Pedal Power Imagine, just imagine, vehicles and bicycles coexisting on roadways as people make their way to work, to the store, to wherever. Sure it sounds like Montreal, or Copenhagen, but it’s also a vision many in Syracuse have harbored for years. And finally, after frustrating stops and starts, movement in a bike-friendly direction seems to be taking place.
“Syracuse appears another step closer to making its streets cyclist-friendly,” said Paul Mercurio, a transportation planner for the city. Mercurio’s hard work has not gone unnoticed by John Allen and Don Hughes, both longtime cycling commuters and members of Bike CNY, a group that has pushed for friendlier road conditions for cyclists for the past 12 years. They spoke after the second meeting of the Bicycle Infrastructure Plan, held Aug. 3.
“I was impressed with the proposal when Paul first presented the bigger picture,” noted Allen about the first gathering in July, “and I was even more impressed on Wednesday with the details they’ve worked out and the number of people assigned to this. They seem to be serious.” That second meeting attracted nearly 70 citizens to City Hall Commons; the third is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 7.
“Matt Driscoll talked a fine line about the city being green, but when it came to doing things like bike lanes it was very slow,” Hughes said of the most recent former mayor. “Now with Mayor Stephanie Miner’s administration, we’ve got Paul Mercurio, who has put together a plan and he’s soliciting public input, and it’s wonderful to see that we’re finally making progress.”
Added Allen: “We worked with the Driscoll administration for two or three years, meeting every quarter, with limited progress. The person we met with was Pete O’Connor, who was able to get some things done and who is now the head of the Department of Public Works. Obviously, his interest continues.”
Mercurio, who cycles to work when his schedule allows, lauded O’Connor as well. “He’s been able to find opportunities as they arose to implement some bike lanes,” he said. “He’s given us most of the 9½ miles of bike lanes that we do have.”
But given the hundreds of miles of roadway within city limits, it’s high time to expect more options for those who choose to push the bike pedal instead of the gas pedal. And that’s where Mercurio and his team come in.
“The whole idea is to be more intentional with how we select bike lanes,” Mercurio explained. “The process is we’re taking this template that the SMTC {Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council} created, looked at all of the conditions that make for a good cycling corridor and then looked at ways to measure it.”
The SMTC ranked from 1 to 5 such factors as road surface, topography, one-way traffic flow and presence of odd-even parking, placed them into a matrix and then applied the results to the University Hill neighborhood. Current improvements to University Avenue include some of those findings, specifically bike lanes.
“The SMTC created the matrix with the intention that the criteria could be applied throughout the city,” Mercurio said, “so I’ve been working with interns over the past year, coming up with a prioritized number for all the corridors in the city.” As a result, at the Aug. 3 meeting, his team presented ways to integrate bikes onto such main drags as North Salina Street, James Street up to Eastwood, East Genesee Street, Bellevue Avenue and East Onondaga Street. With each, a different challenge presented a varying solution.
And those options are open to public scrutiny. “We are still looking for comments,” Mercurio said. “I don’t feel that it’s a good public outreach effort unless you get people there who are critical. We don’t have the answers; we’re looking for suggestions. I’m really excited about this plan
because we’re doing a lot of outreach early. SALT I don’t want to come out of this with something SHAKEShalf-baked. I’d rather have you helping cook it than criticizing the finished product, and then you don’t want to eat what I made, to finish the metaphor.”
So while it’s important that the public comment, early and often, on this Bicycle Master Plan, it’s equally vital that citizens understand it’s a work in progress. “A master plan is not a final construction,” Mercurio warned. “It helps me allocate resources.
In lieu of a master plan, it’s like throwing darts blindfolded. This master plan helps give me a target and one that has been vetted through the public.”
As part of the vetting, Mercurio has posted a link on the bottom right of the city’s website, syracuse.ny.us, labeled “Bicycle Infrastructure Master Plan.” There you’ll find such innovative ideas under the Tool Kit link as bike boxes, sharrows (shared streets marked with symbols to guide cyclists to the best locations for travel, away from vehicle doors, for example), different types of bicycle lanes and a whole lot more.
“We had proposed a network of streets to be marked as bike routes,” Allen said of Bike CNY’s past efforts, “but we couldn’t do what Paul Mercurio has done, which is come up with innovative ideas of how to move bicycles in difficult areas. This plan has gone well beyond what we ever suggested—the DPW can change things, they have the expertise. They know how to deal with problems that could come up.”
As for progress, everyone admits it can be slow going, but this latest movement is encouraging. “Syracuse has been given the label of the Emerald City, but I don’t think we’re really there yet,” Hughes said.
“If we go ahead and establish a network of bicycle lanes and boxes and infrastructure, then we deserve that label. It will be a much kinder traveling environment and a softer impact on the planet, and we’ll be getting some exercise. We sure need that.”
The
next Bicycle Master Plan gathering is Wednesday, Sept. 7, at City Hall
Commons, 201 E. Washington St. If you have a hard time finding the
venue, just look for the impressive number of bikes 563478 parked
outside.
—Molly English-Bowers
Classical GasLocal musicians to Grammy Award-winning groups and classical favorites to jazz innovations will all find their place at the 32nd annual Skaneateles Festival happening this month in the picturesque western Onondaga County village. The fest, which began Aug. 10 and goes through Saturday, Sept. 3, promises a wide variety of musical events to reach new audiences and help refresh returning listeners.
“We want people to not know what they’re going to hear,” said artistic director David Ying. “We want them to know that every show they see will be totally topnotch quality, but other than that, every concert should have a surprise.”
Each week of the festival brings another set of performers and a new theme: Community, String, Rhythm and Masterpiece. In addition to the already announced schedule, during the opening week daily “Music Flashes” happened throughout the community. Flash perfor-
mances included pianist Andrew Russo for about 15 minutes at the Sherwood Inn in Skaneateles on Aug. 10 and The Chiara Quartet at the farmers market on Aug. 11. Show locations, artists and times were announced each day on the website, Facebook and Twitter.
The 2011 lineup includes ECCO (the East Coast Chamber Orchestra), pianist Jon Nakamatsu, the Grammy-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, the experimental So Percussion and a rare performance from the Marcus Roberts Trio. The trio, with pianist Roberts, bassist Rodney Jordan and drummer Jason Marsalis, the youngest son of well-known pianist and music educator Ellis Marsalis, will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 27, at Brook Farm, 2870 West Lake Road, Skaneateles.
Performing both jazz standards and original compositions including Roberts’ own “From Rags to Rhythm,” the group seems ideal for the Rhythm-themed week of entertainment. “Marcus is a very special candidate. He made a big splash about 10 or 12 years ago, but hasn’t played out much in the past three years,” Ying noted. “This will be his first time at the festival although we’ve known about him for a long time. The theme week he’s coming, Rhythm, is part of all music, but jazz—and especially with ‘Rags to Rhythm’—it was perfect.”
The week will sway in rhythmic style, spanning workshops for music students, the FamilyFest, So Percussion and Not Your Mother’s Chamber Music Concert to the trio on Saturday. Although both So Percussion and the Marcus Roberts Trio will bring slightly different styles to the fest, Ying attributed this to the diversity of the world itself.
“We think of it as good music, not a certain type of music that we bring,” he said.
“People can come and make discoveries themselves. Music is so diverse and eclectic, the world is so diverse and eclectic—our musical choices should reflect that diversity.”
The trio will also perform at the Everson Museum of Art, 401 Harrison St., on Thursday, Aug. 25, for 120 school-age children from several social service agencies throughout Syracuse; the event is not open to the public. Following the concert, the group will present an interactive learning program, designed to introduce students to jazz and allow the audience to hear and ask questions about the musicians’ lives and careers.
For more information on festival acts, times, locations and tickets, visit www.skanfest.org or call 685-7418.
—Jessica Novak
