GREENFIELD — The city has partnered with the Conway School of Landscape Design in an effort to bolster bicycle-friendly infrastructure.
The semester-long project assigned to Conway School students requires them to work with real-world scenarios. Three students were given the task of creating better cycling networks across Greenfield and beyond.
“It’s been great to have three people who have done nothing but focus on biking in Greenfield for a couple of months. It’s been a gift,” said Amy Cahillane, Greenfield’s community and economic development director.
Funded by the Conway School, the plan focuses on cycling around downtown Greenfield and surrounding trails in the area. Students collected data on traffic incidents, bicycle collisions and road conditions, and also collected feedback from residents during a Feb. 17 community forum. For those who couldn’t make it to the community forum, there is a survey available at tinyurl.com/GreenfieldBikeSurvey for anyone to voice suggested developments in bike infrastructure.
Brian Burke, one of the students involved in the project, explained he has always had an interest in creating better infrastructure for cyclists.
“I think it’s a really interesting process where you’re identifying this need to get from Point A to Point B, and you’re not only looking at what’s the most efficient way to get there, but what’s the safest way to get there,” he explained.
Burke explained that in their plan, the students also sought to make use of previously drafted documents, such as those that are available through the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s Complete Streets program. A “Complete Street” is one that provides safe and accessible options for all travel modes — walking, biking, public transit and vehicles — for people of all ages and abilities.
The students’ main infrastructure suggestion for Greenfield is to create safer routes for residents to commute to and throughout downtown, such as to school or the grocery store.
“I think most people have the desire to be able to ride downtown,” Burke explained. “It seems very reasonable to be able to ride on a bike, and people want safe routes that feel intuitive, and they can get on their bike [or] take their kids on a bike, and not have to think about traffic.”
The plan also addresses requests by recreational and mountain bikers who want to see more trails in Greenfield.
The Conway School students will turn the project over to the city at the end of March. Cahillane explained that the city will hopefully be able to use the plan as a reference when working on various infrastructure projects in Greenfield.
“It will serve as a guide and a map for us, and a tool to make sure that when we work on other projects around the city, we have some guidance around how to make sure that we’re thinking about biking as part of that planning project,” she said.
She explained that certain recommendations might be faster to complete than others, such as adding more bike racks. Other suggestions might take longer, or happen alongside other work being done in the city.
Burke hopes the recommendations that the students present will give city officials “something that they can build upon.”
“I see an opportunity for this bike network to come to fruition,” he said. “I think that can be a very real thing, and understanding our role as students, we are producing these documents, but I want to be able to hand that off and hope that that can turn into something tangible.”