Blogging Mayors.

Round Lake’s Mayor Bill Gentes has a blog. And it’s great. If you know me at all you, you know what I’m thinking so I’ll just write it now: Maybe Elgin’s Mayor should have a blog?

Mayor Gentes uses his blog to update residents on local events such as walks and fundraisers as well as to discuss serious issues such as foreclosure, Section 8, and the Illinois capital bill.

He’s also pretty funny. Look back through the April 2008 archives:
*For April Fool’s Day he wrote a post about a fake road project that would involve tearing up Round Lake’s major streets and making them “warm,” which would save the trouble of snow plows in winter. Many of the commenters took it seriously.
*When the Illinois Hospital Facilities Planning Board decided against putting a hospital in Round Lake, he was quoted as calling them “pumpkinheads.” In response to the situation, he drove two paper pumpkins to the nearest ER, taking photos along the way and timing the drive. It took 28 minutes, illustrating the need for a closer hospital.
*On his 7 year anniversary as Mayor, his blog post was titled “7 Years in Jail errrrrr Office!”

Mayor Gentes receives quite a bit of attention for his blogging. He’s been featured by the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and in a government study commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government on the effects of blogging by public officials. He’s also spoken at many national blogging conferences, where he has “been treated like a celebrity by the blogosphere.”

Round Lake has a population of under 20,000. How do you think a blogging Mayor of a much larger municipality (cough, cough) would be handled by residents, the media, other Mayors? I think it could be very powerful if done well.

Tags: Bill Gentes, blogging mayor, blogs, Illinois, internet, mayor, Round Lake
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Elgin okays bike plan!

Image by Thomas Hawk.

Click here for the story. Everything about the bike plan sounds great–a grid of bike routes no more than four blocks away from each other, an underpass below Kimball street (yes!) and a few other places, bike racks everywhere, and wayfinding signs to let people know where they’re headed.

The end of the article worries me, however. It sounds like the mayor is not very big on the idea of on-street bike lanes. Usually plans only come into fruition with political will. His worry has to do with liability, aka, could the City of Elgin get in trouble if someone on a bike gets hurt while riding in a designated bike lane. The answer is sort of yes. Illinois is the only state that has a liability issue because of the landmark Boub v. Wayne case. Click here to read all about it.

The thing is, on-street bike lanes are safer and more appropriate than trails and sidepaths in a lot of places. Trying to keep bicycles off of roads out of liability worries could actually have the unintended effect of causing more crashes. Sidepaths are really only appropriate on high-speed roads with few driveways and intersections. Those who don’t know much about bicycling might think bicyclists should usually ride on the sidewalk. Nope! That puts pedestrians in danger and makes it more likely cyclists will get hit by cars at driveways and intersections. This page has a compilation of studies comparing the danger level of bicycling in different places (sidewalk, on-road, trail, etc.).

Tags: , bicycle, bicycle planning, bicycling, bike plan, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, Elgin, mayor, Trans Systems
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