There was a lot of traffic on Fremont this morning — both directions — a real steady stream of cars. Fremont between Sunshine and Sunset is a 35-mph, 3-lane street (that includes a center turn lane). The driving lanes are narrow, i.e. not sharable. So I ride where the right tire track is — roughly the right third of the lane well away from the gutter.

Sunset is a 4-lane, 35-mph street with very narrow lanes. Those lanes look less than 10 feet wide to me. So I take the middle of the right lane.

Busy traffic this morning and:

• Not a single honk
• No close passes
• No shouts or complaints or thrown objects
• No dangerous maneuvers
• Nobody ran me down
• And, thankfully, no overly polite drivers

In other words — a typical day riding in Springfield for me.

I know some bicyclists regularly  have different experiences in Springfield (different in fact or different in perception?). I’m really interested in understanding what’s going on out there. I certainly have worse days. I certainly suffer some abuse sometimes. But abuse is rare for me.

Why?

I don’t know. I have a few of guesses. Here they are:

1. I ride in a properly commanding position in the road so I am easy to see and, therefore, easy to pass safely (re: this video).
2. I follow the traffic laws, so I am predictable.
3. I do most of my riding in the urban core.
4. I am male.
5. I’m just used to traffic after 6+ years of utility bicycling.

I’d really like to begin collecting some anecdotes and other evidence about riding in Springfield. I’d like to know why there are bicyclists in our town who seem to have a much worse experience riding on the streets than I do. To that end, I’m going to create a survey. Watch for it next week.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle infrastructure, bicycle politics, bicycle safety, cycling, utility cycling

That’s my Redline out front. And those panneirs are full of goodies grown locally.

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, cycling, utility cycling

The responses are, in my opinion, fairly typical and fit well with a few of my own reasons to ride:

1. Get to know the neighborhood
2. Exercise
3. Enjoying the outdoors
4. Escaping the confines of a car

But one guy has a reason that I’m finding increasingly compelling as a bicycle advocate. Here’s what Mike Nolte had to say:

I ride because I enjoy being outdoors and a bicycle is free transportation. I also work near where I live. Once you know the area, riding a bike may be quicker than driving.

It seems to me that there are many other choices for exercise and enjoying the outdoors. And walking certainly helps you escape the confines of a car and get to know your neighborhood. So what do we have to do to encourage more people to ride bicycles as basic transportation?

Possible answer: Find a way to make it a quick and easy transportation choice; make it more convienient than a car.

This topic was recently covered on Copenhaganize:

I don’t ride a bicycle all over the map because it’s fun. I don’t think I’ve ever considered it fun. Enjoyable, perhaps, but even that isn’t at the top of the list.

Frisbees are fun. That’s why hundreds of millions of them have been sold since Walter Frederick Morrison concieved his flying disk. But there are very, very few people who think that it’s so much fun that they want to join a league and do it full time.

When the City of Copenhagen asks its cycling citizens what their main reason for cycling is – and they ask every two years – the majority reply that it is because a bicycle is the quickest and easiest way to get around town. 56% of them say that.

In second place, 19% reply that their main reason is ‘good exercise’. They get their 30 minutes a day like the Ministry of Health suggests but riding to and from work and on to the supermarket.

Only 6% ride because it’s inexpensive and only 1% ride for environmental reasons.

I agree with Richard when he writes, “No wonder we fail so miserably at cycling promotion. Do car advertisements speak blandly to the raw number crunching, analytical bottom line? Or do they appeal to your desire for visceral, go fast, fantastic feeling of freedom and sexual prowess?”

Cycling advocacy is hopelessly out of touch with basic human anthropology.

…

People on bicycles are no different than people on foot, on trains, planes and automobiles. They want to get there quick. Homo sapiens are like rivers – we’ll always take the quickest route.

People in established bicycle cultures ride because it’s quick. Easy. Convenient. If you make that possible in emerging bicycle cultures, you have half the battle won.

Getting around the urban core is quick and easy on a bicycle — sometimes quicker and easier than a car. I had no real idea about this when I decided to live close to work and downtown. I was thinking green.

I’m surprised, frankly, that I kept bicycling. I didn’t quit in the rain. I didn’t quit in the cold. I didn’t hear that Ford Explorer in the garage calling to me when time was short or conditions were less than idea.

I just assumed that I would be a fair-weather rider when I moved here six years ago.

But riding around the urban core is quick and easy. So I stuck with it and got rid of that SUV. I’ve reached the point where I don’t want to drive a car — the noise, the stress, the parking hassles, the danger, the frustration, the cost … on and on.

(Via Skribit Suggestions)

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, cycling, utility cycling

I am entirely serious when I say that the biggest problem I have on the streets of Springfield’s urban core is overly-polite drivers (my example yesterday, however, was mistaken — see the comments).

I say that knowing many bicyclists in Springfield have a tougher time on the streets because they live in suburbs built for cars. There are two Springfields — one that is largely hospitable to utility bicycling and one that is not. This is one reason why I promote the 1-mile Solution and Keep a Bicycle at Work.

Can the suburbs be retrofitted for walking and bicycling? I think it’s possible (although costly and, perhaps, politically unlikely), so I intend to explore that question this summer.

Right now I want to talk about two reasons I have such a smooth riding experience in Springfield.

1. The first reason I’ve already mentioned: I ride mostly in the urban core where I live. The streets here form a nice grid. The speed limits are low. Drivers in this area expect to see pedestrians and bicyclists. Goods and services are spaced in such a way that urban core residents are often a short walk from groceries, entertainment, and retail. I chose to live in this area on purpose to gain exactly the benefits I’ve listed.

2. I ride “like I mean it” — a phrase I borrowed from Keri Caffrey, of Commute Orlando, who uses it to mean taking your rightful place in traffic and driving your bicycle like a vehicle. Check out the first video on my page of must-see videos. Riding this way is easier in Springfield’s urban core.

How do we make Springfield even more bicycle-friendly so the folks in our suburbs can enjoy the benefits?

I mentioned retrofitting, which could include creating greenways that connect across neighborhoods, to retail areas, and to other greenways. I’ve also mentioned the 1-MS and keeping a bicycle at work. What else is possible?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about urban planning, transportation, and the so-called great reset. The ideas I’m encountering, and the demographics of our area, tell me that suburbia as currently designed is not sustainable in a world of energy limits — a world we must prepare for.

How do we do that?

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle politics, bicycle video, cycling, sustainability, Transportation Planning, Urban and Regional Planning, urban design, Urban Planning, utility cycling, walking

We have been living “car lite” for a year. We own a 1996 Honda Civic. I drive it so little that my wife now accuses me of losing my driving skills. I think I’m simply a lot more careful I’m probably just kidding myself.

I’m happy to report that we have survived and thrived. Only once in the last year did we encounter a moment in which we wished we had a second car. I was expecting it to be more difficult. But, then, we’d been living car lite to a certain extent because I just haven’t been driving much in the last six years.

I’m still using my bicycle and my feet as basic transportation. My wife and daughter have increased their bicycling and walking. These methods are now our first choice as a family when we go out together — to the movies, the theater, the grocery, the music halls, the restaurants, and the civic events.

I’ve crowed before about this being easy. Part of the reason living car lite is easy for us is that we chose to live in Springfield’s urban core. We are 2.25 miles from the heart of downtown. I am .75 miles from work. My daughter is 1 mile from school. We have plenty of commercial services and retail within a mile of home. We are ready for the Great Reset.

Others are not so lucky. And that’s why I continue to push the 1-mile Solution and Keep a Bicycle at Work. And, others have very different values — especially in this area where having a home on 3 to 5 acres in the country is part of the attraction if one is willing to pay the price.

My daughter took the written driver’s test the other day in order to get a learner’s permit. She hadn’t studied. Couldn’t be bothered. She failed the test (missing mostly legal technicalities), but not by much. She’s learned a lot about traffic riding as a part of it on her bicycle. Back in the day when I was her age, to fail that test would have been a disaster — personally and socially. Not for her generation.

Her attitude was “meh.” She’s just really not interested in driving a car.

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle culture, cycling, sustainability, utility cycling