blvd or one-way parking protected bikeways on each side of California Blvd. Such an inviting bike facility will link Walnut Creek BART Station to the downtown and to the future Olympic Corrdior Connection between Lafayette-Moraga Trail and Iron Horse Trail.

There have been several public workshops where hundreds of Walnut Creek residents have voiced support for better bikeways that are safe and inviting for parents with kids, senior citizens, and people new to bicycling. A Citizens Advisory Committee is currently considering our proposal and will make a recommendation in Summer 2014 of the final designs for all of the streets included in the West Downtown Plan.

Many local businesses and community organizations support our proposal, including Kaiser Permanente, Whole Foods, Laconia Development, BART, State Senator Mark DeSaulnier’s Office, Mike’s Bikes Walnut Creek, Greenbelt Alliance, Transform and Save Mount Diablo and our volunteers are busy securing more support.

What you can do:

• Contact Andrew Smith, West Downtown Planner for Walnut Creek, and let him know you support protected bikeways on California Blvd. Please let him know your address and why better bike facilities are important to you.

Andrew M. Smith
Planning Division
1666 N. Main Street
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
asmith@walnut-creek.org
(925) 943-5899 x2213

Check out the Indianapolis Cultural Trail

a wonderfully inviting and economically invigorating people facility in Downtown Indianapolis

In May, 2013, Indianapolis opened the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, an urban two-way cycle track running through the heart of Downtown Indianapolis. It is well-designed, expensive, widely popular, and strongly supported by downtown businesses and major foundations in the community. This new bicycling and walking facility is showing the rest of the country how to build modern, urban bikeways.

Our Companion Project: Olympic Blvd Corridor Study

Help build a modern, family-friendly multiuse cycle track pathway connection between Lafayette-Moraga Trail and Iron Horse Trail.

Contra Costa County is taking the lead on studying a new bike-ped connection between these two popular pathways and the map below shows the corridor and the general alignment options for the connection. The cities of Lafayette and Walnut Creek are participating too and there will be a public workshop in late October for your detail input and ideas.

More information on Olympic Corridor Study

Bikes Mean Business

People who walk and bicycle to shop spend more money than people who drive. It sounds counter-intuitive we know, but study after study of similar retail corridors shows that after adding bike lanes and calming traffic, retail activity goes up. Studies conducted in New York, Toronto, San Francisco and Portland all verify the reality that pedestrians and bicyclists are your best customers!

The reason for this is that people stop to shop or grab a bite to eat more often when bicycling or walking down a street than they do driving down the same street. Many drivers are simply cutting thru the street. The drivers who do stop may spend more in one single trip by driving, but people bicycling and walking make more trips and spend more money overall.

Do you want more customers coming through your front door? Do you want a raise?

Here’s the data:

• Portland: survey of 89 businesses showed people walking & bicycling spend up to 50% more per month than drivers
• New York: after installing protected bikeways on 8th & 9th Avenues in Manhattan, retail activity increased 49% compared to 3% increase borough-wide over same period
• San Francisco: survey of Valencia Street found that 65% of participating merchants believed protected bike lanes had a positive impact on business. Survey of 800 people visiting Columbus Ave showed that people walking and bicycling spent over 50% more overall than drivers
• Toronto: survey of 61 merchants and 538 patrons found people arriving by foot and bicycle visit the most often and spend the most money per month

More information on the economic benefits of bicycling on retail activity.