Cody Donahue (@codyreconnect), the director of policy and advocacy for Reconnect Rochester, joins the podcast to discuss the organization’s mission to promote car-light transportation options in the Rochester area. A significant focus of the conversation is the challenges and opportunities related to improving bike and pedestrian safety, particularly on dangerous roads like Empire Boulevard. Cody shares insights on recent efforts to redesign transportation infrastructure, including the importance of creating safe bike lanes and enhancing public transit services.

Mentions:

• Reconnect Rochester (@reconnectroc @roccycling)
• Go Bike Buffalo (@gobikebuffalo)
• Vocal New York (@vocalnewyork)

Mentioned in this episode:

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Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just can't not.

Yes, I know we're just getting started, but that's the way things go on this show.

So it's a beautiful day in Rochester.

We've got a snowy day.

And we're here talking about an organization that I'm familiar with.

Hope you're familiar with too, but guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Well, hello listeners.

My name is Cody Donahue, and I'm the director of policy and advocacy for Reconnect Rochester.

And Reconnect Rochester has been around about 15 years, and we try to inspire people to think about ways to get around without relying on a car being car light.

And we do a lot of advocacy to expand transportation choices.

And, you know, we think transportation choices make Monroe county and Rochester a more vibrant and equitable place to live and work and play.

Yeah.

So one, that's an amazing thing.

And this covers many different aspects that I'll want to go into, obviously, including, you know, pedestrian safety, bike safety, environmental, you know, equitability for different communities in Rochester.

It kind of encompasses many different things, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's one of the.

One of the reasons why I was drawn to the organization, but also the mission because it crosses cuts across so many different lifestyle and also economic and social issues that are really urgent.

Safety really being top of mind.

We just had the DMV commissioner in town, the New York State DMV commissioner who's also the chair of the governor's traffic safety board.

And he said he picked Rochester as a place to highlight safe winter driving.

Speaking of our snow because were one of the most dangerous places in the state to drive.

Really?

Really.

That's interesting because, I mean, I grew up in Buffalo, and even in the last few years, like the winters have gotten, I can see, bordering on miles to my taste.

And the fact that we still have so much going on just means that people just aren't being careful.

They're not paying attention to the conditions.

They're not driving to the roads or the roads are designed such that they are definitively unsafe by design.

Design is such a huge thing.

Yeah.

For us, this construction season, you probably, you know, if you drove around Rochester, walked around or biked around, you saw a lot of our roads are being redesigned, they're being reconstructed or, you know, they're.

They're taking a maintenance project and trying to bump out the curbs more, make them make the lanes narrower, try to make a street where going fast is actually uncomfortable.

So the city of Rochester has really jumped in to and leaned into the vision zero approach, which is it says, you know, we can design our roads differently, we can educate drivers, and.

And.

And we need to look at enforcement like they're.

We're at historic lows when it comes to enforcement in terms of traffic violations in Rochester and nationally.

And the city said, you know, there's a lot of different things we have to do to make it safer to drive, to be a driver in our city, to be a person walking, a person biking, rolling.

And, you know, design is absolutely important.

And it's also a long game.

It's unfortunately, you know, that's the thing that costs millions of dollars every time you tear up a road.

You also have to deal with the pipes that are underneath or the electrical or the fiber optic cables.

So that's really the long game.

And in the short and the more short term, organizations like Reconnect Rochester and Partners, we try to inspire people to use your bike more, get out, try the bus, especially for trips that are like four miles or less.

And there are studies that show that in.

In our area, most commutes, most work commutes are 4.1 miles.

So it's a really attractive option for walking, biking, or taking the bus, for sure.

Kind of want to take a step back before we dive into the meat of a lot of those different things.

Kind of understand, like, when did you join up with Reconnect Rochester and what was your background prior to that?

Yeah, I'm.

I'm one of those people that.

That embodies the not all who wander are lost philosophy.

I think I'm originally from Oregon.

I didn't grow up here, but my wife did.

She grew up in Chile.

Very typical story, actually.

Yeah.

Moved to Rochester for the.

For the family.

Yep.

And I started my career in international sustainable development.

So I worked for the United nations for about 10 years.

I worked for Grassroots NGO in West Africa for about 8 years.

Moved to Rochester, worked for Planned Parenthood.

So I've kind of done everything under the sun in the nonprofit world, but there's been a kind of a thrill through line with my work, and that's been advocacy.

It's trying to work with building grassroots movements for social change.

And so I had admired Reconnect Rochester from afar, and when they said they were expanding their advocacy work, I literally biked over there and submitted my application as soon as I could.

But my whole adult life, I've considered myself Carlite.

I try to live really close to where I work so that you Know, walking or biking is an option.

Or, you know, I lived in, when I lived in New York City, I would always take the subway.

Of course, owning a car in New York City is just bonkers anyways.

Oh, it's amazing.

So I was able to cycle down to, into Manhattan for the five years I worked in midtown at the un, you know, the UN building.

I just, yeah, I just, I actually, I love just being at the freedom that you feel, just taking the bus, taking the subway, or walking or biking.

And you know, I just, over the years, like, I've gotten less and less.

I just feel less and less joy when I get in a car.

It's just, it's just like, oh God, I'm in this car again.

I have to go.

This, I have to deal with all the drivers.

And so, yeah, I just feel really passionate that, you know, bringing that experience to other people, you know, when they have the choice, how can, how can we get them out into different modes of transportation?

Yeah.

So, I mean, let's, let's start with that example.

So, you know, New York City being a place that has serious infrastructure when it comes to, you know, having a subway, which is more rapid than a bus, and then trains that go to multiple locations, obviously more rapid than subway.

There's many different options.

And actually just got back from a trip to the wife and I stayed in Flushing for four days and when we wanted to go, you know, we obviously didn't rent a car.

You know, we could walk around.

But we did everything.

We did everything from, you know, subway all the way into, into Manhattan.

We did buses to different locations.

And you know, I was, we were in Chicago a couple weeks before.

Yeah, I took the train from, from where we were in Rosemont to the city.

Then I took a bus to get to a different location.

Oh, I don't want to walk 15 minutes.

I'll get on a seven minute bus.

And that flexibility, once you, you know, I'm not accustomed to it, once you start doing it, you're like, oh, oh, this is wildly convenient.

This is, this is a relaxing way of getting around a place.

So with what's in Rochester right now, and that's, that's where I also want to talk about is current versus reasonable to ideal.

Because I always want to go through those different states when it comes to these kind of things.

So right now, Rochester does have a pretty robust bus system around the city and spokes out to the suburbs.

Correct?

Correct.

Yeah.

And rts, the regional transit service, runs those buses.

And in many respects they are Innovating and leading in New York State and especially on the electrification of buses.

A couple years ago, just before the pandemic they completed a system redesign called Reimagine rts.

They had a lot of public engagement on that and Reconnect Rochester was really active in trying to shape and influence that.

And basically what it boiled down to was redesigning the system so that within the core of the most frequently used lines, the most most ridership, we would have more frequent bus service.

And to your point earlier, frequency is key.

Absolutely.

Knowing that there's going to be a bus in 15 minutes or less, you know, even on a snowy cold day like today, I'm willing to stand outside and kind of twiddle my thumbs until the bus shows up.

Unfortunately, the pandemic hit very soon after the Reimagine RTS was launched.

So a lot of the promised 15 minute service lines that were supposed to BE I think nine or 10, I think we're only up to five now.

And so that promise of a frequency has not yet been fully realized.

And you know I'd say that there were other intervening factors such as the school bus crisis that explain why we aren't there yet.

But I think that's our number one talking about future state with rts our number one push is restore frequency.

We need to figure out the bus operators, the availability of the buses and then the operating funds in order to pay for that service.

If we can get that three legged stool together then you know, we think that should, that frequency should be the number one thing that's re established.

I out of curiosity I looked at how much it would take me how much time it would take me to get here today from my house in the 19th Ward.

So I would have taken the 17 bus down the transit center and then switched to the Empire Empire Boulevard bus.

I think it's the eight, the seven.

Yeah.

It would have taken about 55 minutes.

Yeah.

To get here.

Yeah.

That you know, that that's a 55 minutes.

I'm not being productive necessarily.

You know, I could be reading, I could be doing other things that could be.

But it's, you know, time is money in very real ways for people.

So I think that's, you know, some of the, some of the challenges here.

We have a robust system but it does take a lot of time to get to get places.

Well and that's the other thing too is especially for, especially for people where the bus is a necessity, not a choice.

Absolutely.

Having that time is wildly valuable because you probably, you need that time more to be with your family, to, to do those things, maybe to get to a second job or to do this or that.

Having that opportunity to regain time is a huge value in equity to the people that need that service.

Yeah, it's a time tax.

Yeah.

So I wanted to go back.

You mentioned something that I'm not familiar with and again, if it's not your forte, feel free to punt on it.

But you mentioned a school bus crisis.

What, what's, what was that?

I'm not familiar with that.

At the beginning of the school year, there was a shortage of bus drivers for the, the companies that contract with rcsd, Rochester City School District and RTS was asked to step in and provide bus service.

Oh right, yeah, I did hear about that.

To the high schools.

And that's continued to this day.

That's still an active contract that they fulfill.

And based on everything I've heard, if you're a member of the general public, you can actually just get on one of those buses.

So like I could feasibly, you know, when the bus comes to Genesee Park Boulevard at the end of my street and it's headed to School of the Arts, which is near my office at the Hungerford, I could conceivably get on that bus with the high schoolers and then go straight down to School of the Arts and then walk the rest of the way.

But it's not generally seen as.

It's not necessarily in addition to the bus system.

Yeah.

The normal route.

Yeah.

It's not necessarily listed, but in theory you could.

So the other one I wanted to mention with that, just to know for completeness sake was, I forget what, what they call it, but it was the addition of the more targeted, smaller transportation system.

On demand.

The on demand system, which seemed like a big part of that, part of that redevelopment is trying to get to people exactly where they are, especially people who need more direct service.

Yeah.

And it's, it was a choice and a, you know, a conscious trade off I think in the redesign system of the system, you know, have more frequency on long fixed routes in the core of your system where you have the most riders, the most, the most destinations in the city and then, you know, get to the end of the line in say Rondequoit or Greece Henrietta, and then you have a hub where you can kind of transition to the on demand zones.

So they've set up a number of on demand zones in the towns outside of the City of Rochester.

And within that zone.

Yeah.

You have a small, smaller bus that you can schedule a trip with and they will take you door to door within that zone.

Unfortunately, the zones don't cross.

So of course, you know, you can't unfortunately take a on demand bus from Greece and get to your job in gates.

You would have to go to the mobility hub, get on a fixed route, and then back out to, you know, to gates.

Let's say you work at the Amazon facility out there.

So, so there are, there are those kinds of, you know, challenges and drawbacks to it.

But the other thing, you know, the, the cost, the average cost of a per passenger ride on a fixed route is very low.

It's usually like under $5 per person in most bus systems, including ours.

And when you talk about on demand service, so like the cost per person per trip, it can get into the 20 to $30 per person.

That's the system cost.

That's, you know.

Yeah, that's how much it costs the system to provide that ride.

So on demand is inherently expensive model.

It's as if you're scheduling an Uber.

It's almost a personalized car.

And right now I think we've had subsidies that are covering it and a lot of cities around the country have had subsidies covering it.

So I think the question now is what does the model look like going forward?

How do we make that sustainable?

Yeah, and that makes complete sense because you're right, you're basically targeting yourself and that's always inefficient when you're targeting any individual is fundamentally inefficient.

So I think that covers that because that right now, that is the big infrastructure in transport.

In Rochester, when it comes to public transportation, obviously there's many private options available, but that's the main public as well as obviously trying to get to other cities through through rail.

Inefficient rail, such that it is.

Well, there's one possible future state that we're pretty excited about is bus rapid transit.

So bus rapid transit's the idea that you can run a very frequent bus along a fixed route and it makes fewer stops and it collects your fare before you get on.

So the whole experience is much faster.

In New York city, it's the SBS like this, the 14 down 14th street, the select bus service, it only stops at like six places all along.

And so we've, you know, there's been some initial talk about bus, bringing bus rapid transit to the Rochester area.

Albany's done it.

They've got several, several routes Buffalo is working on one right now.

So, you know, we, we would love to see that happen in Rochester and you know, really serve where, where we have the most ridership, the most density.

There's been some talk about Lake Avenue kind of converting that into a bus rapid transit corridor.

And you know, in our mind that would, that would accomplish a lot for Lake Avenue because Lake Avenue currently is, it's a speedway.

It's our, you know, it's our boulevard of death, essentially.

It's, it's the place where, you know, we have a lot of concerns about driver safety, people safety and you know, it needs something.

It needs.

Well, let's talk about that specifically, since you brought it up.

So what, what about it right now facilitates that, you know, facilitates the danger that lives there.

Because that's, that is a stretch that is fairly long, correct?

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at the whole, the whole thing from Charlotte to downtown, that's five or six miles.

The part that bus rapid transit might serve would probably go from, you know, transit center downtown up to like Ridge Road.

So it wouldn't go all the way up to Charlotte.

But you know, what facilitates that is four lanes of, four lanes of, of car travel lanes, fairly wide and it allows for fairly high speeds.

There are also segments of that that are not in the city technically that you can have a higher posted speed limit.

So, you know, that, that, that, that design inherently kind of encourages speed and it's a key corridor for getting down from Greece and Charlotte, northern part of Rochester, down into the downtown core area.

So I think it's a very wide.

When we talk about street redesigns, we talk about the right of way.

What does the city or the municipality own that they can use to kind of re engineer it?

It's a really wide right of way.

So I think that's why having, you know, multimodal options, like more, more bus, you know, a dedicated bus lane and, and more, more space for bike lanes and sidewalks would actually help slow the whole thing down.

Well, and I think that that brings up to the point because there is a lot of, there's a lot of streets that when people are driving on them.

I'll speak for drivers for a second.

Not that I'm speaking for drivers in general, but let's.

I will be the voice of the driver for a moment.

Whenever, whenever we see, Whenever you see a two lanes both ways and the posted speed limit is 35 miles an hour, the chances of people actually driving that are roughly 0% because everybody sees that.

And like, why Is this so low?

Like we could drive so much faster.

There's so much space.

There's, you know, two lanes where you could have rapid speeds driving through these areas.

And I'm thinking of other areas in Buffalo where it's, you know, the, you know, the 35 mile an hour road past some of the parks in the city and here too on where it's essentially separated road with two lanes.

And that's off of, that's up there, right up near Charlotte.

I forget the road, but it's, you know, essentially it's a, it's almost like a mini highway, but it's a 35 mile an hour road split into two lanes in two directions.

People see that and you're like, why, why are they doing this to us?

Why are they slowing us down on these roads that it can obviously go faster?

And that, that's the logic that I would use as a driver because, like, why can't I go faster?

The roads are designed for it.

Yeah.

And that's why as much as we, you know, we would like to see the speed limit lowered, you know, in a lot of places we'd like, you know, we're, we're looking at 25 miles an hour in the city of Rochester, for instance, and we're, you know, we'll talk about Empire Boulevard hopefully, but.

Oh, absolutely.

Want to get that, you know, get that lowered as well.

The, but to your point, the, the driver sees a wide open, you know, a wide open space.

There's nothing, there are no visual cues slowing them down.

You know, you look at, you look at those parts of lake, you look at West Henrietta Road.

That's a Great example.

From 390 south toward, toward Jefferson Road.

There's no trees, sort of creating a sense of kind of enclosure.

There's no kind of signal that, yeah, this is a place you should be slowing down.

There's hardly pedestrian crosswalks.

Elmwood EV is another great example.

It's at 35 miles an hour and it's four lanes and people are, you know, other than stoplights, there's nothing stopping you from driving 50, 50 miles an hour on that road.

Yeah.

And actually, you know, Elmwood in Brighton and the county, the county part of Elmwood, it's actually one of the, I think success stories that Monroe County's had in the last year or two.

Reconnect Rochester nominated Elmwood as a gap in the cycling network.

Actually our members said, hey, this is a big gap in our cycling network.

You know, wouldn't it be great if there were bike lanes here, and the road was narrower.

And to be fair, I'm also thinking of more when I lived over in that area.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I don't drive it much anymore.

I drive it occasionally, but I used to live in that area, so I'm thinking of that road specifically.

Yeah.

And it's pretty recent, actually, that they.

So they took from the city line to 12 corners and they gave it what's called a road diet.

Instead of having four lanes, you have three lanes and the turning center, turning lane.

It created space for bike lanes, and it.

It slowed people down, like, to the point that, you know, people that live.

Live there and will walk down to 12 corners there.

They said, you know, gosh, I just.

I feel so much safer now doing this.

Like, I don't.

I don't feel like it's.

It's a speedway to get, you know, get through here.

And, you know, I think the county and everybody, you know, everybody else should.

Should really be proud of that, that they.

That they were able to accomplish that.

Well, there's a ton of people that live over there, too.

I think that's the main thing is when you're talking about apartment complexes.

Right.

You're talking about a ton of people that could, in theory, ride public transportation or ride a bike to a reasonable distance to a lot of places from there.

And I'm thinking of the apartment complex I lived in.

I lived at Elmwood Manor or the other places over there.

I could get to a lot of places efficiently if I felt safe riding on a bike or if I had, you know, if I were riding a bus to a specific area that's an area that is optimal for that in many ways.

And it's great to hear that that was a target because that makes so much sense.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, builds on the city.

Part of Elmwood has a cycle track.

You know, it goes by the U of R, U of R and the hospital and through Collegetown, and now, you know, connects up to these great bike lanes.

Yeah.

So I think we're going to do.

We're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk about some of the specific efforts that are going on right now, some of the most more recent studies.

And we'll do more conversation with Reconnect Rochester, and we'll be right back.

All right.

And we're back with the second half of our conversation talking Reconnect Rochester, throw some plugs in again where people can learn more about what's going on.

They can go to the website and go to social media.

What's the best place?

Yeah.

Www.renectrochester.org.

there you can sign up for our newsletter and we have a separate cycling newsletter.

If you're, if you're really into bikes and you want all the bike info, sign up for the cycling newsletter.

If you're like me and you like to get involved with the advocacy and the, you know, the lobbying to different groups, we have mobility action alerts.

Once a week or once every two weeks you'll get an email with really specific targeted actions that you can take mostly from your home to advance the movement for safer streets, multimodal transportation options and you know, get together with, with like minded people who like share this vision.

Nice.

So I wanted to do, I wanted to go through roughly biking as it is now and then.

Definitely want to talk about partially out of my own self interest.

And also that is your newest study, the Empire Boulevard effort that just came out.

But I wanted to do biking generally.

So I know over the last few years as I've started to try to bike around Rochester more, I have noticed the changes and the availability of either shared or marked lanes and separated lanes depending on the roads.

And I've seen the maps that came out and everything like that.

And it seems like there's a lot of really good intent, but obviously things move slowly when it comes to these things.

How would you assess the current state of biking in Rochester right now?

The one, one of our staff members, he came up with the idea of the Mind the Gap campaign.

Yeah.

A couple of years ago he and some advocates were sitting around looking at the bike map and they said, you know, it's great, but it kind of looks like you just spilled a whole bunch of spaghetti on a map and there's all these disconnected segments.

So like, you know, you'll be riding along and you know, I'm a, I'm a weekly cyclist, you know, not every single day, but you know, I'll commute at least once or three times a week and you know, you'll be riding along and you have a great bike lane and it's very clear where you're supposed to be and where the car is supposed to be.

And then all of a sudden it just disappears and you're kind of stuck, especially at an intersection.

You're like, you know, so you got to start to look around, make sure that there isn't a car that's going to turn right and hit you or you know, do do something else, you know, so I'd say the state is improving.

It is, it is mostly, you know, the improvements and the, the new facilities are happening through maintenance projects largely, which is really good.

Like take a, take a project where you're already going to be tearing up the road, you're already going to be milling it down and you know, rebuilding it, repainting it and put down the bike stripes and the green paint.

You know, more and more we're seeing the green paint which is standard for, for bike lanes.

Explain what that is for a second for people because that is a step towards bike separation.

But explain the green lanes versus shared.

Versus yeah, so we have a sharrows.

Those are where you kind of see the bike is painted into the, the same lane where the car is traveling.

So you're supposed to share the lane with the, the cars.

And that never really goes that well.

And that's a practice.

The idea is that it's explaining to the cars that bikes belong.

Yeah, that bikes belong here.

And, and we think, you know, taking it one step further for having a separated painted bike lane, again, you know, again signals to the drivers this is a place where cyclists are supposed to be, are welcomed, are legit legitimate vehicles.

And then you can kind of from there there's like a lot of iterations to take it further.

So one way to do that and you know the, the national standard color for bike lanes is green.

So they'll paint, they'll paint at least a segment of the bike lane green.

Especially if you have like a driveway or you have like another crossing road, you'll see the green just to signal to hey, watch for cyclists here.

You know, beyond that there's protected bike lanes, different kinds of protected bike lanes.

You can have a bike lane with a, you know, concrete barrier.

You see that a lot in you know like Brooklyn and Queens, Toronto as well.

Toronto, we're going to be pro doing a trial of low profile concrete barriers on West Main street in Rochester.

I think they'll be installed next year.

You know, you can do the flexible posts, the bollards.

So there's a lot of different flavors of protection and you know it's, it is context dependent but you know, I'd say like big picture.

Our city and county produced active transportation plans last year and you know, updated all of the different plans and ideas for how to build a really robust and interconnected, safe and all ages kind of bike network.

And so they kind of have the blueprint now of what they need to do and where they need to go.

They're accomplishing A lot of it through these maintenance plans.

As I said over the summer, Rochester won a $24 million award from the federal government under the Safe Streets and Roads for all program.

It was part of the bipartisan infrastructure law.

So Senator Schumer came to town and announced that to build four protected bike lanes.

North Clinton, East Main, Chili Avenue, and I believe Lyle is the other one.

So kind of hitting all four quadrants of the city.

So, you know, those.

Those things are moving progressively forward.

But our, you know, our goal at Reconnect is that we see this kind of minimum grid, we're calling it, or like a spine of bike, basic spine of bike networks that interconnect and produce a north south corridor and an east west corridor that's really safe and really comfortable for people of all ages.

So we'd like to see that.

Love that.

Yeah.

So by then I'm going to make.

I'm going to make a statement that you do not have to say or agree with is that the, you know, the.

The shared, you know, the Sharrows, and to me is really just indicating what is already the law, which is that bikes are vehicles that should respected for what they are, not anything else.

And it's really just a visual depiction for drivers to know that you shouldn't injure or maim or kill bicycles or bicyclists or pedestrians.

So it is really just a visual indication that these are people that are transporting themselves to places.

So I appreciate that they're there.

And I think it's still important that we have the visual depiction of that.

So maybe people will think of them not as deterrence, but to going fast.

But people that are driving.

The one I wanted to mention, and I know it's part of the gap situation, is so I think of, you know, I'm thinking of myself as somebody who wants to bike more from where I am.

I have no bike infrastructure until I get deeper into the city, other than the fact that there are gaps on the road that I can get to the side of.

So I'm on a major northwest road, Winton Road, and I could in theory go from there to Atlantic or University, go into the city.

And the only protected lane, not protected, even separated lane that I will see is when I get to Union to go to Ugly Duck Coffee.

And that'd be from a major road, Winton to a major road, University or East or Atlantic, and.

Or if I Go to Culver, same thing.

Basically, I see no infrastructure in hell.

Even if I want to get to a path that I want to ride into the woods, right.

I have to go to the side of midtown to go into the path that goes to Pittsford.

But just to get to a bike path that I can ride, I'd either have to go up to the one off of 590, which means I have to drive here to Culver to major road to major road to get over there, or I have to go down Winton where I'm definitively riding in the road with no separation.

So to me, to get to bike paths right now, either have to go through the city on no protected lanes or even no separated lanes, go down Winton or go up to 590.

So right now the infrastructure is telling me I shouldn't do what I want to do.

How common of a story is that that you hear is somebody who is now active in, you know, talking to people and really being a person.

Not person to person, but training people about bike safety.

That, that's really the most common story.

I want to bike, but I don't feel safe.

I want to bike and there's no lane or there's, there's, there's not a sense that if I did put myself in the lane, I would be respected as a vehicle.

Yeah.

So you're, you know, you're, you're absolutely right.

The goal isn't, the goal is that you should be able to leave your house and use the bike as a vehicle to get from here to there and, and access at least, at least after maybe a little bit of a navigation, you're going to end up somewhere that has protected bike facilities.

You know, right now you said in Union street, there's a cycle track there that was built on top of the old inner loop that's probably going to be extended with the inner loop north kind of around.

But you know, essentially, that's essentially what we're talking about is this spine of protected, high comfort, safe routes through the city that might connect up to a minor, a more minor road that's supportive.

That's Scott Bike facilities.

That's supportive but eventually gets you back, you know, back to your house.

There's one resource I'll plug on our website.

It's called Rock Easy By Bike, because we call everything rock.

But Rock Easy by Bike is a actual, actual.

There's an actual person, Jesse Pierce behind that.

You can email him your, your starting point and where you want to go, and then he's Developed a bike map of high comfort streets.

They don't have to have bike lanes on them.

There's actually a whole network in Rochester.

I call it the Hidden Bike Network.

It's a really cool network of bike boulevards, some of which are signed and some are going to get signs in future years.

But you can go through neighborhood streets, really low, you know, really low stress, low traffic.

In theory, cars are driving slower, but that's really not true anymore.

But it's an easy way to get from here to easier way to get from here to there.

And so Jesse will actually send you an email step by step.

Like, I want to go from my house near Winton Road to Ugly Duck Coffee.

And here's the easy way to get there.

So it's not the solution, but it's part of helping people feel more comfortable on bikes and reconnect.

Rochester does bike classes, learn to ride classes.

I think we have one every month starting in January.

We partner with the city, do it at the rec center.

So you learn kind of the, I call it like the intellectual part of it, like the training of it.

And then there's an on bike component where you kind of do the actual hands on stuff.

And I just actually want to follow up about drivers and how they share the road.

It wasn't until a couple years ago that learning about bicyclists, even though bicyclists have been illegal street vehicle for like a century at this point in New York State, I mean, hey, people need.

To get used to it.

Yeah, people need to get used to it.

It's so new.

I know it takes people a long time to get used to new ideas.

But the, you know, it wasn't until a couple years ago that drivers were even required to learn about bicyclists in their driver's education course.

Like really in the test.

You know, it wasn't required to teach about bicyclists.

It's like, this is wild.

Of course you should.

I mean there's people using the roads with bikes all the time.

So when I think this was, what was it maybe a couple years ago where they actually clarified that you need to give a certain amount of distance to bicycles on the side.

And that was after a schoolteacher, a beloved school teacher in Brockport was killed out on us on a, on a road in the western part of the county.

Carrie Ray.

So it's called Cary's Law and it defines three feet is the minimum passing distance for.

So it's actually, it's cool if you get a pool noodle like just go get your pool noodle from, from your garage.

That's about three feet.

So you can like kind of hang, you know, put that, put that next to you and just see how that feels.

You know, a car passing you at that speed.

The really interesting thing is that it only exists in Monroe County, I think one other county in New York State.

We haven't defined safe passing for the whole state yet.

So it's a active, there's an active lobbying effort in Albany to get the legislature to adopt a defined safe passing law.

And that would put us in line with like, I don't know, we're like one of nine states that don't have this law in the United States.

And it would go a long way to making our, you know, our kind of bicycling score go way up if we just had this, this law in place.

And it's not about like, you know, enforcing it.

We're not, we're not trying to, you know, like, stop drivers who are passing too close to cyclists, but it's a way of protecting cyclists after the fact.

If they were hit, you know, they have a recourse, they have something that, a law they can point to and say the driver violated this law and needs to be held accountable.

Does it also facilitate the addition of the lanes?

Because now it's mandatory.

You have to have gaps that, you know, that's interesting.

Does it legally facilitate that?

It could help.

I don't, I don't think it would require cities to, to adopt that design.

But it certainly, it gives more of an argument for why like having a three foot buffer between the bike lane and a driving car, driving lane would be useful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So one, I appreciate you diving into that because one, I will admit it is a little self, you know, self, self beneficial to me to think about that.

But I think it's a, like you said, it's a pretty common story and hell, I'll bring up the next one, which you did bring up earlier.

But it also affects me directly because I live essentially, you know, I live close to the intersection of North Wind Road and Empire.

And that road, I'll say this, you know, as just a starter.

Empire is a terrifying road.

It's a terrifying road to drive on.

If you actually think about it, it's a terrifying road to do anything on.

If you're going to a restaurant over there, it's a like, like white knuckle, terrifying thing to ride a bike on or walk on.

I mean, I remember, you know, not that long ago, we've had, you know, you know, pedestrian deaths on Empire, closer to Abbotts up there, with people walking, because people walk Empire Boulevard and people going at speeds, you know, 55, 60, 65 miles an hour down the hill and all through the route.

This is a road that brings a ton of traffic, but it's also, realistically for people in my position is a mandatory road.

I need that road to get to places.

And I know that recently you mentioned that.

Gone through a study to talk about that.

So tell me about that.

Yeah, I mean, as.

As you mentioned, like, how do I get from Irondequoit to Webster?

As a car driver, you have a couple options.

You can go over the 104 bridge, you can use Empire, or you can use Browncroft.

But as a.

As a pedestrian or a cyclist, your choice is pretty much Empire.

Yeah, you know, there's the seasonal bridge up at the top of the Roundicoit Bay, but it's, It's.

It's closed for the boating season.

104 doesn't have any bike ped facilities on it.

So, you know, we.

Again, back to the Mind the Gap campaign.

I love this campaign because it really gives people voice, you know, a voice to say, what's your gap?

Like, what's your biggest problem?

And we consistently hear from cyclists who either live in Webster or live in Irondequoit or in Penfield, and they say, you know, Empire.

I can't get anywhere without using Empire.

It's literally the only option.

So it won our campaign last year, and we had support from a generous individual donor, Dr.

Scott McCrae, who helped us essentially hire our own traffic engineer.

It was really cool.

Like, we actually get a qualified engineer, kind of like a New York state DOT has or, you know, the city might hire.

So we got our own.

And he's.

He's actually a, you know, sort of a professional bike PED engineer.

He does this for Go Bike Buffalo, which is our crush organization in Buffalo.

Go Bike.

Yeah.

Shout out to Justin and Kevin.

That's awesome.

But they.

Jim works.

Jim is Mode Choice Engineering, and he worked with us on, you know, trying to figure out, again, within this right of way, we have a certain amount of space that the municipal entity owns and can work with.

And within that right of way, what can we do to make the.

This safer and make more.

Have more continuous walking, biking facilities.

But, you know, ultimately, it's.

It's about speed, right?

It's about how.

How people feel not being in a car, you know, on that road.

What can we do to make that better?

So yeah, as you said, we did this study.

It took us a little while to kind of pull it all together.

But we have a really detailed design rendering.

It's on our blog, it's posted kind of on the front page of ReconnectRochester.org right now.

That explains the different ways that we would envision slowing things down.

So reducing the lane width to 10ft, adding the buffered bike lanes, making more room for sidewalks and continuous pedestrian uses throughout, throughout this area.

And we're talking like Winton Road all the way up to Bay Road.

So up in Webster, all the way up the hill past the kind of shopping plazas up there.

So that would be where it would stop where basically where the turn is.

It kind of turns and then it goes off east.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because Empire goes, I mean, to me, like as somebody who works, you know, works in Webster, you know, that road also goes around the bend past, you know, the Abbots, all the way to, you know, five Mile, all the way into the Village.

Sure.

So right now that, those, that two miles and you know, it's, it's also a corridor that's frankly gotten a lot of attention the last couple of years.

There's, there's, there's.

There's been numerous articles about crashes happening there.

Numerous, numerous incidents involving pedestrians.

But it actually has, has had like a rolling average for like a rolling five year average of 800 crashes.

It's, it's way above average for a road of it.

Of this type.

That stretch, that we're just.

That stretch.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, so I'm going to, I'm going to talk about the actual, you know, structure of that road for a second with the amount of people that are living there with.

We have apartments on one side towards the lake.

We have more apartments coming in next to K2, but we also have a ton of destination spots on that stretch.

We've got Baytown Plaza, which has multiple entrances.

We've got tons of smaller restaurants.

You got Charlie's, you got, then you got chains, you've got, you know, department stores.

And even down on the stretch, you know, the big dip up and downhill, you've got multiple restaurants, you've got Bar Bill that opened, you've got K2, you've got the apartments, you've got other stores.

And turning left out of those places is terrifying with how fast people drive down that road, turning left out of there.

I'm shocked.

And the honest truth is I'm shocked more people haven't died on Empire because you have to cross Two lanes to get to a turning lane.

And that turning lane is who at best, it's scary with how fast people are going.

Sometimes you only have a turning lane.

You have to go directly across into another lane of traffic.

People going 50, 55, 60 miles an hour.

And that's not even to talk about the bicyclists and the pedestrians that can't go fast.

It just seems like there's so many opportunities to do better, like just staggering.

And you know, I love going to the kayak place.

Yeah.

On the south side and you know, getting into the bay with the kayak and you know, last time I was there with my kids, I, I was thinking like, oh, we should cross the street, go to LaSalle Landing Park.

And you're laughing.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, it's, it's, it's like, oh, God, no, I, I can't.

Maybe I could take a right turn, maybe drive half a mile up the.

The road, then take a left turn.

And you know, I was just, I was coming up with this like, very complicated geometry just to like get across the street and maybe look at the geese over in the bay.

There's no crosswalks.

There's no crosswalks.

There's no like flashing light crosswalks.

We looked at an option called a hawk, and they're using it in, you know, basically places where you have.

Your listeners may or may not know this word stroad.

It's a street that's just like a gigantic, you know, car centric road that allows really fast speeds.

And Empire West, Henrietta, those are, you know, classic stroads.

You know, so, so like Phoenix has, has the hawk barrier, which is kind of like a, it's like a stoplight for pedestrians.

You know, it's like, you're gonna stop, all the cars are gonna stop, you know, when the signal is pushed to allow the pedestrians to cross.

But, you know, even that we, you know, we, we.

It's, it sometimes it just doesn't feel like enough.

Right.

Like, you know, it doesn't feel like, you know, no matter what, what we do to design and design it, we still gotta drive, like, factor in the drivers.

And we've, you know, gotta understand and try to change the norms around driving, the culture of driving.

I mean, we, we did a speed study on, on Empire as part of this, and we, our max speed we clocked was 89 miles an hour.

Yeah.

It was like, you know, not shocking and sort of terrible that it is not shocking.

Agreed.

I think that's always the case though, when, if we, if we really look at and take a step back and we're honest about, were honest about what's going on now, I think it does show the challenges, which is where I struggle sometimes with, I struggle sometimes with advocacy.

And not, not that it's a bad thing at all.

I'm not saying that at all is that I love advocacy and I love sometimes the purism of advocacy.

But when we're looking at the reality of somewhere that has so many significant challenges both with, you know, the frequency of cars, because I'm sure it's also one of the busiest traveled roads in our area, you know, how much pushback are you going to get?

Can you do part of what you're doing?

Can you do the whole thing?

I saw, I read the study and I'm like, yeah, this makes sense to me at least as a starting point.

And that's the thing is like, that's a big study that's going to take a lot even to get there.

And that's almost kind of a starting point in many ways.

That's getting to what you would probably consider minimum acceptable conditions or minimal viable.

That's your MVP for Empire.

Not the perfect goal.

Yeah, we approach this as what can we do with quick build?

Quick build is this concept that you're not spending a ton of money.

You're using relatively inexpensive materials to, you know, to make marginal improvements.

So yeah, I think, you know, I think there's plenty of, you know, feedback that I've already gotten about us about this that says you're not going far enough.

You're not trying to, you know, really change things lock, stock and barrel.

And I hear that.

And you know, at the same time, this road is not currently on any kind of like capital plan and for the future there's not millions of dollars just sitting out there for rebuilding it.

But you know, to give New York State.

The credit they deserve, they went out and found $5 million recently as part of environmental resiliency to look at the structure that allows the water to go under it.

It's called a culvert.

It's a technical term.

And they are going to be looking at the wider roadway.

We, and we hope to influence that.

You know, that's, this is the work that we need to do now going forward is there are a ton of advocates in Penfield and Webster and Irondequoit kind of chomping at the bit and want to, want to support this and you know, we need to talk to the businesses along the, along there some more we need to, you know, build.

Build a strong base of community support for it.

So, you know, what I, What I would say is, even if you're, you know, just a little bit interested in it and have 20 minutes, read the blog posts on ReconnectRochester.org and at the bottom, as a list of emails that you can send, we wrote a little paragraph you could copy and paste and just like send an email to, you know, whoever your town supervisor is, the state, the state dot, the state senator, and say, I support this concept because, you know, it's.

It's going to take time.

It's.

And as you say, it's.

It's.

It's the beginning, not.

Not the end.

Yeah.

So, you know, before we, you know, before we close out, I kind of wanted to just do, you know, take a step back and look at, you know, reconnect Rochester today.

And you know, where.

Where do you see.

Where do you see the goals of the organization going?

And I know there's goals now, but do you see the goals expanding?

Do you see it as, you know, going in the same direction as somebody who's influencing that, obviously.

Where do you see the organization going in the next few years?

Well, I'm really pleased to say that we've been able to grow our work in terms of programs and staff.

So sustaining that momentum, I think is really important going forward.

On the programmatic side, we have a signature event called the Complete Streets Makeover where we take an intersection and do quick builds on it.

We use.

Use paint and hire local artists to kind of design a mural that's in the street.

You know, planters and flowers and things like that.

You know, it's meant to help.

Help signal to the drivers, like slow down.

And, you know, this is.

This is a.

An intersection that needs, you know, you need to be cautious.

And so we've done it in, you know, like Parcells in Greeley and Orange and Orchard in the city.

We did Arnett and Warwick by the library, Arnett Library last year.

So we're currently working on another round of that.

Four years.

We want to do four projects, one per year for the next four years.

We're also working on a new program called Downtown Curb Extension Murals that'll really focus on downtown and kind of do art in the public realm.

Public right of way.

We have Sean Dunwoody advising us on that and, you know, good.

A great group of advisors kind of helping shape that program.

We modeled it basic based off of a program in D.C.

and you know, hoping.

Hoping to.

To do two, I believe in the next couple years.

So our programs keep going.

You know, on the advocacy front, a big focus of us is transportation equity.

You know, basically, you know, if you ask, like, how are people doing on their transportation journey, it's entirely dependent on their means, you know, and their income.

And we need to grapple with a lot of things about the inequalities in our city.

And so we're working in coalition with a lot of partners like RMAPI with Voqal New York.

We're doing some work on zoning and, like, how zoning influences housing and how transportation related to that kind of comes together, you know.

So I hope, you know, in the next year and forward, we're having a lot more conversations about transportation as an equity and justice issue and what can be done to improve that.

That's awesome.

So go ahead and put out the plugs.

And if people wanted to reach out and if they have any questions, you know, where can people reach out?

You can follow us on all the socials.

I think we even.

We just started Blue Sky.

We're on Blue sky now.

There you go.

Yeah.

Instagram, Facebook, ReconnectRochester.org got the newsletters.

And you can always feel free to email me codyeconnectrochester.org and we'd love to hear from you.

I think, like, this is a.

This is a movement that.

That we want more and more people to feel home in and, you know, dream big and get inspired to leave your car at home a few days a week and try something out.

Well, I really appreciate you coming over, Cody.

This is a great discussion.

I know.

I learned a few things about what's going on with Reconnect Rochester.

And if you want to learn more about the Lunchadore podcast network, you should check out one of our other shows we've got.

I think a great one to look at would be Mind of Magnus.

Magnus has been doing audio recordings for such a long time and he's starting to.

More interviews.

Just interviewed a guy who did puppeteering for the Henson Corporation and Mystery Science Theater.

Just a great interview.

Go check that one out and hope you enjoyed this episode on Just Can't Not.

We'll be back next time with more about Rochester and beyond.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.