Bicycle Board Members,
* Chevrons *Our bike-and-chevron shared lane marking recommendations to the City took a major step forward today. This morning, Don Spencer and I met with Dan Boroff, City Manager and Terry Hough, City Engineer, Director Public Works. Mr. Boroff wants to install all at one time, in the Spring, all 89 of the shared lane markings that we recommended. The City is beginning the 2008 budget process and he said the shared lane markings will be near the top of the list. The next and perhaps only remaining obstacle is State DOH approval of the installations.
Concerning next steps
1. Boroff directed Terry Hough to coordinate with Ron Eck and to meet with WVDOH District Manager Greg Phillips to get WVDOH approval. 2. Boroff directed Terry Hough to refine the cost estimate. (Our cost estimate included materials but not labor. Boroff wants Hough to estimate the total cost including labor.) 3. Boroff will include the total cost estimate in the budget that he'll present to City Council in the Feb-Mar timeframe. 4. Given 1-3, the City will advertise for bids in spring 2008 and the shared lane markings should be completed next summer.
*Education Grant* Thanks to generous time and help from Bill Reger-Nash, we completed the Intent-to-Apply form for a 2008 WV Transportation Enhancement Program grant to support the education recommendations that we presented to the Traffic Commission in February. The Intent-to-Apply, as well as the actual application will be submitted by Jeff Mikorski, Assistant City Manager. Bill and I met with Mr. Mikorski this morning to review our input to the Intent-to-Apply form. We made some small but very important adjustments to it with Jeff's guidance and we're all pretty confident that our Intent-to-Apply form will be accepted and the State will invite us to submit a proposal. We're requesting $55K federal funds to support instructor development, course advertising and course delivery with a target of delivering the Road I course to more 300 people over a year and changing the behavior of at least 8,000 greater Morgantown residents towards bicycling.
Frank