According to the Oil Price Information Service the average U.S. family spent $4,200 on gasoline in 2011. To put it in perspective, with that much money you could buy eight iPad 2s, or eight Trek 7.1 FX bicycles, or you might even purchase one expensive cruise to Dubai to see what your gas money is building.

As the US economy continued it slow recovery from the Great Recession, Milwaukee was left with a couple of failed development projects to complete or redefine, a changing real estate market, the opportunity to make small infrastructure changes, and questions about the future of transit.

Recently, multiple attempts to cut or eliminate bicycle and pedestrian funding from the federal transportation budget have been proposed under the premise that these funds are needed to rebuild America’s infrastructure. So far all of these measures have failed, but do they even address the problem?

Last week marked the installation of another on-street bike corral in Milwaukee. The newest on-street bike corral is located at Cafe Hollander on Milwaukee’s East Side.

Portland has 67 on-street bike corrals while Milwaukee now has just two. With the latest being installed this past week at the Nomad on the Lower East Side. The Nomad’s new bike corral is located in an used space along Warren St., and just as Alterra’s on-street bike corral removed no regular automobile parking spots, none were removed to install these racks.

Bike-sharing is coming to Milwaukee, or at least to Discovery World for a limited time. On Thursday June 23rd, from 11am-2pm, B-cycle, a partnership between Humana, Trek Bicycle and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, will be bringing their 5-bike, demonstration station to Discovery World.

One of the competitive advantages of urban living is having activities that are useful in many areas of your life. Biking is great example of this; people can ride their bikes to work, or go for a pleasure ride on the weekend. Both Milwaukee and Madison are leaders in providing great biking options and have been recognized on Bicycling Magazine’s “America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities”.

Cities such as Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Minneapolis have install on-street bike parking in recent years, and now you can add Milwaukee to the list.

Back on Park(ING) Day we wrote about the possibility of on-street bike corrals, and how small changes to the built environment can help make for a better, more interesting Milwaukee. But to create those small changes we need the City of Milwaukee and local businesses to work together to get things rolling.

On Wednesday evening, the Beerline Trail celebrated it’s grand opening. The 4000-foot, paved trail connects the Beerline neighborhood, North Avenue Dam Pedestrian Bridge, Commerce Street, and Humboldt Avenue bridge through the river corridor to Gordon Park and much of Riverwest. The trail will facilitate a better connection for non-motorized travelers between the downtown area and Riverwest. The trail also turns a former railroad corridor into a welcoming and accessible way for visitors to interact with the Milwaukee River.