MPO Ride 2024

 

route map

The Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, AARP, and other co-sponsors had a glorious day for the annual MPO Ride, a 14-mile loop from Bever Park to the Prairie Park Fishery and back. It was my first MPO Ride since 2017. That year we had nearly 50 riders exploring trail improvements from here to Robins; this year we more than doubled that number (120, according to Roman Kiefer). We were a mighty group.

Gathering at Bever Park

Roman Kiefer, MPO transportation planner, with megaphone at the ready

Unlike previous MPO Rides I've attended, when we cycled from project site to project site, this year we did a non-stop ride followed by an informational session back at Bever Park about stuff in the works--projects that were not on the route.

Our route took us downtown, then down 3rd Street to New Bohemia and out on Otis Road. We "took a lane" in town, even when there was a bike lane, since there were so many of us. I imagine drivers were surprised to find that many bikers crossing their route to work or Saturday morning errands. These rides tend to be well-publicized within the cycling community, but not so much to the general public. Were I riding solo, my experience would be different, as would the drivers', but it shows that getting to the trail can be a significant effort.

Approaching 10th Street on 3rd Avenue

We were briefly on a trail at the Prairie Park Fishery, then at Indian Creek Nature Center we got on the Sac and Fox Trail. That got us almost all the way back to Bever Park. From Trailridge and Indiandale to Bever and 34th it's a long painful hill, but we made it. Here the challenge to connect to the trail is not traffic--though once you're back on Bever Avenue it can be aggressive--but landforms. They, too, can be deterrents to riding.

In all we were on streets with sharrows, streets with bike lanes, Otis Road which has no markings, hard surface trail, and packed gravel trail. The packed gravel trails had suffered a little with the recent rains.

riders on Otis Road near Indian Creek Nature Center

On the Sac and Fox Trail, approaching Rosedale Road

View of Indian Creek from the Sac and Fox Trail

One bit of infrastructure that was at least new to me was a wide sidewalk along East Post Road from the Sac and Fox trailhead to Trailridge Road.

Along East Post Road approaching Indian Creek

Back at Bever Park, we heard about Connect CR plans for Cedar Lake and the Sleeping Giant Bridge.  Part of the rebuilding of Czech Village will be a reimagined B Street that will be part of a Lightline Loop connecting to the main north-south trail. 

What was formerly B Street will be a pedestrian "promenade" from 16th to 18th Avenues, and then a woonerf from 18th to 21st.  There will be more development, including residences, a "destination park," and a new roundhouse. It's nice to see some creative thinking here, though I have my doubts about woonerfs, particularly with all the motor vehicle traffic at the destination park.

So, it was a little exercise and a little information, on a beautiful day, clearly oriented to recreational cycling rather than commuting. But our recreational trail opportunities have come a long way, and to have this ride practically at my fingertips (I live blocks from Bever Park) says something significant. So does the huge number of participants!

A Brandon Whyte retrospective

MPO ride 2015: Why is the paint green?

Brandon Whyte, whose presence as multimodal transportation planner for the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization has been large and constant throughout the lifetime of this blog, will be leaving Cedar Rapids for Mountain View, California, for a new job closer to family. "This job gave me purpose," Brandon said of his time in Cedar Rapids. "Serving you all, trying to improve walking and biking in the metro, is literally what I wanted to do with my life since college--since I learned that this profession was even a possibility." He offers hope for the day when the trail system will "become world-class."

By way of a parting salute, Holy Mountain offers this tour through Brandon Whyte's greatest hits--some of them, anyway--where we have crossed paths in the last eight years.

Bike to Work Week 2014: Early look at New Bohemia development

Bike to Work Week 2015: 1st Ave pit stop

MPO ride 2015: announcing Hoover Trail south of Ely

August 2015: protected bike lane demo,
led to praise for Brandon on strongtowns.org

MPO ride 2016: meet the mountain bike trail at Beverly Park

Bike to Work Week 2016: Mayor Corbett prepares to ride to Kickstand

Bike to Work Week 2017: Collins pit stop

MPO ride 2017: trail crossing at Boyson Road

October 2018: support for Tower Terrace Road ped-bike trail

August 2018: last leg of Cedar Valley Trail opened! 

May 2019: bike rental rollout

An expanding trails system is Brandon's legacy

And who could forget those bus route surveys!

Anyone who enjoys thinking about these issues as much as I do is a friend for sure! And what joy to see the buses rolling again after the shutdown!

So long, my friend. Thank you for all your good work, and good health to you and your family. Say hi to Charles Babbage if you see him!

Computer History Museum, Mountain View CA, July 2014

Where's the sleet?: MPO Ride 2017

Last weekend's 4th annual tour of recent bicycle infrastructure in the metropolitan area featured a range of projects oriented to trail riders, bicycle commuters, and in some cases both. Those of us accustomed to the foul weather that has accompanied recent MPO rides were pleasantly surprised by the sunshine and pleasant breezes ("More like RAGBRAI, without pie," said one awed participant). Linn County Trails Association's chief trail counter John Wauer counted 49 riders in the morning, which was at least triple last year's delegation. Though this had to make it more logistically challenging for ride leaders, it was good to get the good news out to more people.

We gathered at the New Bo City Market, along with a huge group gathered to walk for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. So great to see people taking advantage of the weather and Cedar Rapids's increasing walkability to work for a good cause!

The Eastern Iowa chapter of the JDRF does not do things by halves

We found each other among the throng

First stop was along F Avenue NE, near the new athletic complex being constructed by Mount Mercy University.

Phillip Platz from their public relations department, who is also a member of the Linn County Trails Association, said they're hoping for completion by August 1, with grand opening scheduled for September 30.

The CeMar trail will run along F Avenue and through these athletic fields--land donated by Mount Mercy--and will eventually tunnel under 1st Avenue to connect the Cedar River Trail with the Marion Parks Trails. The land between the colleges seems primed for growth, and in September this very spot will be the site of a tactical urbanism event put on by the group Corridor Urbanism, about which more in time.

We rode north, across 42nd Street where the Cedar River Trail crosses the off-ramp from interstate 380... still an awkward encounter, but the interface is much improved.

If it's awkward you're after, though, you can't beat the construction zone north of Blairs Ferry Road. During this stretch the trail crosses Center Point Road before heading north to join the Cedar Valley Nature Trails. I'm sure it will be great when it's done.

The trail crossing at Boyson Road features new trail crossing indicators, just installed the previous day. Push a button on one of the posts on either side of the trail, placed at just the right height for a rider to reach--though I failed to connect when I tried to push it while still on the move.

The buttons trigger flashing lights on the road signs which warn drivers--and they stopped!

Ready to stop for lunch! at Lebowski's Bar & Grill in Robins Square, a few blocks down Main Street from the trail, and dedicated to Jeff Bridges's character in the 1998 film "The Big Lebowski." (Quotes from the movie appear on a poster on the wall.)

Back on the road, we returned to 42nd Street and then pushed all the way west past Xavier High School to the Rock Island Preserve.

The plan is to have a trail through here from Seminole Valley Park to the south, then up to the Route 100 extension (somewhat visible in the picture above), across the Cedar River and then south near the highway to the Cherokee Trail planned to run west out of downtown Cedar Rapids. This will be a multi-year process, however.

We rode down Edgewood Road--very exciting, but not nearly as exciting as Stoney Point Road in the wind last year--to Ellis Park, where we took the Ellis Trail downtown. Finally, we were told about progress on the Sleeping Giant bridge south of Czech Village, how trails in that area will be reconstructed after the flood walls are put in, and the importance of reporting trail counts to the LCTA.

I engaged in some critical thinking while I rode, which is not easy to manage when one is also pushing an out-of-shape body along a reported 26 miles, not running into people, and remembering to shout "Car back!" But I'd recently read an article by Rachel Quednau on the Strong Towns blog, which in turn referenced an article in Bicycling magazine, arguing that cities often neglect the poorest cyclists when developing cycling infrastructure. These are folks who, in Quednau's words, "use their bikes to get to work, not to save a little money or for the purposes of exercise, but because they have no other option." A survey by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition found 40 percent of respondents they approached on the street (as opposed to those surveyed by Internet or mail) earned less than $15,000 annually.... in Los Angeles! Here's Quednau quoting Dan Koeppel in Bicycling:

Neighborhood after neighborhood revealed surprise after surprise. The Invisible Riders, for instance, log far more hours than most "serious" cyclists. They do so on equipment most of us wouldn't touch and under the most adverse conditions: at the height of rush hour on the busiest thoroughfares. [...] Most of the riders I met viewed their commute as a battle, but exhibited none of the smug, anti-automotive posturing many committed middle-class bike commuters wear as a badge of honor.

Besides forswearing smugness, which we should all do simply for the well-being of our own souls, we are reminded by Koeppel and Quednau that we need to be developing cycling infrastructure for the whole community, not merely to respond to the desires of a vocal group. Recreational trails are valuable assets, but are we also helping people get to work?

With mountain bike trails? Well, probably not

With trails connecting the west side to downtown? Probably

With protected bike lanes in commercial areas? Definitely!

The new infrastructure the MPO has featured on these annual rides serves, as far as I can tell, both riders of choice and riders of necessity. It's unlikely, of course, many people are using the Cedar Valley Nature Trail to get to work, but a well-planned urban trail network can spare commuting cyclists of all income levels some of the rigors of rush hour. There's some evidence poverty in our metropolitan area has dispersed in recent years, but the Cedar River Trail, the Lindale Trail and the proposed Cherokee Trail all connect low-income areas with downtown. Poor people in core neighborhoods benefit from bike lanes on commuter streets as well as efforts to slow cars through residential areas through road diets and one-way-to-two-way conversions. Cedar Rapids for decades developed as though everyone could and would make all essential daily trips by motor vehicle. As we roll into Bike to Work Week, the progress we've made in commuter cycling can help people get along without cars, which is a huge boost to the ol' standard of living.

EARLIER POSTS
"MPO Ride," 15 May 2016
"Riding on Infrastructure with the Corridor MPO," 2 June 2015

MPO Ride 2016

Gathering at Greene Square

About 15 bold cyclists had a rather miserable but rather enjoyable time of it on the Corridor MPO Bike Ride Saturday. The riding was complicated by a ferocious west wind, which accentuated the effects of hills and heavy traffic.

Temp without wind chill... The crowd was clearly held down by the unfriendly weather

We made two stops in Cedar Rapids.

The first was at Veterans Memorial Stadium, home of the Cedar Rapids Kernels minor league baseball team. Community relations manager Ryne George gave us a tour of everything but the dugouts and the playing field, which were occupied by the teams participating in the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference baseball tournament. In the press box they have oversized baseball cards representing nearly all 405 major leaguers who played for Cedar Rapids.

Concourse view

Mezzanine view

Urbanists want to know: Was the stadium, built with public funds in 2002, a good investment for the city? Hard to say. The Kernels are not privately owned, and their community outreach (to schools and veterans, for example) is energetic. But they've never achieved the 200,000 annual ticket sales which would have paid for the stadium.

Next we rode to Beverly Park on 37th Avenue SW, where Ken Barker from the Linn Area Mountain Bike Association talked to us about the trails the city has created in the last 10 years, after there had been unofficial trails since the 1980s.

Mountain bike trails work with the existing flora to the extent possible

A mild jump

There are trails for all ages and levels

Battling out to Fairfax was facilitated by a newly-created trail south of Westdale Mall to Beverly Road, but once out in the country it was us, the hills, the wind, the traffic and the wind. The drivers were very amenable to our presence, perhaps sympathetic to our struggle. No one honked; one guy gunned his engine as he passed, but that was it. Hooray for humanity putting up with each other!

Fairfax is an old small town southwest of Cedar Rapids that did some serious sprawling in the 1990s. They've just put a cycle track through town, starting here along Cemetery Road:

Our target was the Star Bar, a historic tavern that dates from about 1870.

It's comfortable, good beer, good food. The woman who co-owns it told us about the history and the ghosts.

Our departure was delayed by train:

For the way back we opted for Stoney Point Road over 80th Street to save on hill-climbing. We might have done that, but it was no less windy, and traffic was surprisingly (to me, anyway) heavy. That was the most difficult part of the trip, but we were encouraged by the news that there is a trail planned along 80th Street. Once in town, the wind was less fierce, and ditto the traffic.

We made several brief stops on the west side of Cedar Rapids, where multimodal transportation planner Brandon Whyte showed us the planned route for the Cherokee Trail, which will run through the city from 80th Street through Cherry Hill Park

...and the chain of parks near Hoover School. Getting it over or around the Vinton Ditch is the most difficult part.

The Vinton Ditch from E Avenue NW. It's what looks in this picture like a crease in the field.

 Second most difficult is obtaining rights-of-way in a few key places.

Cedar Rapids and the other towns in Linn County are making great efforts to expand our trails network. I'd argue that trails are merit goods, offering opportunities for recreation and in some cases (like the proposed Cherokee Trail) commuting. That gets people exercise and gets cars off the roads.

LAST YEAR'S RIDE: "Riding on Infrastructure with the Corridor MPO," 2 June 2015, http://brucefnesmith.blogspot.com/2015/06/riding-on-infrastructure-with-corridor.html