Madison Rd / Oakley: Make Bikes a Part of It

The City of Cincinnati's Department of Transportation and Engineering recently released a preliminary plan for improving Oakley Square by slowing traffic and making it more pedestrian friendly. The design can be seen here on Kevin LeMaster's Building Cincinnati blog.

These plans are an additional sign that City engineers are beginning to recognize that new thinking is needed to enhance those things that make our urban neighborhoods unique. A critical part of creating 21st-century neighborhood business districts is making them desirable destinations and easily reachable on foot and by bike.

Oakley Square is perfectly placed to become such a neighborhood, and it's within a short bike ride of thousands of potential shoppers who more than likely already have bikes in the garage. Not to mention that Oakley Cycles is one of the businesses already on the Square.

We would like to see bike facilities explicitly included in the next round of drawings for Oakley Square, and serious thought given to how people could leave there cars at home the next time they go shopping or go out for dinner.

Madison Road is also one of the major east-west bicycle commuter routes in Cincinnati. We would like to see bike lanes on Madison Road all the way from Madisonville into Walnut Hills, Clifton, and Downtown.

It's only three miles -- 20 minutes by bike -- from DeSales Corner to Oakley Square. We drive so much that we don't realize how close things in the City really are, and how great it would be if we started remaking our neighborhoods with that in mind.