Monthly Archives: May 2013

Concord to Boston Transportation Options

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Public Meeting to Discuss Transportation Options

7:00 pm on June 5th in Manchester

The New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) has announced a public meeting on Wednesday, June 5, 2013 in Manchester to receive input and discuss transportation needs, and preferences for solutions that involve bus and rail options for a 73-mile corridor between Concord, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts.

The June 5th public meeting will be held at Manchester City Hall, beginning at 7:00 pm.

The NHDOT is evaluating opportunities to improve inter-city transit service along the corridor through a study funded jointly by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

The NH Capitol Corridor Rail and Transit Study will examine rail and bus options to address transportation, economic development, sustainability, quality of life, and environmental issues along the I-93 and Everett Turnpike corridors from Concord to Nashua, with connections to Boston.

For more information, go to NH Capitol Corridor Rail and Transit Study or contact

Patrick Herlihy
Rail and Transit Bureau
(603) 271-2468

Getting there by bicycle

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Urban_cycling_IIIThe Transportation Research Board (TRB) has published a report from Active Living Research, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, entitled How to Increase Bicycling for Daily Travel. From the introduction:

Bicycling is healthy: it increases physical activity, improves cardiovascular health, and reduces obesity and disease. Bicycling also can be an excellent mode of transportation for people of all ages. In fact, bicycling to school has been shown to improve cardiovascular fitness and overall health among children and adolescents.

Key research results include

One study of 35 large U.S. cities found that each additional mile of bike lane per square mile was associated with about a 1 percent increase in the share of workers commuting by bicycle.

Creating bicycle boulevards by adding traffic calming features, such as speed humps, curb extensions, and pedestrian crossways, on streets with a low volume of traffic and installing cycle tracks, which are on-street bike lanes that are physically separated from motor vehicle lanes, encourages bicycling on streets where they are installed.

Cities that have implemented bicycle sharing programs report substantial increases in bicycling.

Some cities, even very large cities, have dramatically raised bicycling levels but only with a multifaceted, coordinated approach that involved careful planning and ongoing input from residents.

Integrating bicycling with public transportation increases the viability of each. Bicycling can expand the service areas of rail transit stations and bus stops. Trains and buses, in turn, can transport bicyclists over much longer distances than would be feasible by bicycle alone. Studies show that bike racks on buses and good bike parking at rail stations increase both bicycling and transit use.

If you are interested in bicycling more, check out the bike maps provided by the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program at NH DOT.

Chicago’s new protected bike lanes supported by business owners

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In a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun Times, several business owners on a route scheduled to get new protected bike lanes said

A close look at the public plans shows that there’s a lot more than just bike lanes and parking spaces going on — overall it will make our street a more comfortable place to hang out, helping us to attract more customers and greater investment into our neighborhood. What we’re up against here is a chaotic and unsafe roadway that stifles economic activity. This is the story you should be telling.

For photos of protected and unprotected bike lanes in Chicago, see this blog post at People for Bikes.

 

 

New Hampshire Employer Transportation Survey

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CGNH logoCommute Green New Hampshire is conducting a five-minute survey of employers.  The results will help transportation planners decide how to best help employers with employee transportation in the future.

Young people entering the workforce are less likely to own cars than before.  To keep our younger workers in New Hampshire, we must take a hard look at how they will get to work.

If you are an employer, please take five minutes to fill out this survey.  Getting our employees to work is one of the key elements for building a robust state economy in the future.