In Which UK Arguments Resonate in U.S.A.

From https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com.
London lorry driver on his phone.

Here are some thoughts inspired by another biker's blog post.

When I was young, riding a bicycle was pretty much a child’s playtime activity.

As I’ve aged, more adults have begun riding. When we moved to Cedar Rapids in 2001, it became practical for me to start commuting by bicycle, although it took a few years before I began to do that more often than I drive.

As more adults begin riding bicycles, and more infrastructure for bicycling has been created in American cities, there has been something of an anti-bike backlash. And sometimes it seems as if there are three competing and battling groups wanting to use street and walkway infrastructure—walkers, bicycle riders and car/truck drivers.

Some car and truck drivers want exclusive use of the street. In Cedar Rapids, in recent years, when streets have been reconstructed, the city has started adding sidewalks to neighborhoods where none existed before, sometimes to the vocal objection of residents who don’t want to shovel snow or who think losing trees is not worth the gained pedestrian safety.

And we sometimes get letters in our local paper that say things like “I’ve never seen a walker on 35th Street, but the city is destroying our neighborhood and making life terrible for us by installing sidewalks.”

Well, I have several reactions. One is to remind everyone that the walkers came first—humans have been bipeds for millions of years—then the bikers, then the cars. Historically, it was a rather poor mid-20th century car-centric idea in the U.S.A. to start designing and installing streets that served only the latest of those three transit modes. City of Cedar Rapids—for what it’s worth, I applaud your efforts to make up for past mistakes by putting in sidewalks.

As a society, we all benefit by promoting walking and biking, for many reasons. For example, far from slowing traffic, most of the time bikers are aiding traffic by reducing the number of cars on the road. And both walkers and bikers are serving their own personal health—the human body is meant to be used, not to be sedentary. Granted, the most direct benefit of that is for the walker or biker, but still, healthier people mean lower healthcare costs for society as a whole. Also bikers and walkers are reducing air pollution for everyone. (Yes, yes, I know, humans do produce carbon emissions, but cars produce not only far more carbon emissions, but a host of other noxious vapors that CR Biker does not).

Granted, the health savings are offset when a car hits a walker or biker. Which gets me to the big gripe some drivers have—infrastructure. It is the tax argument. Don’t car drivers pay taxes and license fees to maintain roads while walkers and bikers are freeloaders?

Well, no. For one thing, general taxes aid infrastructure, too. And CR street projects are partly funded by a sales tax that a biker quaffing a Fat Tire at the Sag Wagon helps to pay. And the tax argument ignores the relative damage and expense of infrastructure on a per-vehicle basis. It’s not totally free to create or maintain bike trails or sidewalks, but the big expense in street maintenance is to fix damage done by two things: weather and heavy vehicles.

Sure, you pay more gas tax to drive your SUV on my street. But I cause the street practically no damage whatsoever by rolling my bicycle across it, and that’s not true of your SUV. (British readers, I have no idea what an SUV would be called in Britain. A half Lorry, half car? Maybe it’s just an SUV.)

Anyway, I worry that the discussion of transportation infrastructure, such as it is, is too often put as interest groups battling with each other. As a bicycle rider, I don’t begrudge car drivers the improved lanes and smoother roads that city street projects result in—even if they sometimes repave the interstate, where my bicycle is not allowed (and no, I don’t think it ought to be allowed there, either).

I was thinking about this when I read the blog post I linked at the start of this post. It was written by a English bike rider complaining about a BBC news report that described HGV drivers and bicycle riders as warring over the streets of London. HGV is a “heavy goods vehicle” by the way—British speak for a big truck, what we would call a semi.

The blogger is a bit frustrated by the lazy portrayal of interest groups battling, rather than a more rational discussion of possible solutions. As he notes, accidents in London may have more to do with a poorly designed transportation system that requires bicycles and HGVs to share space rather than the inevitable misbehavior among bike riders and truck drivers.

Amen, brother, or whatever they would say in London to indicate strong agreement. The same attitudes hold true here. Solutions are found not when drivers and walkers and bikers battle, but when a system is designed that accommodates all three groups.

And my American people—some drivers just think people on foot or bike ought not exist. Some have so ingrained in their minds that the American Way is to drive a car like God intended, that any use of public funds to benefit anything not built in Detroit is a conspiracy.

Well, these days Detroit isn’t building that many of our cars anyway. And our car-central culture is slowly evolving and needs to change. If that makes you feel uncomfortable, welcome to the 21st century. Please don’t take your frustration out on a biker.

Last, on a totally unrelated note: Geese! See photo below I shot Friday. Watch out on the local bike trail. Goslings are fun to see, but mama and papa goose will be nervous and aggressive at this time of year!

Baby geese and mom or dad Friday near Cedar Lake. I'm on the street on the east side rather than the west side trail. No doubt hindering som poor car driver.

In Which I’m Not Impressed By Bowling Street Trail

Saw MMU billboard near Kirkwood Community College while riding Bowling Street bike trail.

Well, that was an interesting ride. In the morning, I rode my bike to the gym, and then did a figure 8 loop in the neighborhood to climb the Brentwood Drive hill from both east and west.

And I snapped some photos of the storm devastation. Trees down. Streets blocked. Trail flooded. The June 30 storm in Cedar Rapids will long be recalled-sadly, it made the U.S. national news due to a teenager being swept away and drowned in the downpour.

I called my sister Cate, and she had much the same experience that I did—although many tree limbs were down in her neighborhood, she hadn't really suffered any damage. So I suggested a mid-day bike ride, and she agreed.

I puttered around a bit first. I removed the top third of a medium-sized tree that had snapped off in our back yard, and got rid of a few of the larger other branches. I also fussed with my bike, oiling the chain and tightening the rear brake. And I dug out my fake Camelback water source.

I had told my sister I would arrive around 11, but got to her house around 11:30. No worries, she’s used to “Joe time.” We headed over to the trail and headed north, figuring that the trails in town would be a mess.

Well, that was some storm. It hit in Johnson County, south of us, where I was at a mall with family. It smashed much of Cedar Rapids. And as we went north, the trail got more forested and messier. Only a few miles into the ride, we gave up and turned around—too many downed trees.

North on trail mid-day Tuesday. A bit messy, and it got worse.

Worse. Francis near where we turned around.

As expected, high water left many Cedar Rapids trails closed, but what was open in town was in better shape--not as many woodsy areas to be swamped in branches. So we headed south, avoiding the closed stretches of trail by the river, and crossing the bridge of the lions. Cate took me through Czech Village to a trail that I had not ridden before—the Bowling Street trail that leads to Kirkwood.

I was a bit underwhelmed. One of the original bike trails in Cedar Rapids, the Bowling Street Trail is old, bumpy and poorly marked. Cate says it’s a 3-mile shorter ride to Kirkwood then going along C east of campus, but I don’t know. I might ride 3 extra miles just to avoid that trail.

Well, it was there. Unlike the Cedar River Trail, which passes under Highway 30, the Bowling Street trail goes over the 4-lane highway, which makes for a nice view.

View of Highway 30 from Bowling Street trail.

After that, we headed to Ely and then back to Cedar Rapids. We used C Street to avoid the closed areas of the Cedar River Trail south of the river.

It was a nice ride. My bike fell over while we were carrying our bikes over downed trees, and it seems to have killed my computer, which is unfortunate. But, otherwise it was a good practice ride.

I've ridden more than 1,400 miles this year. And 47 of those were today. (By the way, if you look at the chart carefully, the totals don’t add up because today’s July miles are not included). I’m a bit behind in reaching my annual goal, but July should be the month with the most miles. I hope for many more 47-mile and more practice days ahead, weather willing!

Happy Trails To You, MMU

Picture from PDF file.  Cleck on it to enlarge before you answer survey.

The local powers that be seem to be getting serious about bike trails.

For those, like me, who commute by bike, this is good news.  For those of you, testosterone-infested males driving big ugly SUVs, who hate bikers, this is also good news.  More trails equals fewer bikes on the streets, something that both bikers and bike haters would agree is a good thing.

But, of course, there is the whole taxation and how you spend public monies wisely issue that muddies it up.  I will freely admit that, even as a biker, I’m not sure that bike trails are always number-one (or two, or three) on the priority list, and just because something is “good,” it doesn’t make it better than something else (flood control?) that might compete for public dollars.

Tax dollars are not an unlimited resource.

Still, the Linn County Trails organization, linncountytrails.org, is doing a survey on trail connections to help local powers that be decide what trail developments should be a priority.

I’ll admit that the three I listed highest, shown with orange boxes of importance on my picture of the city’s PDF file listing the trail connections in question, are personal and based on where I live and where I ride.  I would be interested in just about any of these trails, including the idea of connecting the Sac and Fox and Prairie Parks Fishery trails to an Otis Road trail (the SE loop).

If and when the CENMAR trail is complete, I will have a totally non-street route to work at Mount Mercy.  That will be nice.

Anyway, CR bikers, if you want your input to be heard, check out the list (click on image above to enlarge) and then go to this link to find and take the survey.

May the best trail win!

CR Plans More Bike Trails…Muted Applause

I read this story recently in the Gazette:

Cedar Rapids officials push more funding for trails, bike lanes
 

As a biker, you can imagine that I’m pleased the city is committed to more bike trails.  Trails are more useful if they connect, and bikers are safer when they’re using the trails rather than riding in the streets.

As you can also imagine, the article has drawn a lot of comments, many to be expected of the “oh sure, don’t fix our streets” or “bikers, not taxpayers, should pay for trails.”  The typical tripe that any article about biking or trails will inevitably draw.

But, I have to admit, to some extent I’m torn on this news.  Why?

While I like trails, streets in Cedar Rapids need more attention.  I cycle through the Kenwood neighborhood on my daily commute, and the streets are like the Chinese food in the small Alabama town in “My Cousin Vinny.”  They are terrible.  It's cool to put money into trails.  But, the streets badly need attention.

And, while I ride the trails when I can, I use streets to get there.  Having more trails won’t remove bikers from the streets—indeed, if trails are more readily available, more people may be motivated to bicycle, and the way from home to the trail, for most, will be via street.

Those crowded streets aren’t always a bad thing—having more people motivated to bicycle has all kinds of ancillary benefits, so even if it means more bikes on the street, the trend can also mean a healthier and happier and less flabby body politic.

I also don’t buy the “bikers should pay for trails” arguments, because that road leads to “park users should pay for parks” scenario.  In some cases—such as swimming pools—it makes sense for users to chip in for public facilities, but in other cases—parks in general—having them free to everyone and paid for by taxes is the point—and hiking/biking trails are just a subcategory of “park.”  Not everyone chooses to use them, but their existence and openness to all is important.

Well, I’m sure I’ll enjoy the more extensive trail system if or when it arrives.  I’ll be glad to see the trails expanded.  Although I’ll bike on sidewalks or streets to get there.