fun | 511 Contra Costa

Tag: fun

Enter the Summer Bike Challenge 2019 Grand Prize Drawing by Sept. 3

Posted on

Click here to enter the grand prize drawing!

 

Looking for free summer activities that are fun for the whole family? Check out 511CC’s Summer Bike Challenge!

Available in Concord, Martinez, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Pittsburg, Oakley, and Brentwood, the Challenge offers healthy fun for all ages, and the best part: it’s completely free.

Participating is easy: Download a printable Challenge Card, hop on a bike, and start exploring your hometown. Bike to each destination, cross off squares as you go, and pick up Free Stuff on select dates throughout summer. Free Stuff events are planned June 1–August 6. Mark your calendar today!

Ready to roll? Get started here.

 

2015 Summer Youth Bike Challenge

Posted on

bicycle_wheel_040415511 Contra Costa is rolling out a new youth biking program in Pleasant Hill. The Summer Youth Bike Challenge provides fun, healthy, no cost summer recreation that challenges participants to explore their hometown via bicycle.
Challenge destinations include public parks and athletic fields, the library, Farmers Market, and Downtown Pleasant Hill.  The Summer Youth Bike Challenge is open to all students in grades K-12. Participants are asked to take the challenge and bike to local places by August 29.
For more information, visit the Pleasant Hill Summer Youth Bike Challenge webpage.

New and Improved StreetMix (2013)

Posted on

Back in April of 2013 we shared an article about StreetMix, the fun web-based tool which lets you resize and rethink streets with mere clicks. When it launched, StreetMix was rather simplistic but that’s partially what made it so powerful and why we wrote about it– because of its ability to let everyday people redesign streets and plainly communicate ideas typically reserved for traffic engineers. StreetMix has since been updated with more details and ways to re-envision streets (light rail, and green-painted bike lanes, anyone?), but it has maintained its simple and user-friendly approach.
Take a look below for a comparison of what StreetMix used to look like and what it looks like today…
StreetMix
It certainly looks more polished and more aesthetically pleasing now, doesn’t it? It may explain why a growing number of neighborhood advocacy groups and city agencies are using the app.
Re-designing streets can be a for exercise for all ages and increasingly it has become necessary to design our streets to be inclusive places; StreetMix can help accomplish this goal. Asking youth how they might re-envision streets in their neighborhood using this tool can help inform the needs and decisions of tomorrow.
Check out the new and improved StreetMix!

StreetMix:Transforming Streets With Clicks

Posted on

Whether you’re an aspiring transportation planner, traffic engineer, planning commissioner  or just want to know what your street would look like with a planted median and bus stops, StreetMix is an excellent web-based tool that lets you decide how to use the right of way of a street. Similar to Blockee, which we’ve highlighted in a previous post, StreetMix is incredibly simple to use and is especially helpful for anyone to experiment with the “what if” scenarios. Let’s take a look at just how easy it is to modify the use a roadway with StreetMix.
Below is a street that is 60 feet from curb to curb with 12 foot wide lanes– common in California…
streetmix1
…then with mere clicks of the computer you can modify lane widths and suddenly the street looks like this…
streetmix2
Now you can see what it would look like when lane widths are reduced…leaving enough room for bike lanes and the street is still 60 feet from curb to curb!
Scematics like the one above takes just a minute to create on StreetMix. Test your more elaborate ideas for your hometown – StreetMix lets you widen sidewalks, add planted medians, create dedicated bus lanes, narrow streets, widen street, and more.
Overall, StreetMix is a great demonstration tool that provides a visual of what a street would look like under various design schemes.  Try using it to design complete streets that serve all modes of transportation. Give it a try– it’s a lot of fun!