The STAR Team meeting this week hosted two guest speakers.
Springfield City Manager Greg Burris brought his “listening tour” to the meeting. He’s been meeting with civic groups to get a picture of how citizens envision the future of Springfield. He said he hopes to meet with 40 to 50 groups during the tour.
He began the conversation asking us to think big. And we did — mostly on transportation topics, e.g. putting existing rail lines to use for a commuter train. But the conversation also covered such related topics as urban density and planning for peak oil.
The second speaker was Melissa Anderson, Non-Motorized Transportation Engineer for MoDOT. She updated us on projects of interest and encouraged us to attend pubic hearings to make sure our concerns are heard. She also said that MoDOT is now taking its mandate to provide for non-motorized road users more seriously than in the recent past.
Committee updates:
Complete Streets Policy: This has moved out of the planning stage into the get-it-done stage. I’m working on a draft resolution now that the CS subcommittee will present to the START TEAM at the 20 January meeting.
Bicycle Friendly Community: Work continues on our LAB application for bicycle-friendly status. We’re still planning on meeting the March application deadline.
Comments 2
Melissa’s title is something like ‘Non-motorized Transportation Engineer’ and she replaced MoDOT’s fired Bike / Ped Coordinator Caryn Giarratano who was and is a ball of fire for bicycling. MoDOT’s BPAC has NOT met once since Melissa took over.
Posted 18 Dec 2009 at 2:44 pm ¶Coy… Thanks for the additional information.
Posted 18 Dec 2009 at 3:10 pm ¶