City of Pittsfield Presents Bicycle Facilities Master Plan| 11:51AM / Monday, July 19, 2021 | |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The City of Pittsfield has completed its Bicycle Facilities Master Plan, which aims to establish a safe, comfortable and connected bicycle network throughout the city that is accessible to people of all ages and abilities.
A final presentation of the plan will be shared via a presentation on Zoom at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 19.
A link to the plan through the project website is available on the homepage of the city's website, www.cityofpittsfield.org, under "Hot Topics."
"This project has resulted in the identification of short-term and long-term improvements that will link the city's neighborhoods and downtown, as well as needed accessory infrastructure, such as storage and maintenance," said City Planner CJ Hoss. "While the project included two formal public meetings, the development of this master plan also included stakeholder meetings, input from a community survey this past spring, as well as updates through an interactive mapping tool on the project website."
The Bicycle Facilities Master Plan provides the city with a long-term citywide vision for a bicycle network and grow beyond a ‘one-street-at-a-time' planning approach, Hoss said. The city retained Kittleson and Associations Inc., a nationally renowned transportation focused consulting firm, to lead this project.
The plan was built around the following project goals and objectives:
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Develop a citywide plan based on transportation, land use, and demographic factors;
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Prioritize plan recommendations for full-scale build out over time;
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Recommend bicycle facility types for preferred and alternative routes in the network; and
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Identify complementary bicycle facilities such as bicycle racks, maintenance stations, and bike-share stations.
Beginning in the early 2000s, the city started to design and implement bicycle facilities with the redesign of North Street to include sharrows (a shared lane marking) and dedicated bike lanes.
This effort was followed by the reconstruction of Elm Street with dedicated bike lanes and sharrows. More recently, the city has adopted a Complete Streets policy, is commencing a Tyler Street Streetscape construction project which will add bicycle facilities, and is currently making improvements to North Street to implement a continuous dedicated downtown buffered bike lane with educational signage and materials.
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