Here’s an excellent letter to the Editor, published in the Dispatch on Saturday, January 2, 2010. The logic is sharp, and answers the objections we hear every day. ("I  don’t see many bicycles out there….there’s no demand for accomodation…etc.") 

Re-printed from the Columbus Dispatch

Saturday,  January 2, 2010 2:58 AM

If you build it, they will come — and they want to ride bikes

I reply to Linda S. Corbett’s letter of Dec. 20, "Bicycle-storage plan costly, unnecessary."

Corbett raises a basic question that a number of other people have been raising: Why should we spend money on making Columbus bicycle-friendly when such a small number of people are biking?

The assumption underlying Corbett’s opposition to using federal stimulus funds to create parking for bikes all around Downtown and to put bike lanes on W. Broad Street — and presumably to everything else contained in the Columbus Bicentennial Bikeways Plan — is that there will never be more than a tiny fraction of people who will ever use bicycling for getting around town for work, for school, for church, for shopping, for dining in restaurants and for everything else.

Corbett believes that too few people will ever want to go to the inconvenience of showering and changing for office work after a bike ride; that too few people will ever bike in cold, snowy or rainy weather; and that too few people will ever bike through high-crime areas. The attitude seems to be that the way it is now is the way it’s always going to be and that we can’t change and do better.

People seem to forget that a majority of people biked everywhere for everything before traffic engineers began designing streets for cars only.

Those who get around know that there are cities all across the U.S. — including cold, snowy, rainy, windy, hilly cities like Portland, San Francisco, Boulder, Madison, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis and New York — that have seen a dramatic resurgence of bicycling once planners have begun to make them more bike-friendly with networks of bike lanes, safe and convenient bike parking, end-of-ride facilities, share-the-road campaigns and education on the rules of the road.

In fact, professor John Pucher of Rutgers University, the leading researcher and foremost expert on bicycling policy and practice, published a research paper in 2006 called, "Why Canadians cycle more than Americans." In this paper, available on his Web site, he tells us why the rate of Canadian bicycling is about three times higher than in the U.S. If I’m not mistaken, most of Canada is much colder and snowier than it is here in central Ohio.

Last March, at the League of American Bicyclists’ annual Bike Summit in Washington, D.C., we were treated to a presentation by the bike planner of Copenhagen — a sometimes cold, snowy, rainy and windy city in northern Europe — who told us how Copenhagen planned to increase the mode share of bicycling from its current 35 percent to 50 percent in five years. Bicycling is dramatically higher throughout Europe than it is in this country because they have engineered bicycling back into their roadways.

Back in April 2006, NextGeneration Consulting produced a study for the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, the city of Columbus and others called "Attracting and Retaining Young Talent to Columbus." The study told us that "the next generation of workers chooses to live first, work second. Young workers can — and often do — pick a place to work and then find a job." The key is providing the "quality of life amenities" that attract young workers. And the study states that young workers in Columbus want to make bicycling part of their everyday routines, and they are specifically asking for a network of bike lanes and bike parking to enable them to do that.

Making Columbus bike-friendly is essential to making all of Columbus — including especially the Hilltop — economically competitive and vibrant. Implementing the bike plan will make Columbus a mecca of bicycling and a great city.

The city of Columbus is absolutely on the right track in creating a network of bike lanes and bike parking throughout the city.

JOHN GIDEON
Vice president Consider Biking Worthington