Downtown Urbana Bike Lanes

Important Points About Proposed Downtown Urbana Main Street Road Diet & Bike Lanes

by Cynthia Hoyle

For those who would like to send an email or call their city council member and/or the Mayor I am pasting in the information below. Please be positive and explain why you feel the road diet should be implemented and if and how it would encourage you to shop more in downtown Urbana. I am including some important points below:

One of the city council strategies was to become a "Bicycle Friendly Community". Urbana's award-winning Bicycle Master Plan and its implementation was part of the reason Urbana won recognition as a Bicycle Friendly Community this year. Implementing the plan includes the road diet and bike lanes on Main St.
Another city council goal is to become an "Environmentally Sustainable Community" and a strategy under this goal is to: "Become a multimodal bike and pedestrian-friendly community that support sustainable transportation." Bicycling is the most fuel efficient and least GHG producing mode of transportation.
Under the City Council goal of "Creating a vibrant and innovative downtown" the following strategy is included: "Develop connectivity across and to downtown with an emphasis on walking and biking." The Main St. road diet and bike lanes accomplish this strategy.
A road diet and bike lanes were included in the Urbana Downtown Plan adopted several years ago.

The Urbana Bicycle Master Plan was adopted with a lot of public input and awarding winning bicycle planning experts assisted in its development. The experts have said that diagonal parking on Main St. would make bicycling downtown less safe. The same experts have said that having a bike lane would make downtown safer for bicyclists.

Adding diagonal parking on Main St. would only add 8 parking spaces and a parking study done a couple of years ago showed there is an excess of vehicular parking in downtown.

Under the city council goal for "Quality of Life" increasing diversity is a strategy. Providing people with the ability to bicycle provides for diversity as not everyone has the ability to own a car and a bicycle is a very affordable form of transportation used by many low-income people in our community. Providing safe and well designed infrastructure for all our citizens includes providing for bicyclists.

Main St. is the only East-West connection available for a bike lane in the north-central part of Urbana that will connect east Urbana with the downtown and campus. The residents of east Urbana who are students and low income deserve safe and accessible transportation choices.

Hearing from people individually does help!

Cynthia Hoyle

Note from Gary Cziko: The Urbana Main Street Traffic Plan that will be presented to the Urbana City Council can be downloaded here (pdf 4.5 MB).

Contact information for Urbana Mayor and City Council Members

(see Urbana map for ward boundaries)

Laurel Lunt Prussing

Mayor of Urbana

400 South Vine Street Urbana, IL 61801

217-384-2456

(217) 384-2426 (Fax)

llprussing@city.urbana.il.us

Ward 2

David Gehrig [D]

304 W. Elm Street #5

Urbana, IL 61801

Phone: 384-9564

dggehrig@city.urbana.il.us

Ward 3

Robert E. Lewis [D]

803 North Goodwin

Urbana, IL 61801

Phone: 328-3585

relewis@city.urbana.il.us

Ward 6

Heather D. Stevenson [R]

413 Beringer Circle

Urbana, IL 61802

Phone: 367-0030

hdstevenson@city.urbana.il.us

Ward 7

Diane W. Marlin [D]

2203 Boudreau Circle

Urbana, Il 61801

Phone: 384-1855

dwmarlin@city.urbana.il.us

Ward 1

Charlie Smyth [D]

805 S. Coler

Urbana, IL 61801

Phone: 367-2813

casmyth@city.urbana.il.us

Ward 4

Brandon C. Bowersox [D]

506 West Florida

Urbana, IL 61801

Phone: 367-3540

bcbowersox@city.urbana.il.us

Cynthia Hoyle, AICP

Hoyle Consulting

2207 S. Cottage Grove

Urbana, IL 61801

217-328-5641

217-649-6505 (cell)