The Big Easy can rest easier

After pummeling the Gulf Coast for weeks this summer, the worst of the tropical weather seems to have died down.  Gustav is gone and Hurricane Ike’s fury has finally been placated. However, an ugly mark was left behind.  After making landfall in Texas on Sept. 13, Ike claimed dozens of lives, caused billions of dollars in property damage and left households across the country without electricity. The full extent of the catastrophe remains to be seen, but if New Orleans’ continuing recovery after its bout with Hurricane Katrina three years ago is any indication, the current damage may be just the tip of the iceberg for Texans.

When the wind abated and the water receded, clean-up commenced in Galveston and Houston, Texas, as residents tried to go about their daily lives once more. But returning evacuees found their neighborhoods much different than they left them, and their houses and careers lie in shambles. Perhaps the most trying aspect of the region’s rehabilitation will be reclaiming those simple pleasures we take for granted, the incalculable things hurricane victims lose and struggle to regain. These are the small incentives to forge onward, the ones that fall by the wayside in the midst of such destruction but are also often the most deeply missed—like the freedom to take a walk in the park or ride a bike.

In the aftermath of Katrina, it’s difficult to do a number of things in New Orleans, not the least of which is riding a bike. The ancient city streets were never the most pristine, but since Katrina, many have become nearly impossible to navigate.  Couple this with a large cycling population (second only to Portland, Ore.) and a lack of updated, comprehensive cycling maps and you can add another unforeseen problem to the city’s mile-long list.  

Lauren Rae Sullivan, however, is out to change that.

Sullivan, a University of Cincinnati student, is currently devising a way to combine what she learned in school with an enthusiasm for cycling to cut through the city’s doom and gloom sentiment – giving citizens something to rejoice about during their continued recovery.

For her capstone – a project that seniors research and work on for about a year – the 23-year-old urban planning major will use computer mapping tools and community organizing to give the city she fell in love with a much needed face lift.

“When I first moved to New Orleans, I was pretty overwhelmed by the poor quality of the streets,” Sullivan said. “There is only one true bike lane in the city, and some off-road paved trails are being planned or constructed. I thought to myself that New Orleans really needs a bike map to help people find good, well-paved routes.”

At the encouragement of a friend, Sullivan ran with the idea—or more precisely, rode with it. Beginning in June, Sullivan began balancing a double-section paid co-op at Concordia Architecture and Planning with her independent plan to revitalize New Orleans’ cycling scene. From her home in the historic Irish Channel neighborhood near the banks of the Mississippi River, Sullivan established the NolaCycle project.

The NolaCycle project utilizes ArcGIS—a program that urban planning students learn in the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. GIS stands for geographic information systems; it is used for locating resources, planning new infrastructure, and assessing environmental conditions. Using pre-created or personalized data layers that include streets, water and schools, ArcGIS users are able to construct a basic geographic view of a city.  For NolaCycle, Sullivan uses a street layer created by the city of New Orleans and alters it in Adobe Illustrator.

The map, always in progress, contains data on pavement quality, lane width, car travel speed (New Orleans drivers tend to disregard the speed limit) and potentially dangerous intersections. It also marks cobblestone, brick roads and railroad and streetcar track locations. The inclusion of such details will give riders a more comprehensive view of what to expect when traversing the city.

“By looking at all the roads and giving people the info they need to get across town, hopefully more people will take their bike for cross-town trips instead of a car,” Sullivan said.  “I love to see those people get out of their cars and onto bikes.”

Sullivan stresses this important environmental benefit of NolaCycle, citing that New Orleans is strongly affected by global warming, specifically ocean temperature rise.

“We need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, and encouraging cycling is a great way to reduce global warming and cut pollution,” she said.  

The map will not only serve as a useful directional device and a means to cut pollution, it will also act as a helpful bicycle safety guide. The other side of the map displays safe cycling positions, locations of lights and reflectors, bike theft prevention tips, a list of bike resources (shops, co-ops etc.) and the state and local bike laws.

“Many people in New Orleans aren’t aware of their rights as cyclists and how to safely operate a bike. Older generations – which account for 50 percent of cyclists in the city – were taught to bike against traffic, which we now know is less safe,” Sullivan said. “As much as I want to create a useful map, I want to create a guide that will prompt safe cycling to those who bike every day and people just getting back on a bike for the first time since they were kids.” 

Sullivan has quite a bit of help accumulating and disseminating all this information. In addition to dropping flyers off at businesses and attaching them to bikes, Sullivan and a group of volunteers gather on weekends with clip boards and markers to plot out various sections of the city. Tom Macom of Loyola University and Dan Jatres of the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission help organize the work. What started out as one person’s dream has now quickly expanded into a city-wide reality.

Of course, coordinating a project of this size has its limitations.

“Since the community does all the data collection for the project, it can be challenging to get enough people out on certain days,” Sullivan said.  “If there is a Saints game, not many people show up.  If it looks like it’s going to rain, not many people show up.” 

Sullivan said she’s not as bothered by this though when she thinks of all of the progress NolaCycle has made in three short months.

For Sullivan, working on NolaCycle has been an unforgettable life experience.

“My favorite part of the project has been meeting people all over the city,” Sullivan said. “Inspiring people to get involved [at] a deeper level than just simply biking is a good feeling, too.  It’s been really rewarding when people in other cities hear about my project and say ‘Hey, I should do this in my city!’” 

The NolaCycle project is scheduled to be completed by June of 2009.  Sullivan says it’s difficult to tell what she’ll do after graduation and the project’s completion, but she hopes it involves community engagement and environmental protection in some capacity.  And if that means staying in New Orleans, that’s fine by her.

“I hope the skills I’ve learned at DAAP in design, research and writing, environmental planning, transportation planning and GIS will help me get a job working in the recovery of the city and taking New Orleans into the 21st century with higher quality schools, parks, health facilities and multi-modal transportation options than before the storm,” Sullivan said.

As history continues to repeat itself and other cities such as Galveston and Houston struggle to cope with the hand that nature has dealt, one can only hope that someone will show the same committment Sullivan did in New Orleans.