Week 15 in Review (June 13 - 19)

As I enter my 15^th week of blogging/biking I decided that I wanted to really get out and bike. This past week was very pleasant weather wise and I had little to do during the days (obviously) so I took advantage with a couple epic rides.  I already posted about my ride to Norristown, PA but the day after that ride I went on a ride with Zack southwest of Center City, through the wildlife refuge and around a the back side of the airport. I did end up taking pictures along this ride so I’m not going to give too much away right now, but keep your eyes peeled for a new entry in the coming days.  Between those two rides I ended up cycling 70 miles so I didn’t ride much over the weekend; mostly because I was tired but partly because I took a beach day on Saturday. Below are the stats and map for this week’s adventures.

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
4	77.5	352	13.22	4,237

Even though I rode seventy some odd miles I only really biked through a few ‘new’ parts of Philadelphia, raising my total slightly to 27.91 sq. mi. or 19.47% of the city. This is also one of the first weeks that I’ve biked a considerable distance outside of the city limits. I biked through large portions of Conshohoken (along the Schuylkill River Trail) and through Tinicum Township (along the Delaware River, where the majority of the Philadelphia International Airport is located).  Because of these forays across the border of Philly there was quite a shake up in the number and amount of the region’s municipalities I’ve biked through. Make sure you check out the Geographic Analysis page for all the deets.

A “Quick” Ride to Norristown

This past Tuesday I was in the mood to bike. I felt stressed about my ongoing job search and it was a perfect, partly-sunny 70-degree day. So instead of think of a good route and taking my camera with me I decided to grab my iPod and Loretta and bike up the Schuylkill River Trail.  I put on Lady Gaga’s new album Born this Way and before I knew it I was in Norristown!

http://www.dailymile.com/people/Jerome9883/entries/7748988

Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
37.6	157	14.4	1,890

Because I didn’t take any pictures I have no real memory of what was happening on my ride – I also wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings.  However there are some big landmarks that a cyclist (or anyone I suppose) passes along the way and I’d be remised not to describe some of them.  At some point in the future I will take a camera and photo-document the ride. 

As all can suspect the ride begins in Fairmount Park and goes along the Ridge Avenue detour to Main Street Manayunk, no need to describe or discuss that.  Through the next part one can choose either the Manayunk Canal Towpath or Main Street to Umbria Street. I took both (the streets on the way to Norristown the towpath on the way back to Philly) – the former is all on streets but there are some pretty ridiculous hills and the latter is all made up of boardwalk and gravel, which Loretta doesn’t appreciate.  Both places lead you to Nixon Street, way up in Roxborough, and the beginning of the Schuylkill Trail that leads to Collegeville/Phoenixville and beyond.

The path runs mostly along an old rail line. Sometimes it’s very evident, like right at the beginning near Nixon Street, there are over head wires and the path is enclosed by gigantic trees or rock formations on either side.  On the way to Conshohocken, the only notable thing that I can remember is the area around the Minquon regional rail stop. You cannot see it from the path but there is some nondescript building off the path.  There are always people smoking outside of the stairway too – it makes no sense.  Once in Conshohocken the path then crosses several streets, and crosses old railroad tracks that are gone but apparently it was too difficult to remove them from the path. Or someone thought that was a great design choice; Loretta’s tires would beg to differ. On the other side of Conshohocken is a GIANT steel mill and unlike the other steel mills in the rust belt it’s actually in operation. I find that fact kinda amazing. After the mill there are a few industrial sights peeking out, the PA turnpike and a road to a sewage treatment plant that smells horrendous.  Also near the treatment plant is an odd curly-cue ramp that takes cyclist over top of the rail lines that are in use. It was here where I have never seen some many groundhogs. There was a groundhog that ran along with me for a bit and there were two groundhogs that were about the f…ight.  It was definitely fight, but I wasn’t sure for a bit. Bold move either way.  From the curly-cue and fighting ground hogs Norristown is just about a mile away, up a gradual hill that overlooks the city.  I stopped at the Norristown Transportation Center which is the hub for many suburban bus lines, the Norristown Line formerly the R6, and the Norristown High Speed Line.  The center itself looks like a half-assed, 1980s version of a Mies van der Rohe house, but it does have cold water and that I was thankful for. Again I’ll photo document this ride and research it at some other point, I was just happy to go on such a long ride, it’s the longest I’ve done this year.  

Week 14 in Review (June 6 - 12)

This past week was a wash as far as biking - less because of the heat, which was absurd, but more to do with the fact that I totally wiped out last Monday.  It was my first major spill and basically caused by a combination of a rock in the road and me trying to turn to fast on a corner that is a little ridiculous. (18^th and BFranklin Parkway). I’m totally fine just had a scraped up knee and elbow. It’s kinda amazing how slow and fast falling happens. I can totally picture the whole thing happening but it had to happen within 6 seconds.  Regardless, this week I biked only 11 miles. Better luck this week.

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
2	11.3	55	12.25	661

This is the first week that I’ve biked and it was all somewhere I had biked before – therefore there is no need to update my buffer map or the Geographic Analysis page

                                                                                                                        

Downtown Columbus

Last week I blogged about a ride I went on with my dad along the Olentangy River in Columbus, Ohio; that was not the entire ride. We also biked along the trails (and streets) of Downtown Columbus and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Background/Introduction

I feel before I get into the ride I should provide a little background on Downtown Columbus as it is quite possibly the main reason I became interested in planning.  When I was a kid, my mom (who is a school teacher and had summers off) would let my brother and I choose a day where we could do whatever we wanted and I ALWAYS chose to go downtown. Coincidentally my interest in city planning coincided with the beginning of the Columbus’ re-focus on downtown. As with many Midwestern cities downtown was the center of city’s economy, but over decades of suburbanization, neglect, and in Columbus’ sake a full-fledge dependence on automobiles; downtown was turned into a 9 to 5 wasteland of parking lots and office buildings. With the exception of a failed downtown mall it had become accepted that downtown be a place where people work, then drive home to the residential suburbs and neighborhoods to live.  In the late 1990s two things happened to drastically change this attitude.

First, Fortune 500 company - Nationwide Insurance, markedly took an interest in downtown development by proposing an arena as well as a 75-acre entertainment district surrounding it. Creating Nationwide Realty, the real-estate development arm of the company, their vision for the Arena District is practically complete 10 years after finishing construction on Nationwide Arena. Today the district is home to hundreds of apartments and condos, dozens of restaurants and bars, an 18,000 seat arena, a 10,000 seat ball park and a 4,500 seat outdoor amphitheater.

Second, in 1999, Michael Coleman was elected to his first term as mayor, in 2011 he was re-elected for his 4^th term. Coleman brought with him a renewed sense of concentrating planning and economic resources downtown. In 2002, Coleman launched a development initiative for downtown to become a mixed use center that would be home to 10,000 new housing units within 10 years.  While the lofty ambition of constructing 10,000 units has fallen short, downtown has more than doubled their housing stock and has a roughly 1,000 more under construction/planned.  A feat that is more than impressive in a national housing recession.  In fact downtown has gone through its second planning process in less than 10 years, with the completion of the 2010 Downtown Columbus Strategic Plan. 

For reference, below is a map of Downtown Columbus, the different districts/neighborhoods that are contained within the boundary and a yellow line that represents the route my dad and I took. To give you a scale of reference the area inside the downtown boundary is roughly 2.2 square miles, or the entirety of Center City Philadelphia. However, where 60,000 people live in Center City only about 6,000 live in Downtown Columbus. According to the 2010 plan, more than 25% of the land in downtown remains surface parking lots. 

Ride Along the Scioto

With my partial-nerdfest out of the way I can continue on with the ride. So as you might remember I ended last time at Confluence Park – where the Olentangy and the Scioto rivers meet.  The path crosses over a fairly nondescript bridge and continues along the Scioto River running east. 

Shortly after riding along Spring Street we entered one of the newest downtown parks – North Bank Park.  The 9 acre park is part of the larger effort to green the downtown riverfront and connect the city to the waterfront. Finished in 2005 the park was mostly funded by the State of Ohio (benefit of being the capital) and the city. The main feature is a large waterfront plaza and glass pavilion that is available for private rentals. In fact when we biked through it looked as if they were setting up for a wedding and when you have this as the back drop – it’d be my first spot too:

The rest of the park is a network of sinuous sidewalk paths that lead to a waterfront trail and through large grassy patches. Linked directly to the park is the Condos at North Bank, one of the larger residential developments within the past 10 years at 20 stories. The river bank is simply made up of limestone rocks and even herons.

Directly next to North Bank Park is the riverfront park that I remember when coming downtown with my mom during our summers. Named Battelle Riverfront Park, the park was designed in 1992 for the quincentennial of Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic. In fact the City of Columbus was so emphatic about this celebration that someone ordered a replica of the Santa Maria to be docked here. No seriously. The Santa Maria is still there today, 20 years after the quincentennial celebrations, although it’s looking a little tired. The rest of the park takes a cue from a post-modern playbook with over-sized lights, concrete promenades and a few benches. 

As one can tell from that last picture there was no more riverfront path as the promenade under the bridges was underwater at the time of our ride. So my dad and I went up the ramp to Civic Center Drive and continued our ride through the city.  Much of the improvements that have been under construction since I left Columbus lay along Civic Center Drive. The Scioto Mile is a $40 million redesign of the promenade and civic park just to the south in honor of the city’s bicentennial, which is in 2012. Bicentennial Park’s redesign (the park was actually named for the nation’s bicentennial in 1976) will include a café, large public restrooms, bio-retention area and a large fountain. The park is scheduled to open within a month (July 2011).

Along Civic Center Drive is one of my favorite buildings in Columbus – the Ohio Judicial Center. The building was constructed in the early 1930s and is a quintessential example of an art deco public building.  Not only is the white marble building beautiful in itself its setting is breathtaking, centered in the bend of Scioto River and flanked by large public spaces.

Just south of Bicentennial Park is the area named River South. The area is under a lot of construction, mostly from streetscaping improvements but also from a few large projects including, the new Franklin County Courthouse and the Annex at River South apartments.  The Annex apartments are the brainchild of Lifestyle Communities, a developer of large suburban apartment and condo complexes.  It’s impressive what they have done at the Annex as the development conforms to the street grid and does a respectful job of covering the parking entrances to interior garages. 

After biking along uneven streets and between orange barrels we ended up in the Brewery District. As one can surmise from the name it historically was the center of beer production in Columbus. However the area is currently a mix of loft-style condos and apartments, office space and a large suburban-style Kroger(s). To the west of the Brewery District is Columbus’ newest Metro Parks. There is nothing like Metro Parks in the Philadelphia region that I can think of. Unlike the city’s parks and recreation department, Metro Parks is a regional park system that transcends municipal and county jurisdictions and is typically concerned with land conservation more than recreational space.

 Along the Whittier peninsula, Metro Parks purchased 94 acres of post industrial and warehouse space and constructed Scioto Audubon Park as a bird sanctuary and wetland reclamation area.  The park not only hosts large passive wetland areas but also a boat ramp, bike trails, dog park and a FREE outdoor rock climbing center.  The area was extremely busy when we passed by it. 

Additional to the open and recreational space the park houses the Grange Insurance Audubon Center. Opened in 2009 the center it is one of the nation’s first urban Audubon centers.  Set up on a hill overlooking the park and downtown the center evokes a modern prairie style building. A few notable design features are the landscaping around the center is full of native vegetation and is essentially a large rain gardens and the windows are covered with graphics designed to keep birds from flying into them.

After biking down a path that was closed, again due to construction, my dad and I returned to the city grid and biked north along High Street. Before turning back to the riverfront trail we passed Columbus Commons, yet ANOTHER park space recently constructed, this time on the site of the failed City Center Mall. The park is designed as a large open space bordered by developable parcels, for the time when the market rebounds.  Columbus Commons is so new that it officially opened two days after I returned to Philly. 

Even though we had to bike the trail back to our car this concludes my babbling about my hometown ride.  As evidenced by the amount I wrote about the city – more than biking itself – it is a city that’s very dear to my heart.  So in conclusion to the whole post I’ll end with an obligatory shot of the state capitol building. 

Week 13 in Review (May 30 – June 5)

This was a pretty solid week for biking. Excluding the beginning of the week, the weather was good and I had some time to actually go on some decent rides. On Thursday I biked a simple loop around Fairmount Park and felt really out of shape. I couldn’t tell if it was the wind or if I was more that I had not biked much and still worn down from the wedding weekend. Either way I was mad strugs. I did make it out and back from my apartment in less than an hour. 

The next day, I wanted to go to a park to do some laps. I had been thinking about switching it up from FDR Park, mostly because I bike there so often. I remembered that Hunting Park has a loop road around it so I decided to attempt a ride up to North Philly and check it out. Hunting Park is much more difficult to get to than FDR Park. South Philadelphia streets feel like they are made for biking; they are narrow, traffic moves very slowly and most importantly (especially for guys) they are fairly evenly paved. While North Philadelphia does not have as many cars parked on the street (I took 13^th Street up to the park) the streets are in pretty poor condition, especially around Temple. Also it probably does not help that there are a lot of hills, whether natural or man-made bridges/dips that go over/under much of the decrepit industrial infrastructure.  I learned from another bike ride I took to/through North Philly a cyclist has to be more on alert, as motorists are seemingly less aware of bicycles.  This held true for this ride so if you decide to bike around here, be alert.

Hunting Park turned out to be a pretty cool park. As I stated in a previous blog entry the park has a lot of history. However when I rode past previously I did not realize how much was happening inside the park.  There are community gardens, a soccer field, a recreation center, a pool, and several playgrounds. Also, that Saturday was the inaugural day for the Hunting Park Farmers Market, at the corner of Old York and Hunting Park. The loop road is smaller and fairly broken up by stop signs for Hunting Park Ave that cuts through the park. Also, it is filled with some interesting entrepreneurs. There were people with lemonade stands. There was one man selling some sort of homemade trinket. However my favorite was the man that had a horse and a pony all set up for rides around the eastern field, that takes dedication. 

On Sunday I biked up to Lemon Hill to watch the last few laps of the Philadelphia International Cycling Championship with Meghan and Judd. I fortunately biked up the back way to Lemon Hill (up Pennsylvania Ave and then over the informal CSX crossing to Sedgely Dr.) and when I got there got a chance to watch the cyclist whiz past heading down the hill. It is amazing how fast the move and how close together they are.  So surprising that no one just slips and ruins the entire race. 

After finding Meghan and Judd on the other side of the hill (where I saw the cyclist come up Lemon Hill instead of down I biked home and ended up on the side of the parkway, where the entire group was in a giant pack and zipped past me at what had to be 35 mph. Impressive.

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
4	45.8	205	13.40	2,455

I covered over an extra square mile this week, which is impressive for not going on any exploratory rides. With this extra boost my total area is 25.99 sq. mi. covering 18.13% of the city. There were major changes in neighborhoods I’ve biked through.  By biking up 13^th Street to Hunting Park I added major gains in the amount Yorktown/Temple/Hunting Park I’ve biked.  Additionally, I have officially biked through 100% of Washington Square West.  For all the detailed information on my cycling patterns check out the Geographic Analysis page.

A ride along the Olentangy River (Columbus, Ohio)

I haven’t been very good with writing about my bike adventures lately. The entire month of May ended up being dedicated to one, epic ride up 5^th Street.  Since that late April day I biked through West Philadelphia with Zack, up to Hunting Park Ave, Germantown and the Awbury Arboretum and had a lovely ride with my dad in Columbus.  I’m not going to be able to write about all those in the next week and I feel like having more adventures soon so I might skip out on some of them. However, one that I don’t want to skip out on is my Columbus ride.  I enjoy writing (and thinking) about my hometown it is where I began my interest in city planning and it’s awesome to watch new projects spring. Also fitting to this blog, Columbus has made a lot of progress in the past 5 years planning and implementing a regional bicycle network. Most of the stride that the city has made is constructing off-road, multi-purpose trails.  The city adopted the Bicentennial Bikeway Master Plan in 2008 in order to connect many of the park systems and existing trails by the city’s bicentennial in 2012.  My dad and I biked approximately 11 miles of the Olentangy (pronounced Ol-en-tan-g (like the letter “g”) River/Scioto (pronounced Sigh-oh-ta) River trails, two of the oldest trails in the city.  Because I have no shapefiles for Columbus you’re going to have to rely on the dailymile.com map below. 

http://www.dailymile.com/routes/677652-cycling-route

Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
24.9	135	11.1	1,625

The Olentangy River trail runs roughly 14.5 miles along the Olentangy River from above the I-270 outerbelt to the confluence of the Olentangy and Scioto Rivers, just west of Downtown. The path and river cut through the middle of the city and provide a pretty accurate cross section of Columbus’ development, from urban mid 19^th century residential neighborhoods to late 20^th century suburban sprawl. My dad and I started a few miles down the trail at the architecturally insignificant Whetstone High School, just south of Henderson Road. 

The high school sets just to the north of the large 138-acre Whetstone Park, which is one of the many parks located along the river.  The park was created in the 1950s and is well known in Central Ohio for the Park of Roses, home to a large collection of roses and a popular spot for weddings.  The park also contains several baseball diamonds, a community center and a large pond. 

Due to the weather (the first warm, sunny day in Columbus for apparently two weeks or a month) the park, and trail, were very busy.  One of the first of few things I noticed about the Olentangy trail is the proportion of cyclist to runners.  In Philly, the split is probably 40/60, where in Columbus it is probably 80/20, so many more cyclists. 

As the trail meanders out of Whetstone Park it enters Northmoor Park (I’m not kidding there are a lot of parks along this trail) which is a long skinny park right along the banks of the river. There is a large lawn along the riverside of the trail and backyards of several Clintonville homes along the other side. 

At the end of the Northmoor the trail empties out into the streets of Clintonville, a large neighborhood in north central Columbus. Developed in the early 20^th century as one of the first “suburbs” of the city, the neighborhood is made up of winding streets, craftsman bungalow houses and rows of large street trees. The area has a few unique traits, it has remained one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Columbus since its beginnings almost a hundred years ago, and it is host to one of the largest concentrations of lesbians in the entire country. It’s like the Mt. Airy of Columbus. 

Like I said, there are tons of Craftsman-style bungalows, including these which I’d buy in a heartbeat. 

Unlike Philadelphia, I could probably afford it. Although Clintonville is a desirable neighborhood in a Columbus, many of the smaller homes (under 2,000 sq. ft.) in Clintonville sell between $150k and $200k.  Like this one, for $165,000.

After entering the streets of Clintonville cyclists have to wind through a small portion of the neighborhood to return to the trail. As part of the Bicentennial Bikeway Plan, the city proposed and completed a Bicycle Boulevard for the half-mile stretch.  I was super impressed; the boulevard is well used, has very clear signage and even includes bike boxes at the intersection of North Broadway (a large arterial through the city). 

After biking through a field that is known as Clinton Como Park and crossing the river we ended up near the Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park administered by OSU as a teaching and research wetland.  The wetland is a 52 acre campus that began in the early 1990s and has expanded to one of the world’s foremost (and largest manmade) wetland research parks, or so is the claim on the OSU’s website. The wetland consists of three parts: a 2.5 acre marshland where water is consistently pumped in from the river; a 7 acre oxbow lake, which are typically found near bends in rivers; and a 12 acre bottomland forest filled with native Ohio vegetation.  My dad and I discovered and climbed a lookout near the administrative/classroom building allowing us to overlook the entire complex. 

Nearing OSU’s main campus is another park, Tuttle Park, consisting of very large field, a recreation center and baseball diamonds.  When I first transferred to OSU I used to live in a building that overlooked the park. However not being the city boy I am now I was dissuaded from visiting the park by stories of muggings that happen late at night along the trail. Ironically, this was my first time in the park. The park also provides an awesome foreground for the OSU “skyline” (pictured are dorms along Lane Avenue, a new administrative building/parking garage and the Fisher Business School).

The path runs through the park and ends up under the relatively new Lane Avenue Bridge, which became one of the most iconic landmarks on campus after its completion in 2003.  The design is very similar to the Zakim Bridge connecting downtown Boston to Bunker Hill, and coincidently both were completed the same year. 

After running under Lane Ave the trail cuts along the west portion of main campus. This portion of campus is home to The Shoe (OSU’s Stadium), St. John’s Arena, Morrill and Lincoln Towers (dorms and administrative offices) as well as the lesser of the two student unions on campus, Drake Union. The trail that runs along the backside of Drake Union opened within days of our ride. The trail also looked as if it had recently emerged from the flooded Olentangy.

After zipping past the acres of parking lots awaiting development by the OSU Hospital/medical school, we ended up near one of the more interesting civil engineering projects in Columbus. In the 1960s when building highways was en vogue Columbus jumped on the trend.  Not only did the city want one north-south highway, they dreamed of two within no more than 2 miles of one another.  It was decided by the powers that be State Route 315 (which historically runs along the Olentangy River) would be the best choice. As with any freeway project cutting through an existing city issues exist about where to put it and when trying to decide a route between OSU’s Campus and downtown it was decided (by those powers) that roughly a half mile bridge should be constructed over the river, an existing bridge, and a dam. Since its construction the free has been widened several times, causing 315 to be infamously known in the Columbus region for its ongoing construction. In fact, the entire thing is currently being repaved with an anticipated completion date of Fall 2011.   

For roughly 1.5 miles we biked along a very wide path directly next to OH-315 and a couple dozen feet above the river. Along this stretch, the trail weaves under several on and off ramps until intersecting with one of the main thoroughfares leading into downtown, Spring Street.

Just on the other side of Spring Street is the confluence of the two aforementioned rivers.  Set just about a mile west of downtown Columbus the confluence provides one of the most dramatic views of the city, so dramatic that the area contains a large restaurant and conference center. 

Since that is the end of the Olentangy River trail I’m going to end this post here and hold off to blog about the path we took along the Scioto River and through downtown another time. There is too much for me to focus on right now to make it a worthwhile read.