Thread by @carlitecarfangs

Kicking off the 6th Oklahoma Bike Summit this morning! Thank you @OKDOT for partnering with BikeOklahoma and providing the venue for today!

I'll be tweeting some of the more powerful statements throughout today as I can (so Twitter feeds, beware).

@LtGovPinnell giving powerful opening remarks. Tourism is Oklahoma's 3rd largest industry, and it's almost all organic. Oklahoma has unmatched history, geology, and ecology. Trails would provide an immersive experience of what Oklahoma has to offer.

Pinnell continues: We have more miles of the most famous road than any other state. It is a natural tourism draw that we would be foolish to not actively enhance and promote. @route66news

@LtGovPinnell: "In Arkansas, the Walton Family Foundation has built perhaps the world's best trail system, because they firmly know that outdoor recreation activities and trails ARE economic development."

#Bikes4Tourism
#Bikes4TheEconomy

Paul Wojciechowski discusses Complete Streets: "They safely amd confortablely serve the needs of the communities they go through." Simple as that. (Sort Of)

"Don't tell me why you can't do it. I want to know HOW you can." Perspective, a little insight, and (deep) common sense goes a long way.

Who are your streets trying to serve? With @cityofokc's noble development of top-notch senior centers, how do people get there?
"People outlive their ability to drive by 10 years."

"The health effects of loneliness and isolation is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes per day"

"By 2035 we will have more seniors than children. Communities need to ask themselves 'Are we ready?'...
Whatever you call them, complete streets, liveable streets, calm streets, safe streets, they are essential to serving community needs."

"Whatever you call complete streets, make them your own. Oklahoma City cannot be Portland" and that's a good thing. Involve the public, the context, your unique perspective. The goals are the same (safe, comfortable, useful for everyone), but implementation can have your style.

Paul continues, showing a few examples of successes in his Missouri communities, reallocating space along a 5-lane roadway to 3 lanes, plus bike lanes, wider sidewalks, better drainage, pedestrian islands, and meeting the needs of emergency vehicles.

This project goes by 3 schools, a church, and a university. People are now comfortable walking and biking with their kids to school now.

Paul on Space reallocation. "Streets are expensive. Why let them go underutilized?"
They reallocated space on overly wide streets, incorporating bump-outs, pedestrian plazas, seating space, greenery, and in general a MUCH more liveable community.

"Remember that you aren't designing for that 1 or 2 percent who will still bike anywhere. You are designing for AT LEAST the 60 percent of concerned but interested riders who need (and deserve) mire separation and protection from fast moving motor vehicles."
#OKBikeSummit

Question from the audience: How can we balance funding complete streets infrastructure of the result is more people biking, less Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), and therefore less fuel tax for funding?

Think long term (complete streets perspective). Less VMT means less wear and tear on roadways, so less money needs to be spent on maintenance.

In addition, there does need to be a much larger discussion about how transportation infrastructure gets funded. The fuel tax hasn't been raised in 26 years, and in Oklahoma, it only covers 30% of the costs of roads - the rest of it comes from general taxes and sales taxes.

So happy to have @BillNesper Executive Director at @BikeLeague visiting @cityofokc and @OKDOT. He's already excited about our passion, and says to do everything @LtGovPinnell and Paul W. say.

Bill adresses the question from earlier, there is a fair amount of federal funding for bike infrastructure and complete streets - Transportation Alternatives. Still less than 2% of all federal transportation dollars. But it's been growing, and ridership has increased with it.

By the way, the new transportation and infrastructure bill includes a 50 increase for TAPs. So call your representatives (@RepKendraHorn for me) to let them know you support it and want to see it passed, and to keep in mind it's a great start for representative funding.

(Nationally in 2017, Bikers and pedestrians represented 12% of road users, 18% of road fatalities, but less than 2% of transportation funding.)

He reiterates that road diets (shoutout to @MickCornett on putting the city on a diet), complete streets, are all about reallocating space to better utilize a limited public resource.

Further, they are about placemaking, connecting people to each other and their city.

He discusses a lot of data and metrics on bike friendly communities and states available on the @BikeLeague's website. He adds safety for all road users is a problem we know how to solve, but political leadership has not prioritized it.

Bill ends with excitement for us, and resources to help boost is even further.

Brent Hugh from Missouri's advocacy network is adding to the why and the how for enhancing bike networks and trails. He makes strong comparisons between the infrastructure challenges both Missouri and Oklahoma face. (Mostly rural, financially, politically, infrastructurally.)

He adds the great cycling cities in the world tool 30+ years to get where they are. Missouri (like Oklahoma) started getting serious about biking infrastructure after 2010. So the long view is important.

Most transportation engineering is based on the mid-1950s data of 5% driving increase per year. Hence, demand saying build a 2-lane road for now, make it a 4-lane road to be ready for the future. But rates of VMT is dropping hard. So why are we still overbuilding?

So much great stuff and discussions it was hard to keep up. Will try to catch up after my session. A couple teaser pictures.

Brent dropped a lot of good stats. (He has a Mathematics background, he can't help it. I love it). In Missouri, they conducted a detailed survey of what recreational activities people do. It showed MASSIVE numbers for how many residents would use good trails.

A survey of of Missouri residents about recreational activity showed:
-85% walk
-40% bike
-25% run or jog
-25% hike

AND YET, major recreational capital goes to baseball, football, soccer, tennis, golf...
Missouri started focusing a little differently. Trails. Legendary trails.

Looking further at the economics of recreation and tourism, it showed that bicyclists are the ideal tourism demographic, spending more per day and per trip than any other - $100/person/night, with longer stays.
(He's gesturing the drooling when they saw the numbers.)

Compare Strava Heatmaps and population density maps. "Where there are people, there are bicycles."

A couple interested elements:
1. In NW Arkansas, the Fayetteville/Bentonville area has dedicated serious money developing their trails. And residents and tourists respond (leading to more money for trails). You can see the state borders with OK and MO just by where riders stop.

A couple interested elements:
2. Exceptions to where there are people, there are bikes. There are also bikes on good, long, and historic routes. in MO, Katy Trail, Route 66, Ozark Trail.

"If you build it, they will ride it."

A couple interested elements:
Even though OK hasn't done much to help Route 66, people still ride it. Why aren't we enhancing it and capitalizing on it?

The longer the trail system:
1. The further people will travel to visit it.
2. The more days visitors stay ($$)
3. The more they spend per day ($$$)

20 mile trail? If I'm passing through I might check it out. 500 mile trail system? I'll plan a few weeks to fly around the world for it.

"Big trails drive connections!"

The Katy Trail is 240 miles built by the state.. But after seeing the success of it, small and large towns near it wanted a piece of the action. So THEY built connections to it, which made it all the more interesting as a tourist destination.

The Katy Trail is 10 feet wide. But with all the connections, it now feels 10 miles wide. Tourists can choose their own adventure to explore a town, find a restaurant, shop, sleep, etc...It's a win for small towns, a win for the state, and a win for tourists.

Going back to Bentonville, the Waltons invested in trails in order to attract and retain the best and brightest employees at their headquarters.

Sound familiar, @CityofOKC?

We have 110 miles of paved trail, a couple mountain bike trails, but no connections. Yet. #MAPS4

Oklahoma, like Missouri, has a lot of historic and scenic routes. Build a cultural adventure trail system around it.
-Link metros with rural towns
-Fill in connectivity gaps
-highlight historic, cultural, scenic landmarks
-build cultural pride by highlighting it.

Win/Win/Win

Secretary of Transportation, and ODOT Director, Tim Gatz, gave the Luncheon Plenary. He talked about the evolving culture at ODOT, that transportation obviously includes walk, bike, bus, rail, freight, and cars. He continued with how that culture trickles down through ODOT.

He went technically deep with transportation funding mechanisms and issues. Too deep to capture on twitter, but I loved it. But with Fuel Economy, goals of reduced VMT, transportation funding needs serious partnership for serious vision.

67% of road fatailities occur on rural 2-lanes, even though that's only 11% of our roads. In addition to structurally updating bridges, those rural 2-lanes are the focus.

Specifically of interest for the biking community (~40% of the population based on Missouri's survey), all rural 2-lane roads will be getting large shoulders. 4 ft minimum, 6-10ft goal, shooting for 8 feet. Rumble strips at fog line and centerline too.

After lunch, we had a virtual ride (the wind, rain and cold meant we collected cold and rainy video the evening before), and analyzed infrastructure pretty in-depth.
-What do road users feel, when riding and walking here?
-What do they need?

Lane widths, sight lines, sharrows, crosswalks, curb radii, STROADS, ADA compliance, raised crosswalks, drainage, scenery, comfort, pleasantness, on-street parking, door zones...

We covered a lot. Day 2 is Saturday at the Boathouse. You should just come.

We ended with group exercises. Participants sent in problem intersections from their communities ahead of time, and the attendees on Friday went to work developing solutions. There were some funny moments speculating how community meetings about these solutions might go.

It was a positive and productive atmosphere that continued into a social happy hour afterwards. See you all at Day 2 at the Devon Boathouse, which will include @jospacebear, @jdunnington, @BillNesper, OK Freewheel, and so much more!
OKBike.org
#OKBikeSummit

Live at the Devon Boathouse, Day 2 of the Oklahoma Bike Summit. We have 2 tracks, and I'm hosting a few sessions, so I won't be able to live tweet today. With a little luck, @OKC_SPAN, @BrettDOkc, or @martypeercy may be here, and may fill that role.
Better yet, join us! 9 to 5pm

Beautiful sunrise scenery along the river as attendees are rolling in.

Tons of great items here for the silent auction, and a hige thanks to @newbelgium for raffling off this sweet bike!

Packed house for session 1 with @BillNesper and Larry Mitchell on how to raise Oklahoma to a Top 10 Cycling State.

Follow along with @OKC_SPAN here:

https://twitter.com/OKC_SPAN/status/1188093896217239552?s=19