“I have found repeatedly that the person that takes their bicycle on an inhospitable street is trying to do the very thing that many complain those in poverty don’t do: get to and from their job.”

You can read the whole post here.

A trivia night at Tybee Island Social Club on Thursday, Jan. 12, features tree trivia and food and drink specials beginning at 7 p.m.

On Saturday, Jan. 14 the foundation will plant trees at River’s End Campground, from 10 a.m. until noon, rain or shine. Twenty-five volunteers are needed to help with planting trees and mulching previously planted trees. Volunteers should wear closed toe shoes, long pants and long sleeves. Gloves and tools provided by Savannah Tree Foundation, but bring your own if you have them. Community Service credit and refreshments provided.

For more information, call 912-233-8733 or visit the Savannah Tree Foundation website.

“The Total Mobility Plan is an in-depth planning effort which will emphasize sustainability, Complete Streets, Context Sensitive Design, non-motorized transportation and transit. The Plan will address the transportation network and specific facilities, but also the interaction between transportation and the community as a whole.  The thoroughfare planning component will address facilities for auto traffic, bicycles, pedestrians, and public transit vehicles, including intersections.  Workshop attendees will map context areas, creating a vision of the desired character in each community. The thoroughfare standards will then be shaped to achieve that vision.”

It’s encouraging to hear the phrase Complete Streets used in this context, as many of the area’s most important streets are woefully incomplete when it comes to safely accommodating pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders. The meetings will be held at the following times and locations from 5-6:30 p.m., and will use a “Drop in when you can!” format.

Tuesday, Jan. 10
Islands High School Career Counseling Center, 170 Whitemarsh Island Road

Tuesday, Jan. 17
Armstrong Atlantic State University – Armstrong Center, 13040 Abercorn St.

Thursday, Jan. 19
First Presbyterian Church, 520 Washington Ave.

For more information, contact Mark Wilkes at (912) 651-1451 or wilkesm [at] thempc.org

“Volunteers are needed to help young trees as they mature into an urban forest at the Westlake reforestation site by  staking and mulching. This afternoon event will entail some hard work, but promises to be a fun afternoon and will help Savannah’s newest urban forest. Refreshments and community service credit provided. Tools and gloves also provided for volunteers who don’t have them. Please wear closed toe shoes, long pants and long sleeves. Gloves and eye protection are helpful, too. Meet at the Westlake site by the service road at the south end of Oriole Road at 2 p.m.”

Call 912-233-8733 or email karen [at] savannahtree.com to RSVP for this volunteer opportunity.

And there’s more news out of the market: The season is being extended to Dec. 17 and will reopen earlier in 2012:

“We are proud to officially announce that we will continue to provide fresh produce, high quality meats and delicious prepared food until December 17th. We will then take a short winter break before starting the 2012 season on February 11th, 2 months earlier than we typically do. This represents a 30% increase in your market experience and a great way to indulge in the southern luxury of a year- long growing season.”

More information is available on the market website.

Bill Dawers does a fine job on his blog of addressing this oft-repeated objection to removing the flyover:

“The single weakest argument against the removal is also the one that I hear the most, at least among those objections dealing with traffic. As I noted in the column, I’m constantly hearing people say that MLK can’t handle the additional incoming traffic, but every single car leaving the city via I-16 has to travel on or across MLK already.”

Read more here.

Bill Dawers  has strong feelings about parking lots, which he shares in his City Talk column, “Another parking lot detracts from downtown’s vibrancy” in today’s Savannah Morning News:

“They tend to rend the residential and retail fabric. They repel pedestrians. They generally generate far less economic activity than more intense uses. They create heat islands. They contribute to problems with drainage and polluted stormwater runoffs.”

And he’s not alone in his thinking. Here’s Donald Shoup quoting Jane Jacobs on how parking lots affect the sidewalks they border and the city at large:

“The presence of open shops and people on the street encourages other people to be out as well. People want to be on streets with other people on them, and they avoid streets that are empty, because empty streets are eerie and menacing at night. Although the absence of parking requirements does not guarantee a vibrant area, their presence certainly inhibits it. ‘The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages,’ Jane Jacobs argued in 1961, ‘the duller and deader it becomes … and there is nothing more repellent than a dead downtown’.”

John A. Jankle and Keith A. Sculle review Jacobs’ ideas about what parking lots do to neighboring properties:

“A kind of ‘unbuilding’ or running-down process was set in motion. Thus, parking lots were ‘instruments of city destruction that could ‘disembowel’ a city. ‘City character is blurred,’ Jacobs continued, ‘until every place becomes more like every other place, all adding up to Noplace.”

And they offer a quote of their own:

“Nothing over the past century in America has proven as disruptive of the traditional urban landscape as parking. Perhaps nothing has made American cities less memorable…nothing fragmented the urban space more than the parking lot.”

It’s important to remember that the preservation movement in Savannah, which has prevented downtown from becoming “Noplace,” has its roots in a fight over a parking lot.

“Savannah was becoming Anyplace, USA and it was losing its soul. By the mid-1950s, the loss of the Wetter House, beloved City Market and demolition threats to the Isaiah Davenport House sparked the formation of Historic Savannah Foundation. Led by seven visionary women, HSF purchased the c. 1820 Davenport House and thus began the organization’s formal entry into the world of preservation and real estate.”

Why was Davenport House being threatened with demolition? So the land could be used for a funeral home parking lot. The question now is how to promote better uses for spaces left behind by buildings that were not saved.

Dawers offers more thoughts (and photos) on his blog.

It’s hard to imagine a better example of backwards-looking ideas than House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s proposed transportation reauthorization bill, which he announced yesterday. It will eliminate dedicated federal funding for bicycling and walking. Mica apparently deems spending in these areas to be “not in the federal interest.” Meanwhile Sen. James Inhofe, the lead Republican negotiator on the transportation bill in the Senate, has stated one of his top three priorities is to eliminate “frivolous spending” on bicycle facilities, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

These merciless cuts are not aimed at reducing the deficit, reviving the economy, creating jobs, improving transportation choices or serving the American people.

• Did the lawmakers consider a national study finds that bicycle and pedestrian projects create 46 percent more jobs per dollar invested than road-only projects?
• Did they consider the impact of transportation spending that will keep millions of Americans dependent on their cars for every single trip they make, contributing to obesity rates that have climbed at least 90 percent in 17 states from 1995 to last year?
• Did they consider the medical care costs of obesity totaled more about $147 billion on 2008 dollars?
• Did they consider the real economic benefits millions of individual Americans derive from using bicycles for transportation?

It’s clear they did not.

“Volunteers should be sure to wear long sleeved shirts, long pants and closed-toe shoes with socks to help protect from sun, bugs and plants, and may bring work gloves, bypass pruners and pruning shears if they have them. Refreshments, community service hours and tools will be provided.”

More information is available on the Savannah Tree Foundation website.

“Don’t they like to get somewhere during their walk or run? How many times can a person walk or run around the park without wanting to use that time and energy to arrive somewhere?”

She quickly and astutely zeroes in on the problem, which is one pedestrians and cyclists share: Many local streets, having been designed (or redesigned) exclusively for cars, are not enjoyable places to walk.

“Of course, who can blame them? Have you tried to walk on Eisenhower Drive? How about Waters Avenue? Not even the reliable Abercorn Street, which traverses Ardsley Park, has a sidewalk that will accommodate your walking.”

These thoroughfares are dangerous by design. It’s unfortunate that using these streets requires pedestrians to be “adventurous and bold,” but the fact is that many citizens have no choice but to walk on streets that are unwelcoming at best and deadly at worst.