Hi, folks!

Well, it's light at 5pm these days, and I've been hearing birds chattering
like Spring is coming, so hopefully soon we'll start to thaw out.

I wanted to let you all know that Abbi Rider, who manages the Brown
Transportation Office (and Plan), is suppporting an official Bike to Brown
map. After speaking with her, the plan is to have both a large-scale map of
our recommended cycling routes to campus, and a campus-scale map of existing
facilties such as racks and building showers. Also, it will have some tips
for safe riding. For all of this content, I will soon be soliciting your
suggestions and help.

For the campus facilities map, I would start with the Harvard map as a
model, but make it more streamlined and simpler:

<http://www.commuterchoice.harvard.edu/bike_racks_and_routes3.pdf> [1.1MB PDF]

To assist with gathering the type of information necessary to produce such a
map, I will be meeting this Friday with Mike McCormick, who is a cyclist
himself (though not on this list at this time), and in charge of Planning at
Brown Facilities. He has the hard map data on rack and shower locations that
we should be able to plug into our map.

While I'm meeting with him, I also plan to raise a few other topics about
planning and management of bike facilities at Brown. I want to give you all
an opportunity to contribute additional topics to our meeting agenda if you
have any.

Specifically, I hope to ask him to reconsider the design of future bike
racks deployed at Brown. The current traditional serpentine wheel-benders
(such as those at <http://www.dero.com/rolling_rack.html>)are pretty, but a
little regressive functionally. Current best practices are more supportive
configurations such as those at <http://www.dero.com/hoop_rack.html> or
<http://www.dero.com/rail.html> or <http://www.dero.com/bike_hitch.html>.
This last style has been deployed around the downtown area by Bike Downtown.
I don't think it will be cost-effective for Brown to rip out and replace
existing racks, but certainly new construction projects that include racks
could be specified with better designs.

Please let me know if you personally have strong feelings *against* this
recommendation.

I also have a recurring fantasy of some interesting *covered* bike storage
at Brown. I think it could be really cool to perhaps work out a design
competition at RISD Architecture each semester, and build the winning design
at Brown. It would only need to be a canopy over paving/racks. We could get
some really progressive architecture at Brown for a low cost this way,
tucked into interesting niches on campus. What do y'all think of me spending
any time pitching this idea? I know I for one would be grateful for covered
outdoor bike parking, to save my office floor. I really don't want to leave
my bike outside *uncovered* in all weather though.

So, what are the topics *you* would like me to address with Mike? Are there
areas of campus that don't have enough racks right now? Any new construction
for which you want Brown to build-in indoor bike parking? Feel free to bring
up anything; I can tell you if it's appropriate to ask Mike or not.

Thanks all for your input. Hope to see you out on the road soon!

Don

Bike to Brown discussion list:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/bike-to-brown.html

Bike to Brown website:
http://biketobrown.brown.edu/