Autumn Is Upon Us, Are You Ready?
As always—If you know anyone who wants to receive our email updates—we now have a form on every page of our website where they can enter their name and email address to subscribe.
Upcoming Event: Beer & Brauts For Bikes
Come enjoy Octoberfest at Carnegie’s on Saturday, October 12 starting at 4 p.m. Hang out with friends, eat, have a beer or two, enjoy the live music—and support better bicycling in our community while you’re at it! You don’t need to ride a bike, but it’s a great opportunity to ride downtown for a fun evening with other people who love to cycle. And if you’re in McCloud for Biketoberfest earlier in the day, you can stop by when you get home and not have to worry about cooking.
Thank you to Carnegie’s and Redding Distributing for making this happen! Beer saved the world, now it's the bicycle's turn!
Shasta Living Streets To Be Regularly Featured on A News Cafe
Shasta Living Streets will have a recurring column on A News Cafe starting this week. The inaugural article, written by Michael Kuker, is on the
Parkview Avenue Rightsizing project that just completed behind the Redding Civic Center.
We will be regularly contributing to A News Cafe on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. If you have an idea for a topic relevant to our vision or would even like to contribute a column, please contact Anne at athomas@shastalivingstreets.org. It’s going to be a great way to increase awareness and explain our mission to the community!
Changes Coming To California Street
CalTrans is planning a resurfacing project on California Street in downtown Redding within the next year. This is an opportunity to make some adjustments to the lanes and striping that could improve pedestrian crossings and give us a bikeway down California Street. This could even be the start of the safe and inviting bikeway connector that everyone has been waiting for to help encourage visitors on the Sacramento River Trail to head into downtown! We want to thank Senator Gaines’ office for its help in arranging a meeting with CalTrans to discuss our hopes and vision for our downtown streets. Although this project is limited in scope, it could be a wonderful short-term fix until we get a comprehensive vision for downtown that allows for the design and implementation of a more complete solution. There will be opportunities for public input on the project in the near future, so keep your eyes open and we will alert you as soon as we hear about them.
Monthly Meeting This Thursday At Tapas
We’re meeting on Thursday this month because of an event at the Cascade Theater on our usual second Wednesday of the month. Thursday’s meeting will be a hands-on, interactive discussion about street design and better bikeways. We’ll discuss bikeways, greenways, and innovative bicycle facilities that could be used in our community. What are the different types of facilities being implemented in other cities and what are their pros & cons? What types of solutions would you like to see in our cities and on county roads?
Redding Makes The Top Ten California Trails List, Featured In Article By Rails To Trails
You probably know that Shasta Living Streets was featured in an article on Redding in the most recent Rails to Trails Conservancy magazine—now the longer version of the article is available online, with quotes and comments from many of our local trail and cycling celebrities! Rails To Trails also placed the Sacramento River Trail among its Top Ten Trails in California in a recent blog post.
Thank you to everyone who helped by spending time with the reporter, sharing your stories, and contributing photos. It’s a big deal that we are featured in this national magazine. We should all get ready for more tourists—word is getting out about our great trail system!
Livable Cities Draw Talent and Business
Last Friday at the Shasta Economic Development Corporation's Game Changers 2013 presentation, we heard more evidence that creating livable cities is good for business and regional economies because livable cities attract talented and creative people. The presentation featured Peter Barth, a speaker from Greenville, South Carolina—a city very similar to Redding that reinvented itself to become one of "America's hottest cities."
Peter described how he moved his business to Greenville because it was a livable city for he and his family. "[That's why] I moved my start-up business there in the first place—for lifestyle reasons", said Barth. That was the initial attraction; once he was there, he and other CEOs and community leaders built an amazing start-up incubator and developed new firms and created jobs that have revitalized the entire community. There's no reason the same approach wouldn't work here!
Links Of The Month
This month we continue a feature where we share a few links that we hope you'll find interesting. If you're looking for more good reads, be sure to visit our Twitter feed at
twitter.com/ShastaLivingSts today!
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In our August email we discussed how driving has peaked in recent years. Now a recent survey show bicycle commuting is up 9% since last year. In light of these trends, are we planning and building our cities and infrastructure wisely?
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Studies in New York and Seattle show that bike lanes are not bad for business—they’re good for business! Would additional and better bike lanes in Redding help local businesses too?
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Feeling down? Get on your bike and ride! A United Nations report on happiness reports there is a relationship between bike-friendly counties and happiness.
Talk to you next month!
The Shasta Living Steets team
