Making our home town People Friendly!
Main page The act of making our cities friendly to ALL residents and encourage a sense of a human friendly community
Community is important!

In many countries, the Automobile is NOT the supreme being.  This is not the main reason that I advocate making cities and communities MORE bike and pedestrian friendly and LESS car friendly.  I advocate this because I think communities need to encourage MORE COMMUNITY activities by members of the community and cars do NOT encourage community involvement.  Quite the opposite, cars encourage displacement of the individual and isolation from the community at large.

I also advocate this because, walking and cycling are activities that allow interaction on a personal level which makes the city a "community" rather than a place to "hole up" .  As an amature student of history I have found that in most cases, people tend to have a language that says that they are "people" and that others, not of their "tribe" are "enemy", and I believe that living and operating in isolation tends to enforce that feeling.  If you live in a closed house then walk to your car and drive everywhere you go in closed isolation, your interaction with other people is minimal.  In this way, you can and often DO avoid contact with people living as close as next door seeing them as "foreigners" and not part of your group.

By walking or riding a bicycle you can enforce the feeling of community.  I have found that when I ride a bicycle, people who I do not know and have possibly never seen, will smile and speak, or wave.  It is uncanny.  I see noting wrong with having differences with other people, but the hostility that is apparent is not a part of a "community" feeling.

So how do we solve this?

I am not terribly sure, but in many ways, a bicycle is one of the solutions.  On a bicycle, you are fast enough to travel to work, local businesses, and friends homes, yet you are slow enough that you can speak to others as you pass.  It is a good compromise between speed and convenience.

The problems facing cyclists, or POTENTIAL cyclists and pedestrians, are two fold. First, Safety on the streets.  How do you walk or ride a bicycle safely in traffic that is sometimes verging on suicidal?  Second, In climate weather.  For the most part, I have  found that BOTH problems are somewhat over rated.  to begin with, alternate routes are often available and secondly, in several years of using a bicycle for basic personal transportation, I have VERY seldom been caught in any sort of difficult weather problems.  I have been occasionally caught in rain, or snow, but beyond (and in 5 years, I think this has happened about twice) the rain or occasional fog (actually more than a few early in the AM) I have experienced no difficulty, and I often ride when my wife deems it imprudent.

I once was out, 2 miles from home when the warning sirens for a Tornado sounded, though alarming at the time, I didn't even get wet that time!  Let alone blown away in high winds.  So I think that weather problems are somewhat over emphasized.  You must use caution of course.  Getting caught in a bad storm is no fun.  Note here that on this same bike trail a year or so earlier, a hard rain hit and the stream flooded, leaving the trail about 10 ft under a torrential stream that tore out three bridges and rooted out the trail for many many thousands of yards of distance!  I was somewhat alarmed until I wa out of there!

Traffic!  This is the big problem that most people worry about.  and there are things that you can do with your city to approach this problem and there are other ways in which you can do it yourself.  Often I have found cities (or at least OUR city) to be fairly reasonable about addressing problems that impact pedestrians.  This often extends to cyclists as well.  But Do not make the mistake of deciding that you want "50 miles of striped bike lanes" in your city before you research the problem more fully.  Often Traffic is less hassle than you might imagine!  Confidence and skill are your two allies here!

A cautionary tale here.  In an adjacent town they decided that "bike lanes are a great idea" and got out the striping machine and began laying down bike lanes.  Unfortunately, they did not do enough research and the lanes are poorly placed, badly laid out and in fact a danger to cyclists rather than a  help.   Also, bike lanes often are a repository of glass, sticks, discarded junk and other debris that are not swept clear by auto traffic.  In some places, the bike lane runs along the side of a parking lane, subjecting cyclists to being "doored" by inattentive (or simply vicious) motorists.  In many cases no bike lane at all is better than a badly engineered one.  In fact, this community has been sued by a cyclist that was ticketed for NOT using the bike lanes citing that they were a danger, not an aid.

In our city, there is an extensive network of parallel streets to the main ones that allow a cyclist to go from place to place in comfort and safety and avoiding heavily traveled main streets.  This is a great resource but is seldom used by those unfamiliar with the town.  It also, since it is not obvious, lends the idea that we are not "Bike Friendly".  A friend who was visiting recently said that he saw several bikes in his cross town travel and couldn't believe that we have so many people using bikes to get around.  Bikes tend to be "Stealth" vehicles rather than "apparent".

So what can you do?  Much depends on your individual community of course, but become familiar with those who are working with the bike community and pedestrian community.  identify problems that may be of difficulty to you or others.  When you do find a problem, note it and see what might be done to fix it or make it less of a difficulty.  city officials have a much better  view of someone who comes in and points out something and has an idea of what might be done to fix the problem.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the city is made of money because they aren't!  but they may be able to do something to address the problem that is somewhat of a compromise.  Think of solutions that are low or no cost or make the city LOOK good!  they like those!

I can't give you any CONCRETE examples, but there are ideas around that you can look up!  Report problems to the proper department and be a good citizen.