www.roanoke.com

Blacksburg remains an innovator in Southwest Virginia when it come to better governing through technology. Check out this nifty tool for letting the town know where you ride your bike. It's an interactive map that allows you to trace your bicycle and pedestrian routes and share them with the town. (Instructions for using the map.)

Why should you do that? From the town press release:

The information sought from these surveys is an understanding of riders’ points of origin and destination, the most travelled route from high density origins to common destinations, preference for in-road, shared-use, or off-road riding, and requests for additional amenities such as lockers or bike racks to facilitate users’ commutes. Once the data is collected, this information will be used to prioritize route improvements. These improvements include widening and improving roads for in-road bike lanes, construction of shared use off-road paths, in-road markings or signage for preferred routes, and assignment of an alpha numeric designation for each route for the purposes of navigation and mapping.

In other words, before the town can build new lanes, bike racks and so on, it needs to know where they are needed.  So if you bike in town or would if there were safer routes, visit the survey and let Blacksburg know where you ride.  The public comment period runs from Wednesday through Dec. 2.