Share the Road
Mark Martin and Beaux Jones of Bike Baton Rouge stand next to one of the bike racks their organization installed in front of Chelsea’s Café. Photos by Collin Richie
Several initiatives continue B.R.’s move toward a more bike-friendly city
A few years from now, someone might be able to rent a bike at City Park and pedal off on a short sightseeing trip along the lakes. Or bike up to Government Street and browse the shops in Mid City for a few hours.
Those aren’t just pipe dreams.
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, which is managing the Government Street redesign, plans to include a designated bike lane in its design scheme.
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The working designs for the LSU and City Park lakes improvements suggest extensive bike paths.
The Downtown Greenway project is moving along, with construction expected to begin later this year to connect City Park to the already completed bike path at Expressway Park downtown.
And in January, the Capital Region Planning Commission and Downtown Development District announced an EPA grant that will help them study how to launch a parishwide bike-share program.
Advocacy groups such as Bike Baton Rouge have spent years calling for alternative transportation infrastructure around the city, and a lot of these projects finally seem to be getting off the ground at the same time.
“There’s definitely been a huge paradigm shift,” says Beaux Jones, director of Bike Baton Rouge. “This is something a lot of other cities are doing.”
Jones’ non-profit group has been helping the business community see the economic benefit, recognizing “bike-friendly” businesses and constructing bike racks outside storefronts and in public places.
Whitney Cooper, DDD development project director, says the EPA’s grant to study bike-sharing is similar to one they received to map out the Downtown Greenway.
Cooper anticipates the bike-share study will follow a similar year-long process, initiated by a two-day workshop with the EPA in upcoming months.
“We’ve looked at different cities and what they are doing,” she says. “There are all kinds of different scales to a possible bike-share system. … This goes beyond downtown and includes the whole city.”
Still, Jones sees downtown as a likely area to benefit from bike sharing. A couple kiosks could help downtown employees quickly grab a bite to eat or help visitors staying in downtown hotels tour the city without renting a car.
“I think a bike-share program done in a very focused way can be a huge benefit to Baton Rouge,” Jones says. “Obviously I don’t think this will solve every traffic problem in the city. But the idea is to provide just another option.”
Recent bike-friendly improvements across the city:
• 70 new bike racks downtown in the next year, according to DDD’s Davis Rhorer.
• Bike Baton Rouge installed 30 bike racks around town, with 20 more ordered.
• Florida Street riverfront access downtown under construction, providing better access to the levee bike path.
• A portion of the Downtown Greenway completed at Expressway Park. Design Workshop expected to finish plans by the end of the summer for the connector to City Park.
• BREC’s Capital Area Pathways Project completed the first segment of an eventual “medical loop” trail, starting along Ward’s Creek near the Mall of Louisiana and the High Grove development.
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