The Martin administration has just made an encouraging change: instead of twenty reserved parking spaces for high-ranking city employees (like himself) there are now ten, and those are located on the second floor.
Now I live close enough to city hall to ride a bike there but plenty of people don't, so the message David Martin appears to be sending is: let's give the parking spaces to people who really need them.
It's a good way to think, and that's part of the message I have as a cyclist. If you live in Stamford and would not, in a trillion years, even think about riding a bike in the city, it is in your best interests to encourage cycling, because the more people who ride, the less time you will spend looking for a parking space for your car.
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There are other benefits, too: for instance, some people drive so fast on Shippan Avenue it would make Jeff Gordon take Dramamine. Part of why fast drivers are found there, particularly Shippan Point, is that Shippan Avenue is very wide as it once accommodated a streetcar. As much as I'd like the streetcar to return, a less ambitious and less expensive project would be to put bike lanes in: the road would appear narrower and discourage speeding. Making roads narrower is sometimes referred to as 'road dieting' or 'lane dieting' but without a memorable visual, such as The Michelin Man holding up a pair of trousers that are now too large for him.
Now that we're settling into winter, not many folks are talking about these things. The cyclists on the road today are mostly bundled up like Randy from A Christmas Story and motorists are mostly talking about things like snow tires and remembering where they put the ice scraper.
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But now is a good time to talk about these things, and that's why DIYBIKING.COM and People Friendly Stamford are inviting all Stamford residents and workers to share their thoughts on a variety of ideas on making our city work better through this survey:
All of the proposed on-street bike lane or sharrow (the stenciled images of cyclists on the road to encourage road sharing) projects for a number of Stamford streets - Shippan Avenue, Broad Street, Bedford Street, and a couple dozen others - has been accumulating over the years in a number of meetings with urban planners, cycling and pedestrian advocates, and other folks just interested in making the city work, live and move better. The hope is that the findings will be used to guide the Martin administration and other government officials on these proposed ideas - some of which date back to the Master Plan meetings of 2002.
So please, if you live and/or work in Stamford, please take a few minutes today and take the Stamford Share the Road survey - no matter how you get to where you're going. All I ask is you answer honestly and keep an eye on the future. I look forward to sharing the findings in a future post. Thanks in advance for your input, and may you park easily from this day forward.
Mike Norris is the founder of DIYBIKING.COM, a site dedicated to casual cycling, random builds, and bike travel. He is a member of the Connecticut Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Board and owns one 3,300 lb. SUV and 9 and 3/5 bicycles. He lives and works in Stamford and can be reached at connecticutmike@gmail.com
