With our first week of “Ask the Lede” in the books, we received great responses from readers sending us in all directions turning over rocks. Under some of those rocks was an automated “Out of the Office” message due to the Fourth of July holiday, but we did find someone. And some answers.

Ten-year city of Huntsville veteran Dennis Madsen, the manager of Urban & Long-Range Planning, helped addressed the question from Nick Frevold: Any insight on new bike lanes or paths being planned or built?

The city just finished a restriping on Oakwood Road, which Madsen calls the biggest of their recent projects. That project brings the total distance of bike lanes in the city to 13.62 miles.

Existing bike routes totals 182 miles (shown here in an interactive map). Proposed bike routes is 347 miles.

That project is from the city’s Bike Plan from 2006 (available here) that, Madsen says, has seen changes over the years. But the biggest change could be just around the bend. This fall, officials are looking to do a comprehensive update to the bike plan. In that, gap analysis – linking routes to destinations – will be a major focus, but the ultimate goal will be bringing all the areas together to benefit the region.

“It kind of underscores the idea that bike routes don’t stop at kind of abstract municipal boundaries, right?” Madsen said. “When you’re biking, you just want to be able to bike from Point A to Point B safely and without having to worry about what happens when you’re crossing from one city to another, from the city to the county. So the (Huntsville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization) is going to update that … and really get all the jurisdictions kind of under one planned umbrella.”