WSDOT Endorses NACTO Urban Street Design Guide

The Washington Department of Transportation announced yesterday that they are the "first state DOT in the nation to officially endorse the new Urban Street Design Guidelines" recently published by the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

This matters to Bellingham because several major roads in town are actually state highways, including the Guide Meridian north of I-5, and Sunset east of I-5.

It means there's a chance for these important transportation corridors to be changed to facilitate mobility for everybody, not just trucks and cars.

So, there's hope!

via.

Open House for Bellingham Bicycle Master Plan

The City has announced an Open House to gather public comment toward developing the Bellingham Bicycle Master Plan.

When: Tuesday, April 23 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m
Where: Whatcom Middle School auditorium, 810 Halleck Street
What:  At 6:30 a presentation on the planning process; stations with information and opportunities for input

everybodyBIKE will provide valet bicycle parking across Halleck Street from the school front entrance.

Everyone is also invited to provide input via an online survey (available until May 12, 2013, at 5pm).

"The Bellingham Bicycle Master Plan will take one year to complete and will identify a detailed strategy  toward creating a safe, well-connected network of bicycle facilities and supportive programs to make bicycling a viable transportation choice for all ages and ability levels."

WTA on Google Transit

SmartTrips posted this on Facebook today:

Guess what? WTA is now on Google Transit. No joke. Check it out: http://www.google.com/landing/transit/index.html

It's really cool that our small system has been added to the big leagues!
Does this mean that real-time bus tracking is on its way? We can hope so...

Smart Trips tidbits

Last week I dropped by the Whatcom Council of Governments office to pick up my reward for logging 900 Smart Trips -- a tee shirt! Yes, I already have three Smart Trips tees, but I quite like them. The 900 trips reward was actually a pick-one-of-seven options, and my choice was the practical one.

While there I had a short chat with one of the Smart Trips folks about the trip logger on the website. As participants know, they had an issue this past summer that caused them to shut it down for about a month. When it returned, revamped and more secure, the programmers had made a change that confused some folks. On the old site, new members could log trips from before they joined, up to two months worth. When I joined back in 2008 I back-filled two months worth of bussing, biking, and walking trips that I could remember. On the revamped site, though, they count trips from the day you joined instead of with the day the Smart Trips launched back in 2006. This meant that anyone who backfilled trips suddenly saw their number of logged trips decrease. I lost about 40, I think.

But with perseverance I finally clawed my way back up, and have passed 900!

The other thing to note is that mileage reports will soon return. The person I spoke to said they have programmers working on a project since the first of the year to return that function to the site, plus some additional features. Can't wait to see it--then I can update my little logger on this blog.

********
Update March 6
Looks like the software update project has arrived, probably March 1. Mileage reports are back, as is $ Saved. Calories burned may be new.

In the re-set of the start date my stats dropped by about 40 trips. Now my reported mileage has dropped by 1,200 miles between last May and today. Interesting...
*********
Later on March 6
Now the mileage looks correct again. Weird.