I don't think I'll be able to show you any intersections in Morgantown that are extraordinarily bicycle friendly. With our hilly terrain and no money, we've chosen to educate people to ride safely and confidently in the current situation and to educate public officials on cyclists' needs.

This year, the League of American Bicyclists gave Morgantown bronze level recognition as a bicycle-friendly community primarily for our education program and secondarily for our planning. Most of the main streets in Morgantown are controlled by the state. For most of the years that LAB has been evaluating states for bicycle friendliness, WV has ranked 50. This year, it's 48. Getting the state to do anything primarily for cyclists is extremely difficult.

I expect you're familiar with the 6 Es: Education, Enforcement, Engineering, Encouragement, Evaluation and Equity that LAB uses to evaluate communities. We chose to start off emphasizing education because we felt we could realize the most benefit by educating cyclists how to ride safely and confidently given the present infrastructure. We also chose to emphasize education to help City and State officials to learn how to make our community more bicycle friendly. Those of us that teach believe that if cyclists operated their bicycles as vehicles and if both cyclists and motorists obeyed traffic rules some costly infrastructure "improvements" could be unnecessary. That said, we can't expect 5-14 year olds to be competent drivers and so we must identify reasonable solutions to protect them. Our community has chosen to bus them all and/or have adults drive them to school.

Creating Safe Routes to Schools is one of the top priority projects in the Greater Morgantown Bicycle Plan that City Council approved last May (attached). Many streets in Morgantown do not have sidewalks and so they also don't have crosswalks. We also have a Pedestrian Safety Board that has a prioritized plan for installing sidewalks and crosswalks as well as more multi-modal traffic control. However, whether children ride on sidewalks and in crosswalks or on the streets, their safety still depends on motorists paying attention, driving at appropriate speeds and not running them over: enforcement.

Both local bicycling and pedestrian advocates face the same problem: a state that's motor-vehicle focused and a State and City that have little money. So far, nobody locally that I know has done a complete life-cycle economics study of bussing & driving children versus investing in infrastructure to enable them to walk or bike safely. Just getting started on that will take a major culture shift that we're just starting to talk about in our long range transportation planning (30 year horizon). Discussing such with you would probably be more pleasant on the trails but we could also discuss such on the roads accepting that we might have some distractions.

On Jul 17, 2012, at 2:00 PM, Matthew Boggs wrote:

Hi Frank,

Thanks for the quick reply and great info!! We are excited to hear our road bikes should handle the nice rail trail system there. Can't wait to get pedaling there!

We live in a town about half the size of Morgantown which is trying to take some steps to making the community more cycling friendly so we will be looking for ideas to take back home as well regarding making intersections safer for cyclists, especially children who elect to bike to school from nearby neighborhoods. Do you know of some good intersections in town we should check out for ideas to take back to our City Council? Possibly examples of signage, crosswalk markers, special stoplight programming, etc, with cyclists in mind.

Thanks again!

-matt
Rubber Side Down

On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Frank Gmeindl <fgmeindl@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Matt!

I ride 700x 23 GP 4000's on the crushed limestone sections of the rail trail with no problem. The Monongahela River Trail, Caperton Trail and Deckers Creek Trail as well as the trail all the way to Shinnston WV is fine for our tires. The crushed limestone is small and well-packed; a little slower rolling than asphalt and a bit dustier on dry days. Approximately 10 miles of the trail within the City are asphalt and several miles of the trail in and near Fairmont are asphalt.

We also have great road rides around here that I'd be glad to show you.

Other bike related items:

Morgantown has 2 excellent bike shops: Wamsley Cycles, http://www.wamsleycycles.com/ located right on the trail and Pathfinder, http://www.pathfinderwv.com/ located right in the heart of downtown.

The local bicycles clubs, Monongalia Bicycle Club and Country Roads cyclists have regularly scheduled rides. See the Monongalia Bicycle Club calendar at https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=64i6hoaouqrdmetaeu7o1en6a0@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York&gsessionid=OK and the Country Roads Cyclists' ride list at http://www.crcyclists.org/CurrentRideSch.html .

Both clubs have Google groups that list races and impromptu rides. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/monbikeclub for the Monongalia Bicycle Clubs group and https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum/CRcyclists for the Country Roads Cyclists google group. The google groups sometimes have post ride reports that might provide you more specific insights into the rides.

Morgantown offers some great eats for bicyclists including Terra Cafe, Black Bear Burritos, Chaan Thai, Mother India, Sargasso ($$), Kenyan Cafe, Puglioni's, Rio Grande, Mountain State Brewery, Morgantown Brewing Co.

I'm copying this message to the monbikeclub and the CRC so members can share with you other opportunities of which they may know.

Frank D. Gmeindl
Chairman, Morgantown Municipal Bicycle Board
LCI #1703
491 WilsonAvenue
Morgantown, WV 26501
304-376-0446
Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles

On Jul 17, 2012, at 10:13 AM, Matthew Boggs wrote:

Hi,
We will be coming to Morgantown for a biking vacation from Illinois in a few weeks. I see that Morgantown has a lot of constructed bike paths of which most is defined as "crushed limestone". We were planning to bring road bikes but were not sure how they would do on the crushed limestone part of the trail system. Currently have Conti 4000S 700x23 tires installed.
Do you think using road tires on the crushed limestone part of the trails is a bad idea? Do you have any advice on how to make a road bike more suitable for the crushed limestone part of the trail system, if possible?

PS> We are very excited about coming to bike in Morgantown. We have been looking at the bikemorgantown.com website and have been impressed with the momentum cycling has gotten in Morgantown. We will be in town August 9-12 and staying in the downtown area. Can you recommend any other bike related items special to Morgantown you feel we should checkout while in town?

Thanks!
-matt