Left to Right: Dave, Bill, Jeff, Jeff, Pegg?, Jenny, Molly, Chas, Mayor Bob, Denis, Steve, Shelly, Karen, and ?
Showing their continued support of Muscle Powered’s efforts to increase livability in Carson City, Mayor Bob Crowell, and Carson City Supervisor’s Karen Abowd, Shelly Aldean and Molly Walt joined members of Muscle Powered on a ride around the west-side of Carson to promote Bike Month and the Carson City Corporate Challenge.
Continue reading about this event over on BikeCarson.com!
On the evening of May 4th, Jennie Hamiter will be teaching a bicycle repair clinic for women down at the Bike Habitat! Come learn some of the skills you need to know for basic roadside repairs and home maintenance.
Jennie Hamiter
Details:
Location: Bike Habitat – Topsy Lane next to Best Buy
When: Wednesday, May 4th, at 6:30 PM
Also: Due to space and time constraints, don’t bring your bike to the class (it’s ok to ride there though!)
Ladies, keep those bike running good and keep smiling!
On April 23rd, Muscle Powered volunteers assisted the Carson City Parks and Recreation Department and the Chamber of Commerce with a Community Cleanup. There were three cleanup locations around town, and I attended the event that staged at Fremont Elementary School, cleaning up along the Linear Multi-Use Path. Many people showed up in spite of the rain to lend a hand at keeping our community clean.
A good turnout!
Once we were briefed on our mission, it didn’t take long to spot litter. Almost all the litter we found was near the road and adjacent to the playground of the school. There was plenty of trash along the banks, but much of it was located in the ditch itself. Thankfully, a few brave people waded out into the water and reeds to retrieve the trash the rest of us couldn’t reach.
Trash in the Linear Path ditch
When you do an event like this, it gives you a pretty good picture of what people are discarding, and what the big problems are. I picked up a lot of empty disposable water bottles. Half of the trash I picked up on Saturday would not have been there if people would simply use reusable water bottles, which in my opinion are way more convenient anyway.
Volunteers hard at work
With all the volunteers we had, we made quick work of our project, and helped restore the ditch to a pristine looking condition! Big change comes from lots of people doing little things.
Finishing Up the Cleanup
According to Tillery Williams, one of the event’s coordinators,
The cleanup was an overall success. We ended up attracting roughly 85 volunteers. We had about 15 of us at Del Taco, about 25-30 at the Moffat properties, and over 40 at Fremont. We were able to pick up a great deal of trash in all of the areas. Maybe next year the weather will be a little better! Thanks for helping us spread the word and for volunteering.
Muscle Powered will once again assist the Carson City Parks and Recreation Department and the Chamber of Commerce with a Community Cleanup! This is a great family event, and helps keep our community and resources healthy and looking good.
Earth Day Community Cleanup
Volunteers are needed from 8:30 AM to Noon on April 23rd, and we’ve been asked to stage at the Fremont Elementary School parking lot on Saliman Road. We will be cleaning trash out of the Linear Ditch and along the multi-use path.
Linear Multi-Use Path
You should bring some work gloves, a sun hat, sun screen, and some sturdy shoes. There could be mud along the ditch, so also keep this in mind. Parks and Recreation will supply the trash collecting tools. Hope to see you there!
More information on this event can be found in this Nevada Appeal Article.
Franktown Road
Here are the details for this weekend’s Muscle Powered ride!
The weather looks questionable for the 23rd. Rides will be canceled if it’s raining or snowing, so be sure to call ride co-leaders Kelly Clark at 315-2719 or Paul Zatarain at 775 513-6335 for more information. We will do our best to update this blog for schedule changes as well.
May is National Bike Month, and we are planning many fun activities to celebrate, including the annual Corporate Commuter Challenge. Last year Carson City competitors completed 987 trips by bike and logged in 3,234 miles. And this was during a week of unseasonably foul weather! Let’s make this year the biggest yet!
We’ll be putting most of the content on the BikeCarson.com page, so make sure to check over there often to see the latest Bike Month news.
We’ll have a lot going on this month, so keep checking back for the latest updates.
This Thursday evening Muscle Powered and the Carson City Health Department will doing a bicycle safety check! From 5-7pm on April 7th, we will have a booth setup at Telegraph Square at the crossroads of Telegraph and Curry Streets to help celebrate National Public Health Week.
Telegraph Square
Thursday’s theme is Safety on the Move. It’s been a long winter, and those bikes have been sitting for a while. Bring your bicycles on down and let us make sure you’re ready to roll safely! Also, Muscle Powered and the Carson City Health Department will have some give-aways and info to hand out. Hope to see you there!
It’s quite evident to today’s cyclist that our transportation system is designed with the automobile driver in mind. Millions have been spent on roads, highways and other infrastucture for the motorist, but very little in comparison for people that prefer or need to travel under their own power. Bicycle advocates often have to work hard just to get basic transportation infrastructure that is safe and gets people where they need to go. Because we often get so little, it’s frustrating when it’s taken away from us from a group that already has way more than its fair share.
Carson City has long had bike paths along Highway 50, leaving Carson City to the east. These bike paths are the primary way to travel by bike when heading east or west, to and from Carson City. They provide a safe area to ride that separates the cyclist from 50mph traffic, and connect neighborhoods, schools, parks, and shopping. In addition to the cyclists of all ages that use these paths, walkers and disabled citizens also rely on this route.
People have recently come to me with complaints of businesses and customers along Highway 50 using the bike paths as parking. When a car is parked in the path, often for no good reason, since there is usually alternative parking, the path user is forced off into the dirt, gravel, or mud. And depending on the weather or what bike your riding, it can be no easy task to navigate this terrain. At the very least, extremely inconvenient. For the person in a wheelchair, it may be impossible to get around a car on the path.
The city has been receptive to complaints from users of the bike route, and has even taken steps to provide better signage along the path, even reminding motorists that there is a fine for misuse. I rode down the paths recently to see the situation for myself, and it didn’t take long before my way was blocked by a parked car. The car was even parked under one of the new signs that the city just installed. And once again this weekend, I had to navigate around another parked car, riding through the mud to do so.
I believe there is some education that needs to take place for people to better understand what they’re doing wrong. It seems to be understood that we don’t park our cars in red zones, in front of fire hydrants, or in reserved parking spaces, but for some reason it seems acceptable to block a bike path. From what I’ve heard, some businesses are even angry that they’ve been told the bike lanes aren’t for parking, and said they’d fight it if further measures were taken. It’s hard to understand this though, as there is often a dirt shoulder to park on right next to the bike path. There seems to be room to accommodate everyone.
This story is still unfolding, so it’s anyone’s guess how it will progress; however, as fuel prices and unemployment continue to rise, we will certainly see an increased use of alternative transportation like biking and walking. And we mustn’t forget our friends in wheelchairs that simply have no other method of getting around than these paths. I’d like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume they don’t know the trouble they’re causing by obstructing the paths.
A couple of the photos above are mine, and others were sent to me by Carson City residents. Have you had problems with cars blocking bike paths in Carson City? Let me know, and please send me photos if you have them. What do you think would be the best way to educate these motorists?
You can contact me at: jeffmoser@musclepowered.org
Walk Score yesterday released new “heat maps” that show neighborhood walkability. This addition gives a visual representation of the walkability of your place, beyond the numerical walk score for your address.
You can view the map for Carson City. How do we do? Overall, our walk score is 44, which is below average for Nevada but not horrible. The data is from two zip codes, 89701 and 89703, but strangely the third 89706 zip code where I live is missing. My address walk score is 75, great for Carson City, but I suspect that is based in part on amenities that are no longer available, as there are a lot of empty storefronts in my part of town.
It is worth zooming in on various parts of the map to see what the walkability and bikeability of your neighborhood is, as well as where you shop and work and play.
Walk Score is by no means perfect. It makes a lot of assumptions about what kinds of amenities people want, which may not be your priorities, it doesn’t do a great job of determining accessibility, as an amenity across a busy street with poor pedestrian access and protection rates just as high as one without the hazard, and of course there is a lot of fuzziness. For example, the green areas on the map are all clustered around Carson Street, because that is where the businesses are, but crossing Carson Street can be an uncomfortable challenge for adults and a too-risky crossing for kids. But I think these Walk Score maps are a useful measure to help us understand where we live and what we might do to make our place better.
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