The parks board in the new year plans to create new bicycle lanes in the city.
The parks board will submit a request to city council for improvements across the city based on recommendations from its bicycle audit presented at a council meeting earlier this month, Tonia Griffin, vice chairperson of the board, said.
Those recommendations include installing bicycle lanes on Bayou and Cedar roads, along with obtaining quotes for the installation of sidewalks on Lake and Newman roads.
Griffin described the recommendations as “quick fixes” and hopes initial action from the audit is done soon so the parks board can look at other improvements down the road, she said.
The La Marque Bike Audit evaluated the city’s biking infrastructure by assessing existing bicycle lanes, paths, signage and to provide insights into areas needing improvement.
The audit was funded through an American Association of Retired Persons community improvement grant and spanned two multi-day periods in September and October.
Mayor Keith Bell described the audit as “insightful” to the potential opportunities for the city to grow its biking community.
“It’s exciting for us as a small town to be able to have an opportunity to provide for other modes of transportation,” Bell said. “In our small community, we do have public transportation. We’ve added sidewalks over the years for pedestrian movement, so the opportunity to add on and to build onto that with a possible bicycling infrastructure is an exciting idea.”
Along with evaluating infrastructure, the audit was a chance to better understand the city’s bicycling community, Griffin said.
“What started this was we noticed a lot of kids were biking to the parks in the area, but we weren’t paying attention to see what the adults were doing,” Griffin said. “So, we were able to understand our biking community and get a better understanding of what their needs are and why they’re biking.”
Eighty-eight riders were identified at the audit locations over the two-week period, Griffin said.
After the city completes the parks board’s initial recommendations, Griffin hopes to use the audit to continue expanding the city’s bicycling infrastructure in the future.
“Our hope from this is that we’ll be able to use this audit to secure more grant funding in hopes of installing bike paths at some of the locations included in our audits, and we are planning on expanding the audit to include other areas of the city of La Marque,” Griffin said.