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Thu, 18 May 2006

Serious Cyclists Do It In The Road, Waylon Lewis, and Bicycling in Boulder (and Fairfield)

While cruising New West Network, my new favorite site, I came across Waylon Lewis's bicycling article, You Say You Want A Revolution. Says Waylon, "You say you want a revolution? If we Americans hopped on a bike even once a week, the world would start revolving counterclockwise—and our lives would be healthier, happier and holier." Amen!

Waylon is from Boulder CO, one of the four most bicycle friendly cities in the US. But there are quite a few people here in Fairfield Iowa who ride bikes year round, no matter the weather. They do it for recreation, for health, for the environment, because they're too poor, young, or old, because cars make them nervous, or because they got too many DUI's. Most of them would rather be driving a car.

Fairfield has 10,000 people, and you can safely cycle almost anywhere except the main drag, Hwy 34, which is clogged with cars, trucks and semi's roaring through town. Like most places in the US, cycling isn't considered transportation, which is built around cars.

In spite of the relatively large numbers of people riding bikes in Fairfield, only 1.6% of the residents bike to work, 9% carpool, 7.9% walk, 7.3% work at home, and 72.9% drive alone. Parking is mainly for cars. The city uses tax money to fix the roads, but makes property owners pay to fix broken sidewalks. That's the car mindset - what's the point of sidewalks to the 72.9% who never walk or bike anywhere if they can help it?

Recently, a group of students from the U of I began a project designing a system of bike trails for Fairfield, including biking to school, work and shopping. If it ever gets built, it will revolutionize the town. Potential challenges to the building of the bike system include: safety on shared paths, opposition to sidewalks, heterogeneous proposals, and adequate public buy-in. In other words the whole idea could perish of ignorance and apathy.

Forgive my going on about this. I blame Waylon Lewis and his inspiring article about zipping around Boulder on his bike, and all the reasons why bicycling is The Way. Not all of his commenters agreed with him 100%, and he admits that there is still a place for cars. But Waylon gave me hope that times are changing. Yes! I want a revolution! But first, I need a bike.