Bikes

 

The Houston Bike Plan

Houston Bike PlanHouston 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.