A new supplemental Tucson bike map released yesterday aims to highlight city bike routes that have lower volumes of cars and are more comfortable for cyclists.
The map, which has been in the works for months (read the October story here), highlights six different categories of bike infrastructure including; Shared-use paths, bike boulevards, enhanced bike routes — routes that prioritize bike travel —, bike routes and bike lanes. The map also shows cyclists where they can find crossing signals along major arterial streets.
Two circles radiate around the the University of Arizona indicating the approximate time it would take to ride to the UA. The first circle suggests if you live inside of it, it would take about 10-15 minutes. The second suggests it would take 20-25 minutes.
The map folds up to the size of a credit card and according to Ann Chanecka, the city’s bike and pedestrian program manager will be available at bike shops, ward offices and libraries.
In the interim, you can download the map here. The map was created by the Pima Association of Governments with the help of the City of Tucson and the University of Arizona.
What do you think of the map?
I love it! It seems it’s already out-of-date, though? The Palo Verde Greenway shared use path connects Palo Verde to Country Club south of Aviation Highway. I’ll probably print it out and annotate it as I ride around.
Who should we contact to say “Thank you!”?
It’s an improvement. It isn’t a huge improvement, but it is better. Showing the traffic signals is great, Changing the descriptions to include the terms, ‘motor vehicle’, and, ‘car traffic’, is long overdue.
The map was created by the City of Tucson and PAG and the printing was paid for by $9,000 in Pima County funds along with $2,300 in PAG funds. Many thanks to Ann and Gabe for the great work in creating the map.
Thanks. but there’s a mistake on the map out east. Adams is not a Bike Route east of Rosemont. The street is Lee.
Cody and others – please let us know changes that you would like to see on the next go around. It is a work in progress!
Ann Chanecka Thank you and great work, Ann! The only update I have so far is the addition of the Palo Verde Greenway following the drainage near 45th and Country Club.
Love this! I heartily add my humble thanks to the City of Tucson, PAG, Ann and Gabe for putting it together. It will be a great reference tool to facilitate getting around in our Old Pueblo. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the street I live on, Fairmount -which becomes Drachman- , actually goes from Oracle, all the way to Wilmot, in a virtually unbroken straight line (with the only deviation I could see being at Campbell. But that is actually a lighted crossing, and offers an easy way to cut back around to Drachman). Might be a good candidate for a future East/West greenway bike corridor?
Would LOVE to see more North/South connections too. Especially as a way to connect to the Loop from points in the center of the city proper. =)
@Gabrielle
I totally agree with you about Fairmount’s virtues as a bike route.
Ann Chanecka(and Matt Zoll and Gabe Thum)
This is potentially fairly good.(“why do we have to learn all this math”)
This seems to be a worthy early effort to get usable info out there, especially to newcomers. It should be noted that the circle is a mathematically special member of a larger family known as the ellipse. And the circle is the most familiar. So we might want to bring in the other members of the family:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Ellipse.html
NB: the second gif
@Gabrielle Yes! I live on Drachman, and it’s a great east-west route, despite the stop signs and lack of lighted crossings. Because it’s straight as an arrow, it’s faster than 3rd street and easier to navigate.
What’s on the back of the printed map? If we have suggestions or corrections, should we post them here or send them to Ann directly?
Ann Chanecka Thanks to all for the great job on this! I especially love that the best routes just visually pop out at a glance.
A couple corrections needed are 1) the streetcar route looks like the old route – it doesn’t show it going under Warren. Which leads to 2) the purple shared used path on Warren should stop at Helen based on the UA’s new ‘dismount zone’ thru the underpass).
Josh Pope, PAG’s GIS Manager, deserves the lion’s share of credit
for making the map look as good as it does. Thanks Josh!
Hi Ryan, the map image you see online is essentially cut in half in printed form, so half the map is on one side, the other half on the other. And feel free to send suggestions or corrections to me: gthum at pagnet.org
The new map looks great, I’m anxious to get a copy. Thanks to all of the bike planners, graphic artists, and IT folks that made it happen.
Ann Chanecka I think this is a great idea. Will there be other versions to include the rest of the Tucson metro area? It seems odd that the east side and northwest side of town aren’t included. It makes sense that the U of A was the focus for an initial roll out for this sort of project but it would be great to have this info for other parts of town. Even if it was only a digital copy at least somebody could plan their route at home before leaving.
Personally I don’t think I’d ever use a paper copy of this but I’d reference it from my computer before going for a ride.
Just wanted to share something I discovered today: if you’re riding on the south side, the bike lane on Palo Verde ends at Gas Rd (just north of Irvington) and never shows up again as you go south (this is accurate on Google Maps). An alternative is to take the Palo Verde Greenway connection from Palo Verde over to Country Club. Country Club has a nice wide bike lane that runs all the way from 36th down to Drexel Rd (not on Google Maps), at which point it’s intermittent down to Valencia. This bike lane and the lower car traffic on Country Club made my morning commute much more enjoyable.
CodyM48
Can you show your narrative here:
http://tucsonvelo.com/map-collaboration
?