HUNTSVILLE – Automobile drivers navigating streets and roads around the Huntsville metropolitan region know all too well of the many construction zones during these boom times.
Bicyclists know as well, and they’ll soon get some more riding room.
The Huntsville City Council passed a resolution Thursday night to green light an agreement with a national company to review and help update the area’s plans for bicycle routes.
The agreement is between the City of Huntsville and eco-friendly ALTA Planning + Design for the Huntsville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Bicycle Plan.
“This is, in our opinion, a long overdue update to the MPO bikeway plan,” said Dennis Madsen, manager of the city’s long-ranged and urban planning department and the Huntsville area MPO. “We’ve been sort of patching it together for the last really couple of decades. This is our first opportunity to really take a comprehensive look at updating the complete bike plan, and emphasizing not just for the city of Huntsville, but this is an MPO wide effort.
“So we’ll include unincorporated Madison County, parts of Limestone County that are in the MPO, city of Madison, city of Huntsville, Owens Cross Roads, Triana, all the constituents. There’s well over a thousand square miles of planning for the bike plan.”
The updated plan, Madsen said, will be done with “100% MPO planning funds. Nothing comes out of the city’s pockets.”
Councilmember Jennie Robinson of District 3 applauded the move.
“I think this is good news,” she said. “There’s a lot of interest in the community about improving our bike infrastructure and this is an important first step toward that.”
Madsen was asked if he had a ballpark estimate of the number of bicycle miles that are in Huntsville city limits.
“That actually depends on how you categorize them, whether it’s a ‘share the road’ or a dedicated bike way,” he said. “One of the parts of this plan will actually be looking at our existing infrastructure, because then that’s going to start to inform a gap analysis. What are the things that we have on the ground? What are the sort of breaks in that network that don’t allow you to safely get from point A to point B?
“But hopefully, at least part way through this process, I’ll be able to give you a number on that down to the foot.”
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