People in cities and in the unincorporated county both pay for county roads. Which is as it should be, just like we should share an ambulance district.

Right now transportation on campus is a free-for-all. The university could help solve this problem by bringing back dismount zones during high-traffic times of day, and providing alternative designated routes for bicycles through the most traveled sections of campus. If these alternatives were well thought out, they would be faster than cutting across dismount zones, and cyclists would use them. At the minimum, two or three north-south routes and one or two east-west routes should be implemented. The split bike/pedestrian lanes just to the north of the biology complex are an example of a good start; however, in my experience, the lane markings are often ignored by cyclists and pedestrians alike. Also, these markings end abruptly at the plaza near the fieldhouse. Ideally, designated bicycle routes would be continuous, dropping out onto a street with a bike lane, and there would be a campaign of education and enforcement until their proper use became commonplace.

From the user side, all users, no matter what the mode of transportation, should remember that a crowded path is just like a road: travel to the right, and pass to the left.

I haven't personally done a comparison between grass and artificial turf, but keep in mind that turf grasses are completely unnatural in Colorado.

There seems to be a group of people who bring this up every time snow shoveling comes up in the paper. I'd love for my street to be plowed, too, but I'm worried about how much it would cost the city to plow all the side streets. Has anyone come up with a cost estimate for this?

If you leave town, or are sick or injured, ask a friend or neighbor, or hire someone to shovel in case it snows.

The snow removal laws are enforced on a complaint basis, so if you want the city to "go after" someone, just take down the address and call them in.

Hire someone to do it, ask a neighbor to do it, or use this city program (from the city website):

"Senior citizens and physically disabled persons who are unable to clear snow from their sidewalks may receive assistance through the ICEBUSTERS Program. For more information, or to be a volunteer, call Retired Senior Volunteer Program at 303-443-1933"

I don't have a quick way to come up with a number (you could maybe come up with one by looking at commute distances), but my gut feeling is that there's no fundamental reason it couldn't be as high as the 30-40 % quoted for many European cities in the article. We'd have many hurdles to overcome to get there, the greatest of which, in my mind, is infrastructure that allows cars, bikes, and pedestrians to coexist better. And maybe squeezing every last bike commuter onto the road isn't our priority, but I think that the success of Community Cycles points to the fact that people are eager to get out on bikes once they have the proper equipment and knowledge.

As a lifelong bike commuter, it's neat to see that Boulder tops the list, and it would be great to see our percentage of bike commuters increase even more! As it does, I hope that the city is looking at how some European cities with lots of bicyclists handle sharing of paths between pedestrians and cyclists. For instance, on a visit to Goettigen, Germany, a college town about the same size as Boulder, I noticed that most paths had red concrete sections for bikes and white concrete for pedestrians. I also saw cyclists being ticketed. The correct system, properly enforced, helps make getting around faster and safer for everyone.

Also, kudos to Community Cycles for getting more knowledgeable cyclists out on the road!

It says bike taxi.

I wanted to link through to one, but a quick google search doesn't turn up any company that appears to be currently functioning in Boulder. I feel like I've seen them around- anyone know more?

You're right, I was being sloppy. In counting experiments, the uncertainty on any one measurement is the square root of the number. The standard deviation of a set of numbers is the deviation from the mean, averaged by adding in quadrature, which, in this case, also works out to be about 7.

My point stands, though: these data don't show an increase in pedestrians being hit by cars in Boulder.