As a part of the Join the Movement campaign, a group of graduate students from the University of Iowa College of Public Health successfully demonstrated the Iowa City Bike Boulevard on May 21.  An estimated 140 to 160 bicyclists rode the route on College Street starting at City High to the Iowa City Farmer's Market at Chauncey Swan Park.

Join the Movement encouraged all road users to respectfully share the road, learn, and practice safe cycling at the protected bike lane demonstration to show their support for a bike-friendly policy in Iowa City. As part of a communications campaign class, the four graduate students Emily Hejna, Erin Arneson, ThankGod Ugwumba and Mitchell Kang worked with the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities, and the City of Iowa City on the project.

 A bike boulevard is a low speed and low volume street that optimizes bicycling conditions to create safer, more sustainable, and beautiful community streetscapes. It creates more defined bike lanes and controls traffic flow to build a network of comfortable and safe streets for all community members.

The event began at City High School where World of Bikes staff did safety checks on about 30 bikes. Many others stopped at the bike information table. Cyclists rode the College Street bike boulevard between 8 a.m. and noon.  The route featured different types of traffic controls, including a painted bike lane, a protected bike lane, and improved shared lane arrows (sharrows).

Students used stencils borrowed from the city to paint sharrows on the College St. and Summit St. traffic circle as well as on College St. between Lucas and Dodge. Bike lanes were painted between Summit St. and Lucas St. adjacent to the parked cars. Lastly, bike lane bikes and arrows were painted within both the bike lane and the protected bike lane to encourage utilization and make the area obvious as a bike space.

On the morning of the event, cones and 30 flower pots and buckets were placed in the protected bike lane between Muscatine Avenue and Summit Street. A 6-foot bike lane was made with the pots and cones set at 10 ft. intervals to allow late entrance into the boulevard or easy exit when needed.

Three signs were placed at the beginning of each different block of the boulevard to educate road users on proper usage and safe riding behaviors such as helmet wearing, riding on the right side of the street, and passing at safe distances. Additionally, small signs were displayed for cross traffic to be aware of added bicyclists and to guide bicyclists along the route.

“Even when bikers were not riding in the lanes, we noticed that drivers intentionally did not drive in the lane,” Arneson added.

At the end of the boulevard at the Farmers Market, educational material was given to over 70 people. A grant from People for Bikes provided cyclists with T-shirts, stickers, and buttons. The first 22 people that brought a Join the Movement sticker to the farmers market won a Protected Bike Lane T-shirt. Stickers were offered at the City High, along the route, and passed out to bicyclists on the surrounding streets.

The response to the boulevard from cyclists was very encouraging. “People were enthused to see this infrastructure being demonstrated, loved having the option to ride the protected section, and provided useful feedback about bike lanes, sharrows, and other components to be considered for future boulevards,” Arneson said.

Arneson and her group hope that similar events can be done in the future and that others will pick up this idea and host boulevards on other streets.

Those who attended the event can post pictures on a Facebook page (facebook.com/iowacitybikeboulevard) and take a post-event survey at http://goo.gl/forms/xvCo5HLS2leQu54t2

See a Daily Iowan article about the bike boulevard at http://daily-iowan.com/2016/05/06/bike-boulevard-coming-to-ic/. City Channel 4 in Iowa City will have a feature story on the project in June. See a preview here.