Bicycle Planning Seminars

Planning for bike-friendly communities is becoming more common in major cities, suburbs, and small towns across the country.  Everyday decisions by planners, engineers, and others affect how safe and convenient it is to bike for recreation or transportation.  However, most of these officials have had little to no training on these issues. 

During early 2010, LIB’s Ed Barsotti taught 500 local officials, consultants, and others about the technical aspects and strategic issues of bicycle planning.   The 2.5-hour “Introduction to Bicycle Planning” seminar was held in eleven different locations around Illinois:  Rockford (Jan. 12), Peoria (Jan. 15), Springfield (Jan. 19), St. Louis MO (Jan. 21), Woodstock (Jan. 29), Champaign (Feb. 3), North Aurora (Feb. 5), Des Plaines (Feb. 16), E. Hazel Crest (Feb. 19), Wheaton (Feb. 25), and Ottawa (Apr. 19).  Craig Williams of LYKAH Consulting co-presented at most of these seminars.

The seminar, a condensed version of LIB’s Summer 2009 four-week University of Illinois-Chicago urban planning course, familiarizes attendees with car/bike interactions, relevant national standards, best practices, planning tools, related “political” issues and policy techniques, tips on available funding sources, and implementation strategies.  (The old registration form has more details - pdf)  To help draw professional planners and engineers, continuing education and certification maintenance credits are offered for the seminar.

The seminar will be repeated in the future, but there is no schedule at this time.  You may view the seminar presentation slides here  (9MB pdf).  A video of the seminar is available in several parts on Facebook:

• Introduction
• Bike safety lesson – part 1
• Bike safety lesson – part 2
• Bikeway network – part 1
• Bikeway network – part 2
• Bikeway network – part 3
• Bikeway network – part 4
• Other infrastructure
• Other infrastructure (cont.) and non-infrastructure
• Implementation
• “Top 10″ strategy tips

For bike advocacy organizations (or others) interested in replicating this program or doing something similar, LIB has prepared a memo with lessons learned and suggestions for running a similar seminar program.  LIB’s Ed Barsotti will present these during a presentation at the 2010 Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference in Chattanooga.

Support for the seminars comes from The Alliance for Biking & Walking and its Advocacy Advance Grant, funded by SRAM, Planet Bike, Bikes Belong, and Cannondale.