07.25.08
Posted in Advocacy, East Bay
by Mark Dieterich at 7:37 am
From an article in today’s projo, the Barrington town council
approved spending up to $10,000 to construct a new bike shelter so people can safely store their bicycles before catching a RIPTA bus to work.
The Rhode Island Department of Transportation is offering to finance the design of the project, which will include the installation of about 10 bike racks and a covered shelter.
The location would be near where the bike path connector meets County Road, according to Town Planner Philip Hervey. There is already a shelter for bus riders.
Another town that is starting to understand how bicycles can be used for transportation. If all goes well, this project should end up costing the town very little as
the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority has offered to commit $40,000 if Barrington chips in 20 percent of the cost.
The only question I have here is whether or not RIPTA can afford to do this. At a time when they are discussing route cuts to cover bugetary shortfalls, should they be spending money on bike racks? Hopefully, this means RIPTA has secured other funding to continue their full compliement or routes.
Are you looking for some way to reach out to your local community? I’d suggest each of us can contact our local officials, make sure they know what Barrington is doing and ask whether your town can do the same!
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05.19.08
Posted in Advocacy, Bike Commuting, East Bay
by Margherita at 7:17 am
Inertia at the Top
Belated, Patchy Response Further Hamstrung By Inadequate Federal Attention, Experts Say
By Susan Levine and Lori Aratani
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 19, 2008; A01
The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter — ate more, sat more — and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government.
But since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country’s reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level.
“The sense of this as a national health priority just doesn’t come through,” said Jeffrey P. Koplan of Emory University, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chairman of the Institute of Medicine’s 2004 study of childhood obesity. The top recommendation of that seminal report was for the government to convene a high-level, interdepartmental task force to guide a coordinated response. No such body has been assembled.
Read the rest of this entry »
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03.05.08
Posted in East Bay
by Mark Dieterich at 4:30 pm
From an EastBayRI.com article:
The long-studied Warren Bike Path will be delayed yet again, as a review of the proposed site by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation has triggered a request for an archaeological study by the Narragansett Indians.
The survey was recommended to the town in a March 3 letter. Because of the survey, about four to six weeks will be added to the bike path’s completion time. This will allow the town’s engineering firm, the PARE Corporation, to request a survey from the Public Archaeological Laboratory and to complete the survey.
The $2.5 million project was most recently pitched and planned after a re-design by PARE in April 2006. The first idea for a trail came in 1987, with the idea morphing into a bike path in the 1990s. However, the state’s engineering firm went bankrupt, which required Warren to hire PARE to complete the work. The path would stretch 4,500 feet, from the Warren-Fall River railroad bed near Long Lane to the end of the Kickemuit River.
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11.12.07
Posted in East Bay
by Mark Dieterich at 9:19 pm
The Projo had a recent article about how the Bristol Town Council is considering building some bathrooms at the end of the East Bay Bike Path. For those of us who commute via the bike path, this would be a welcome addition. Hopefully, other towns along the path will follow suite, especially at the Northern end of the path.
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