Description:
Have you wondered how the bike infrastructure in Palo Alto came to be?
Do you have questions about how to improve cycling infrastructure in Palo Alto?
Do you want to better understand what works and what doesn’t work?

In 2017, Palo Alto was named a Gold Level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. After Ellen Fletcher championed our first bike boulevard in 1981, Palo Alto has continued to expand bike infrastructure around the city.

Come meet Hugh Louch, Principal of Alta Planning and Desig to learn more about recent city efforts to design and expand our bicycle infrastructure. To start the discussion, bring your own images of successful bike infrastructure and with Josh’s guidance, we will deepen our understanding of Palo Alto’s cycling infrastructure toolkit, and learn how we as individuals can help champion more successful bike infrastructure.

Proposed Format: 

1. Introduction (20 -30 min): Attendees introduce themselves, and show an image of bike infrastructure (please come with a 8.5x11 image of a good example of of bike infrastructure)
2. Street design vocabulary and library (20 min): Short presentation/forum for staff to share different street designs, cycling and traffic calming strategies and provide background theory and data around different street designs 
3. Bike Infrastructure Plans for Palo Alto (20 min): 
      - Key Documents - Comp Plan + 2012 Bike Pedestrian Transportation Plan (BPTP)
      - Short History: how did we get the bike infrastructure we have? 
      - Timeline of different bicycle/pedestrian/traffic calming projects currently in the pipeline
4. Discussion/ Q+ A (30 min+) How do we build the bike infrastructure we want?

Speaker Biography: 

Hugh Louch is a Principal of Alta Planning + Design and leader of Alta's Bay Area offices.  Hugh specializes in helping communities identify and prioritize transportation investments that create comfortable and safer travel for people walking and bicycling.  He has helped the City of Palo Alto plan for and design a set of bicycle boulevards that are currently under construction and recently helped develop the California Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan and an Bicycle Plan for Caltrans District 4 that identifies improvements to bicycling on state highways in the 9-county Bay Area.