Bikes
The Houston Bike Plan
Houston
is a thriving, diverse, and vibrant city. New residents and businesses
continue to move to Houston. New projects continue to be developed, from
master-planned communities to higher density, mixed-use neighborhoods. Much
of this growth is driven by the affordable, attractive quality of life that
is available in the city. With this growth, more people are moving about the
city, and an increasing number are doing so by bicycle.
People
bicycling in Houston match the diversity of the city and the types of
bicycle trips people take are just as varied. The city and region have made
great strides to support people bicycling. The Bayou Greenways Initiative is
expanding rapidly to provide attractive, comfortable paths for people of all
ages by transforming major bayou corridors in the City and beyond. The bike
share system, Houston B-cycle, is in the process of a major expansion to
connect more neighborhoods with more destinations. Bike connections on
METRO’s transit system continue to grow and more people of all backgrounds
are riding in events like Tour de Houston and Critical Mass. The city has
installed its first separated on-street bikeway on Lamar Street in Downtown
and has adopted new context-sensitive infrastructure design approaches to
integrate safe, comfortable bikeways into more streets in the City of
Houston. PlanHouston, the City’s first general plan, was adopted in 2015 and
identifies a goal of Connecting People and Places, including the development
and maintenance of a citywide bicycle plan.
Read more about the Houston Bike Plan.
CTC Bike Plan Recommendations
Bike Plans are becoming increasingly more important to Houston’s and the
H-GAC’s transportation modes. By H-GAC’s recent study (2012) residents
across the H-GAC area wish to see $13 of every $100 spent on bike ways and
sidewalks. See the pie chart below.
CTC filed comments
to Houston Public Works and Engineering/Planning focusing on the need for
written, formal processes insuring access
of neighborhoods to public involvement in formulating
bikeway plans; and notice, comment, open meeting, and outreach procedures to
be included in Chapter 33 Bike Plan revisions (as well as other PWE/Planning
revisions to the city code or its guidances and policies.)
Click here to view CTC comments bike-plan-public-involvement-comments-to-citys-aug-26-revisions:
To prevent stakeholders for having to fight each time about the public
involvement processes for each separate project, we urged the city to
consider a blanket public involvement and transparency process for the city,
or at least perhaps for PWE/Planning to promote greater and earlier public
involvement, to promote fairness, and to prevent legal and other obstacles
to important projects from cropping up at the last minute.
The city PWE/Planning should rise at least to the level of other agencies
with regard to involvement of the neighborhoods. Other governmental agencies
which have formal bike plans, such as TxDOT, FHWA, and particularly H-GAC,
all have formal notice and comment processes for adopting regulations, open
meetings, and formal processes for soliciting public comments for particular
projects including bicycle plans.
The city has no compelling reason not to be in line with those agencies in
terms of procedural and access rights of residents and neighborhoods.