One of the things that’s nice about living in a town as small as Bloomington is that the connection between different dynamics and forces is much more clear. Two development plans that will really affect Bloomington in coming years are Finelight’s proposal for a new headquarters downtown. Finelight is requesting that the city help provide parking for it’s employees, claiming that parking downtown is scarce. A local group conducted a study questioning perceptions of parking scarcity downtown and this study has become central in the debate around Finelight’s plans. I’ve also been paying attention to bike issues and the proposal for the B-Line bike path on the old railroad grade that runs north/south through Bloomington. Tonight on WFHB’s interchange, they had guests from Bloomington Transportation Options for People, the group that conducted the parking study as well as a transportation planner from Portland, Oregon.
Two new strategies or tools regarding shared use of roads that I had never heard of: “bicycle boulevards” and “sharrows”.
Link to WFHB’s programming archive where this episode of interchange should be available for download soon.