Warsaw Planners To Review Bike, Pedestrian Plan Monday
Posted
Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
The city has developed a drafted plan for a bicycle and pedestrian system for Warsaw and Winona Lake. Warsaw Plan Commission will review the proposal during its meeting Monday at 7 p.m. at city hall. The plan establishes a comprehensive framework for a connected bicycle and pedestrian system that will be used for both recreation and transportation purposes. The focus of the plan is for bicycle and pedestrian movement and the reduction of potential conflicts among transportation modes. The plan proposes a connected system of 87 miles of multi-use paths, greenways, bike lanes and signed routes along major transportation thoroughfares, utility cooridors and natural features to create a network of bicycle and pedestrian facilities. This is to make it easier for citizens to choose these modes of transportation in order to commute, exercise, walk their children to school, visit friends and run errands. Physical conditions, trends, previous and current studies, development plans, demographic data and public input all contributed to the bike and pedestrian master plan. The planning process started in June 2012 with a kick-off meeting with existing Bicycle Advisory Committee members and Warsaw and Winona Lake staff. Committee meetings continued monthly through December. Two public meetings were in July and October to solicit input on destinations, potential routes, desired connections, safety concerns and other opportunities and constraints. An online survey was used to gather information about residents’ walking and biking habits and interests to solicit opinions on existing and future infrastructure improvements and programming May through July. There were 184 surveys completed. The survey consisted of questions on walking and biking. The survey showed nearly 90 percent of respondents have walked in the last year for at least 10 minutes at a time for recreation, exercise, transportation or other reasons. Nearly 70 percent of respondents have biked for at least 10 minutes at a time. Of those who have not walked, 45 percent indicated the reason is because there is no safe place to walk. There were 94 percent of survey respondents who indicated that providing new pedestrian facilities such as sidewalks and paths would make it easier to walk in the community. Given opportunity and safe access, 85 percent of respondents said they would walk to the furthest recreation destinations. There were 90 percent of survey respondents that indicated providing more bicycle lanes would make it easier to bicycle in the community, while 77 percent indicated the addition of bike paths and greenways would help. The survey indicated Warsaw is “somewhat easy” to bike around with busy roads. Too much vehicle traffic was cited as the primary reasons for not biking. The survey showed that biking lanes would make it easier to bicycle in the community. Given opportunity and safe access, 89 percent of respondents would bicycle to work and school, shopping or recreational destinations with people willing to bicycle the furthest to recreation destinations. There were 71 percent of respondents who said they would bike more than 5 miles to recreation.
