Last night I spent 3 hours at the SAC Center with 50 individuals with concerns like mine. The Bicycle Advisory Board was well represented, as was the City Council (Mary Verner and Joe Shogan were in attendance). The city planning department, the engineering department, the State Health Board, The Department of Transportation and many many others were in attendance. It was great to see so many different representatives with different viewpoints discuss ways to make Spokane a more Bike Friendly town.

There were a few major themes and ideas that came out of each and every group as reports were made back from small groups to the group as a whole. I will touch on a few of these that make the most sense to communicate to others. Howard Street from Riverfront Park up to Five Mile needs to be marked with bike lanes the entire way. There is currently construction being done on SE Blvd., it would be easy at this point for the city to make SE Blvd entirely marked with bike lanes. I think a mass email / phone campaign to our Mayor right now would possibly get stripes put on SE Blvd!!!!!

In addition to bike lanes it was agreed upon by a significant majority of people that there is a need for a connection from Sprague to the Riverpoint campus non motorized vehicles. Also a topic of discussion was connecting the Ben Burr trail to the Centennial Trail. An interesting discussion arose around lack of sidewalks in Spokane. A map on the wall showed how development in the 1960’s stopped requiring sidewalks and this has disjointed entire neighborhoods.There were many more great topics discussed but the above are just a few of the items. There are future meetings that will hopefully lead to action and my next post will be focused on what “you can do” to make Spokane and safer and more friendly bike town.Happy Riding!!!!! Ben…….