Leader
Jason Van Driesche
Location
1 Steele St. Burlington, VT 05401
We are building a "Pop-Up Protected Bike Lane Demonstration Kit" that will make it easy for municipalities to say "yes!" to short-term demonstrations of innovative infrastructure for safe biking, in particular protected bike lanes. It will include all the equipment and supplies that a community needs to do a variety of bike-related demonstration projects, including stencils, traffic cones, spray chalk, signage, plywood "islands" for roundabouts, and so on. We will seek pro bono help from a local engineering firm to design the kit components, and we'll need lots of volunteers to put it all together! We'll also refurbish and rebrand our trusty old 15 passenger Dodge van to haul it all around. Then we'll bring the van and its contents to the communities we work with, helping them identify, plan for, execute, evaluate, and publicize demonstration projects. Finally, we will document how we put the kit together and how we used it so that other advocacy groups can build kits of their own.
1. List and describe the types of bike infrastructure demonstration projects that the kit will support
2. Create a design guide and "how to" for each type of pilot
3. Identify all the equipment, tools, and supplies needed to support each type of project
4. Gather/fabricate/assemble all needed items
5. Organize everything in our trusty Dodge van and go find our first pop-up project!
Interest in biking is on the rise in Chittenden County, but our streets are not keeping up with the demand for safe places to bike. We need an easy, low-cost way to try out innovative strategies for redesigning our streets for safe biking. Pop-up demonstration projects -- whether they are a day, a week, or a month long -- give people a chance to see just how great it would be if our streets offered protected bike lanes and other bike-friendly options. They also let community leaders and municipal staff get comfortable with new approaches without having to commit to permanent changes sight unseen. The Pop-Up Protected Bike Lane Demonstration Kit will accelerate the development of a network of protected bike lanes, thereby giving many more people the option to make biking a part of their life.
