Bicyclists are changing our streets and cities
Bicyclists are changing our streets and cities
http://www.seattlepi.com/connelly/405198_joel16.html
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
A backstage hero of Jeff Mapes' book "Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities" is an intense young bureaucrat named Mia Birk, who put Portland on a "road diet" and created bike lanes across the Rose City.
"The motto was, 'Better to ask forgiveness than permission," joked Mapes.
It sums up why a sweeping change in transportation policy has caught hold from New York City to Louisville, Ky., to such "Left Coast" cities as Seattle, Portland and Davis, Calif.
In Portland, where he is a political writer with The Oregonian, Mapes' bike commutes were made safer when the city shut down one entrance ramp to the Hawthorne Bridge that was causing bike-car conflicts.
"A movement has grown slowly, under the radar screen, which people are hardly aware is going on," Mapes told a Tuesday night forum sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Club.
Seattle is a big blip on bicyclists' radar screen. The city's big street repair package, approved by voters a couple years back, provided $27 million for bicycle projects.
At a weekly Madrona neighborhood breakfast, Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin often shows up in riding attire, taking his helmet off as he orders coffee. About 4.2 percent of trips taken in the Emerald City are by bike, triple the figure of a few years back.
Portland is doing a bit better.
With a bit of the smug, we're-social-pioneers attitude often heard out of Oregon -- on fronts ranging from recycled bottles to land use planning to physician-assisted suicide -- Mapes is a cheerleader for the "revolution."
"I've seen in Portland how just an approximate 5 percent share for biking -- more than five times the national average -- has changed the city," writes Mapes. "And I see how learning to ride my bike in the city has changed my life. I still have a car and I still appreciate its utility. But I don't worry about high gas prices, road congestion or lack of parking downtown."
http://www.seattlepi.com/connelly/405198_joel16.html
