Thursday September 3, 2009

Darla Eaton just moved to Charlottesville a month ago and she brought her bicycle with her.

"Charlottesville does have bike paths in some places," Eaton says. "Not very many."

That was one of the concerns shared Thursday night at a rally of the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation (ACCT), a group pushing to make the city more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

"Making an extra-wide sidewalk...a nice wide bike lane and then a lower level from that so everyone's separate from each other," suggests ACCT volunteer Kassia Arbabi. "Maybe one...lane for cars and maybe a lane for public transit. So making the street as complete for all forms of [transportation] moving through the street."

Group members say they've had conversations with city leaders including Mayor Dave Norris about implementing some of their ideas; things like shutting down entire city streets one day a week to vehicle traffic.

"So far what we've gotten from the traffic engineer is that they're worried about the route for emergency vehicles and that they were concerned they wouldn't find a good alternate route," Arbabi says, "but we're confident that we could together work to find a solution that would work for everybody."

For bicyclists like Eaton, transportation solutions aren't about preference, they're about safety.

"They're honking and yelling," Eaton says of drivers in Charlottesville. "You're kind of in the middle and someone doesn't see you and you have to slam on your brakes and then...more honking...yeah, it can be pretty scary."

September 18 is National Park(ing) Day. Groups like ACCT will take over parking spaces for the day, putting out couches and chairs; basically anything but motor vehicles.

For more information, go to http://www.transportationchoice.org/.