The National Trails Symposium was held on October 19-22 in Davenport, Iowa. Alta was involved in a variety of efforts at the conference, including a board meeting and an all-day workshop for the Mississippi River Trail. Alta Principal Jeff Olson is a board member of the "MRT." Jeff helped lead the workshop entitled, "Painting the Fence: Help Create a 3,000 Mile Trail," and used the Tom Sawyer theme to involve representatives from the 10 states along the river. Another highlight of the Symposium was an MRT reception that was held on the new Davenport Skywalk bridge, which connects downtown with the riverfront. During the conference, both the MRT and the American Discovery Trail (ADT) were featured because they intersect in Davenport. A new trail junction sign was installed at the confluence of the trails, and a sculpture is planned for the site. The MRT and the ADT were among the 16 National Millennium Trails. More info about the MRT can be found online at www.mississippirivertrail.org.

Alta was also featured at a symposium session on "Integrating Trails with Private Sector Development" presented by Jeff Olson, Bob Searns - President of American Trails, and Jim Woods of the Florida Office of Greenways and Trails. The session reported on the Orlando Greenways Workshop that the three speakers collaborated on, along with a case study report about Alta's involvement in planning the Lakeland Green new urbanist community in Tennessee. Jeff Olson was also part of a strategic planning meeting with Tom Wiowode of the Southeast Michigan Community Foundation, which has led a $25 million privately funded Greenways initiative, and is considering the potential for similar efforts in other communities. Even with all this going on, Jeff still found time to get out on the trails in Davenport, and enjoyed walking and bicycling along the river with some of the leaders of the trails and greenways movement, including Rosie Zamora of Houston Wilderness, Gil Penalosa (former Public Works director from Bogota, and keynote speaker for the Symposium) and Reese Lukei of the ADT.

The icing on the cake for the Symposium was a plenary session on 'Creating a National Trails Agenda' that included costumed dignitaries and audience participation in drafting a priority list of trail action items for the next U.S. Congress. The 'dignitaries' included Senator Hillary Clinton, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mark Twain, and Dick Cheney. You will have to contact Jeff directly if you want to find out which costume he was wearing. For more information about American Trails and the National Trails Symposium, please visit www.americantrails.org.

At their just completed winter meeting, the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices voted 35-0-3 to endorse the shared lane marking and forward it to Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for potential inclusion in the next edition of the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).

In order to address concerns that NCUTCD sponsoring organizations had expressed about the use of this marking, the proposed implementation language includes a provision recommending that the marking be used only on roadways with speeds less than 40 MPH. Once this change was made, and it was made clear that there is a significant demand for this marking across the United States, the NCUTCD Council reversed its earlier ruling and voted strongly in favor of endorsing the shared lane marking.

For several years, Alta has been working to implement shared lane markings, or "sharrows," in San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. As part of the City of San Francisco's Bicycle Master Plan Update, completed in 2005, Alta conducted a Shared Lane Marking Study that involved researching the effectiveness of shared lane pavement markings for the City of San Francisco. This report reflected several years of effort to address the need for a marking on streets without bicycle lanes. Alta videotaped and interviewed cyclists and drivers with regards to the markings. Using a series of statistical tests, Alta analyzed the effectiveness of the markings. This study was accepted by the California Traffic Control Devices Committee (CTCDC), which has approved the recommended shared lane marking as an optional marking for roadways in California. To date, Approximately 850 of the 1600 planned shared lane markings have been implemented.

Although NCUTCD has endorsed the shared lane marking, and it is very likely that this marking will be in the next MUTCD, the marking is still classified as experimental at this time, and FHWA experimental approval is required for installation of this marking on roadways open to public travel until the marking is officially included in the next edition of the Manual.

Also at this meeting, FHWA announced that the rulemaking process for the next MUTCD will begin soon, with draft MUTCD content out for public review and comment by this fall. However, based on previous experience, it will likely be spring 2009 at the very earliest before the next MUTCD (with the shared lane marking) is approved and published.

To see a list of all the items that NCUTCD has recommended for Part 9 of the MUTCD, visit: http://members.cox.net/ncutcdbtc/accomp.html.

Alta has played an active role recently in helping students and clients obtain grant funding:

Congratulations to Portland State University (PSU) urban planning graduate student Laurie Miskimins, who secured funding for a project she developed in Alta Principal Mia Birk’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Issues in Urban Planning class. In Birk’s class, students develop a bicycle or pedestrian project that addresses a specific problem or deficiency. They organize their project in the form of a federal grant application, with required elements including a letter of intent, problem statement, mapped project location, alternatives considered, selection criteria, proposed solution, technical analysis of potential project benefits, public process, and maps, graphics, and annotated photographs. Miskimin, who has a part-time job working for PSU’s campus facilities department, proposed more and higher quality bicycle parking to encourage PSU’s 25,000 students to bicycle to campus. According to Miskimins, "My bosses decided they liked what I was doing for your class and might as well take a shot at submitting it for real. So we submitted to the CMAQ Metro Grant program. I had to go to a question and answer session over break, and then they notified us before Christmas that they would give us $50,000!" Well done, Laurie!

Alta's East Coast office, headed by Principal Jeff Olson, recently assisted the City of Plattsburgh, NY to obtain over $1.3 million in grant funding to implement the Saranac River Trail. Alta assisted with the grant process, which resulted in the City obtaining $1.2 million from NYSDOT and $135,000 from the NYS Canal Corporation.

Hagen Hammons, Associate ASLA, Designer - Portland, Oregon
Hagen Hammons has experience with various design and planning projects including streetscapes, parks, a regional veterans cemetery, and community and long range city plans for Carter Burgess in Sacramento, CA. He brings strong skills in site planning, planting design, construction management and documentation, and computer presentation renderings. Hagen has completed internships in New Orleans, LA documenting and surveying trees, and in Houston, TX at a prominent landscape architecture firm. He has participated in the Central Valley (CA) Rails to Trails Foundation, which is promoting a 32-mile abandoned rail corridor into a Rail-to-Trail, and was active with the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates. Hagen thoroughly enjoys mountain biking and exploring city- and region-wide trail systems.

• Pro-Bono Assistance: Alta staff are available to help community groups and agencies on a pro bono basis, whether it is answering questions or assisting with research. Every year we donate hundreds of hours to help our colleagues in a variety of areas. Call an Alta professional today to find out more about this, or come into one of our offices and use our library of resources.
   
• Conference Support Program: Alta offers help to deserving individuals who wish to attend conferences in fields related to bicycles, pedestrians, and trails. This may include plane tickets, other travel costs, and conference costs. Contact Alta Principals Michael Jones or Mia Birk to find out more about this program.