The Parks and Rec Department now has a “Norfolk Bikeways & Trails” page that gives some helpful info.  It’s not quite at the level of a city like Madison, but hey, Norfolk’s page is brand new and I’m sure it will keep growing along with the mileage of bike lanes and number of cyclists.  Maybe you can send them a friendly email with suggestions.

They have the most important thing covered:  A link to Bike Norfolk!

The 2030 General Plan is in the public input stage,  meetings, online comments, and email are ways to give the city your input.  I went to one of the meetings tonight and will bore you with a little story:  I was talking to one of the city planners and commented on how it is about time that bicycle infrastructure in the General Plan.  She looked at me and said “bike lanes were already in the 1992 General Plan.”  I had heard this before and replied “but the City chose to ignore it other than a few ill-placed ‘Share the Road’ signs.”  -This is where you need to pay attention; she said “it is not that the City chose to ignore it, there was no interest from the public in bicycle infrastructure, so they didn’t want to spend money on things they didn’t feel anybody wanted.”   - Don’t let that happen again, folks, let your City know that you want bike lanes, sharrows, multi-use trails, etc!

Meanwhile, the bike/ped taskforce has been working on a map that will be included in the aforementioned General Plan, but this kind of thing doesn’t happen over night, you got to start somewhere.  So when Mike E. was at one of the public input meetings the city planner gave us some homework; come up with a top ten list of streets for bicycle infrastructure.   Answering the call a few of the most experienced riders in Norfolk put there heads together and came up with a Top Ten Priority Bikeways Map.  Check it out and let us know what you think.  We feel that it does a good job serving the different areas of Norfolk, it connects the hubs, and it builds a good framework for future bikeway development.  Note that the Elizabeth River Trail is not on this map since it is already moving ahead and it would serve the communities on the west side of Hampton Blvd.  Also, to the best of our knowledge, the points where the bikeways end at city lines to Chesapeake and Virginia Beach those cities have bicycle infrastructure on there bike plan maps, as well.

If we all keep working at it, we’ll be known as the Portland of the East Coast pretty soon.

BikeWalk Virginia, which blogged this announcement, cites Richmond, Fairfax, Harrisonburg, and our own Virginia Beach as areas that have shown remarkable improvement.

Unfortunately, our beautiful neighbor West Virginia still ranks 50th. Is anybody there working on this issue?

When: Tuesday, August 16 · 6:30pm
Where: 757 Creative Space, 259 Granby Street, Suite 250, Norfolk

Some (but not all) agenda items:

- To parade or not to parade? We have the application for the Downtown Illumination Parade, if there is interest in having a float again a Parade Committee will need to be formed.
- Update on our efforts to work with the City
- Update on the joint venture with Grow Interactive, a week day bike ‘n’ dine for lunch in Ghent
- Treasure’s report and 501c status update
- End of summer cycling event possibilities
- HRT / Tide and bicycles discussion
- and, of course, open floor discussion of your ideas and concerns

If you have a something you would like to see on the agenda send it to bikenorfolk@gmail.com.