AUSTIN, Texas — Last spring, Lauri Aylaian and Keith Culver were traveling on a cross-country bike ride from San Diego to St. Augustine, Florida, when the couple arrived in Central Texas. They planned to travel from Austin to La Grange.
Twenty minutes into their ride for the day, a driver hit their group from behind on East Stassney Lane. Culver, 74, died.
"I have not had the same life. I have not traveled extensively and I, generally, am an optimist about everything. And I never would have thought that something like this could happen to me," Aylaian said.
Crashes like these illustrate the need for bike safety in a growing city. "ATX Walk Bike Roll" is the City's effort to update sidewalks, urban trails and bike plans in three distinct plans.
The "Sidewalks, Crossings and Shared Streets Draft Plan" seeks to identify a need for more than 800 sidewalks. The "Urban Trails Plan" envisions a system of urban trails connecting the entire city. And the "Bike Plan" moves to expand the city's bikeway network from 415 miles to more than 1,200 miles.
"How do we make biking a choice for people for some trips? How can we make urban trails more accessible to more households in the city? How can we make sure that sidewalks really connect you to where you need to go, get you to a bus stop?" asked Laura Dierenfield, the division manager for Austin Transportation and Public Works.
Dierenfield said safety must be prioritized to get people to walk or bike, and there are many ways the City is aiming to make Austinites more comfortable.
"We can open up many, many more streets that may not need a sidewalk but could become more walkable by way of having a shared space. Likewise for biking: there are neighborhood bikeways where, again, with lower speeds, lower volumes, we can connect more of our communities and neighborhoods through shared space," Dierenfield said.
Dierenfield said the goal is to get the Austin City Council to approve ATX Walk Bike Roll in July.
Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.