Cyclist’s Death Spurs Push for “Complete Streets” in Huntsville, AL

Posted & filed under Alabama Car Insurance, Auto Safety.

Last month, Huntsville, Alabama resident Sharon Bayler spent time lobbying her city’s mayor, Tommy Battle, pushing for a “Complete Streets” policy which would make local roads safer for bicyclists, pedestrians, and people in wheelchairs. Sadly, last month Bayler also died – she was killed in an accident in Tennessee, while on her bike.

Today, her friends are taking up her banner, carrying on her campaign.

One such friend, Leela Pahl, another Huntsville cyclist, told reporters last week, “She wanted the streets to be for everyone. Sharon’s death has stirred up a lot of feelings that there’s something fundamentally wrong with how people are driving carelessly.”

Last January, Pahl and Bayler teamed up to present Mayor Battle with a petition signed by about 1,400 people, asking the city to pass the Complete Streets policy. At his website, bellovelo.com, another Huntsville bicyclist, Jim Garvin is continuing to gather signatures in an online version of the petition.

Complete Streets is a national movement that works to make public streets user friendly and safe for pedestrians, bicyclists, and wheelchair users, as well as drivers, and public transit. In some cases, the result might mean the creation of designated bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and wider shoulders, while in others it means the designation of special lanes for buses, or raised medians which allow walkers to safely cross busy roads.

Already, several cities and counties have welcomed the concept, among them Chickasaw, Daphne, and Fairhope, Alabama, Pascagoula and Tupelo, Mississippi, and Cobb County, Georgia.

According to Ms. Pahl, there are many Huntsville, AL streets which are “not very friendly” for disabled people, walkers, and bike riders. Specifically, she says, sidewalks are not always interconnected, and some curbs don’t have wheelchair ramps. As well, dedicated bike lanes are a rarity.

“If we want to be one of the best places to live and raise a family,” Pahl said last Thursday, “then we should also be one of the best places to walk and ride a bicycle. It would only help the city go forward.”

While it’s the biking set that has been the most outspoken about the urgency for a Complete Streets policy in Huntsville, Mayor Battle’s Green 13 task force, which focuses on environmental sustainability, also supports the concept. In their report to the mayor in February of this year, task force members recommended the city, “…update street standards and adopt policies consistent with those outlines by the national campaign for ‘Complete Streets’.” The report also said that such updating should begin with the improvement of the roads connecting downtown Huntsville with Cummings Research Park, Bridge Street Town Centre, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

On Friday, Battle told the press that he agrees with the message of Complete Streets, but feels that the city government can’t afford to do the necessary retrofitting of existing roads, to add wider shoulders and bike lanes. Instead, he would prefer to incorporate those design elements into new roads where the city has enough right-of-way, as it did on the Oakwood Road extension, and Cecil Ashburn Drive.

“It’s a good goal to incorporate portions of that (Complete Streets) system into what we’re already doing,” Battle said. “But we’ve also got to stay within budget, too.”

Pahl countered that making streets more bike- and pedestrian-friendly doesn’t half to be expensive, and added that she’d like to see the mayor film a PSA asking drivers to show more consideration to cyclists.

Source: Insurance Journal