Tag Archives: active transportation

The end of the car commute

I’ve planned some version of this post in my head for quite awhile, though I was beginning to think it would never happen.

Over two-and-a-half (!) years ago, I accepted a position promoting active transportation (with a focus on biking).  It was a great opportunity, with one big downside: my four-and-a-half years of biking to work came to a screeching halt.

I explored options for bike commuting, including combining biking with transit, but the location, sixteen miles away, with a river crossing that is only spanned by an interstate (if I didn’t want to travel significantly out of the way, and still be on high-speed highways), and no transit service made that an unrealistic option for me.  I know some people bike to work at that distance and longer, but spending over two hours getting to and from work, and my route options (or lack there-of), made it a nonstarter for me.

Going into it, I knew the switch from a bike commute to a car commute (about 30 minutes each way) would be hard to swallow, and it was.  Everyday, I drove past an overpass reconstruction that was set to be complete exactly a year from when I started the position, and I set an arbitrary deadline of finding something else by the time they completed the project.

A year came and went.  Then two.  I enjoyed my job and working with my coworkers, but the drive bothered me.  And I didn’t want it to NOT bother me, but it didn’t bother me enough to bite the bullet and leave without another job lined up, not in this economy.

I’ve known for several months now that continued funding for my position was uncertain, but I found out just HOW uncertain two weeks ago, when the higher-ups informed me that due to recent budget cuts, my job would be ending effective July 31.  Alrighty, then.

I’m exploring a few possibilities, and, at least for now, not even letting myself look at positions that I could not readily access without a car.  At this point, I don’t know what things will look like come August 1, but I won’t be spending an hour in the car that day, and that can only be a good thing.

Dinner & Bikes recap

After all my questioning whether or not to attend the StL edition of Dinner & Bikes on Sunday night, and time spent formulating a blog post as I processed things, the event itself was a bit anticlimactic.

But let’s start at the beginning.  I watched the weather forecast with rain and thunderstorms for Sunday and Sunday night all week, afraid that conditions would be such that biking would be inadvisable (I won’t say impossible, because you can theoretically ride a bicycle through most any weather condition, however, we try to avoid riding in severe thunderstorms).

Sunday afternoon arrived hot but dry (as in no rain — plenty humid still), and it looked like there was a good chance the rain and storms would hold off until we were safely back home.  Since we’re not acclimated to riding in the heat yet (and let’s be honest, I haven’t been riding all that much lately, period) we debated biking to MetroLink and using transit for part of the trip.

We left that as an option, but, as I expected, once we started rolling, I voted to keep going.  We were about four miles in when I started thinking fondly of the air-conditioned MetroLink cars, but by then it really didn’t make sense to reroute for that.  We continued on, enjoying the “down” part of getting downtown, and we arrived at our destination having covered eight sweaty miles in about forty-five minutes.

After being tempted by the scent of delicious food during the happy hour portion of the event, we finally got down to business, going through a buffet-style line with a variety of vegan dishes, including three or four that featured tofu, and most with Thai flavors.

The William A. Kerr Foundation hosted the event at their 21 O’Fallon Street building.  Given the mission of the foundation, and the LEED Platinum status of the building, I was disappointed to discover styrofoam plates and plastic forks in the buffet line.  Fortunately, I had my bamboo utensil set in my bag, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that I might need to bring my own plate.  Argh!

Matthew and I agreed that our top two dishes were the coconut tofu with plantain (three o’clock position in above photo) and the eggplant with shitake mushroom (middle of plate).  My compliments to The Touring Vegan Chef, AKA Joshua Ploeg, for a tasty meal.

We met some new cyclist friends over dinner, including the organizer of the StL World Naked Bike Ride, and caught up with old friends.

After dinner came the presentation portion of the event.  Elly Blue kicked things off with a talk on the economics of bicycling.  While she had some good points, from our perspective she was preaching to the choir.

Because of my work with bicycle advocacy and Complete Streets policies, I already know the stats and numbers — how expensive it is to build a mile of urban highway ($39 million on the low side, $65 million on average, even higher in some places) and how much bicycle infrastructure that you could build with that amount of money, the cost of owning and driving a car, etc.

Elly pointed out how the cost of owning and operating a car disproportionately affects people living in poverty, especially women, and how women with children face extra challenges to using bicycles for transportation, which, as a bicycling mama, had me nodding my head in agreement.

I pointed out in my pre-event post that the use of well thought-out, progressive infrastructure can be part of the solution for making bicycling more mainstream, and throughout the presentation, I noted examples of infrastructure that should be universally acceptable: bike corrals (i.e., designated, on-street bicycle parking in front of businesses), way-finding signs for bicyclists and pedestrians, and measures that slow motor vehicle traffic.

By the time we got to the video clip portion of the evening, we were both pretty beat and getting restless.  They started with some clips of bicycle advocacy in Portland, having read Mia Birk’s Joyride, this felt like more familiar territory.

Since a baby-free evening is a precious and rare thing for us, we felt we had reached a point of diminishing returns in staying longer, so we ducked out early.

On our way there, I questioned how many attendees* would actually be biking to “Dinner & Bikes,” given the off-the-beaten-path location and the heat.  Unfortunately, the pessimist in me was correct — the indoor bicycle parking was sadly underutilized.

All-in-all, it was a nice evening.  I’m very glad we biked to the event (the ride home was especially nice), as the biking, along with the food, were definitely the highlights for me.

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*I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of turn-out.  According to someone from Trailnet (the event sponsor), they sold about one hundred tickets.  It didn’t feel like there were one hundred people in the room — I’d ballpark it at 60-70, but I could be wrong.  I would have loved to see a larger turnout — more people engaging in bike-related activities and getting excited about promoting and increasing bicycle use would be a great thing.

Black ice and bikes

I recently did a guest interview for Simply Bike’s “Biking While Pregnant” series — you can read it here.

People often express surprise at the weather conditions we bike in, which include some pretty extreme temps (hot and cold),  rain, wind, and snow.  For us (though much less so for me, at the moment), these conditions are just part of using a bicycle for transportation.

As a general rule, there are two conditions in which we don’t bike: ice on the road and lightning storms.  Late Friday afternoon, freezing rain coated area roads just in time for rush hour.  After a failed attempt to fit his bike in a coworker’s car, followed by narrowly missing a bus, Matthew decided to chance the icy streets rather than wait 20-30 minutes for the next bus.

He made it to within a few blocks of our apartment and then went down on some black ice on a side street.  Fortunately, he escaped with just a few bruises and aches.  (His bike is also fine.)  After making it to the sidewalk (he said the street was so slippery he could barely stand up!), he opted to walk the remaining blocks.

The next day, when I suggested biking to an afternoon apartment appointment, he was understandably hesitant.  With the roads still icy in the morning, I reluctantly agreed to the car.  When the time came, I walked outside and proclaimed, “We totally could have biked.”

Our destination was less than two miles away, the kind of trip that can really almost be reached by bicycle as fast as by car, and we had fifteen minutes, so we headed to the basement for the bikes, quickly donned cold weather riding gear, and pedaled down the road.

As it turned out, the apartment was a total flop.  I would have been really annoyed if we had driven, but the bike ride turned it into a nice afternoon outing — so glad we reassessed road conditions, and that Matthew was willing to get back in the [bike] saddle.

Seriously people?

I don’t say much about my work here, in the interest of keeping work life separate from personal life.  Most days, I feel fortunate to be in a line of work that is in keeping with my interest in active transportation and health.  Other days, I just want to bang my head against the wall . . . .

I recently conducted a survey on walking and biking to school, and I couldn’t believe this response from the parent of a 9-year-old who lives six or seven blocks (residential blocks with sidewalks and low speed limits) from the school:

Reason for disinterest in walking school bus or bike train: “prefer to drive [child] myself”

Sadly, there were other, similar responses.  In my mind, this is inexcusable, both from a health and a resource standpoint.  There’s a reason we have a huge childhood obesity problem and the attitude behind statements like this play a big part.

I know, I know, there are millions of excuses, some legitimate, but most not.  Parents’ fear the risk of very rare events that get lots of media coverage, like kidnappings, and fail to see the much more real risk of a sedentary lifestyle: obesity, type 2 diabetes, and a host of other chronic diseases and health problems.

Don’t want your child to walk alone?  Okay, then get off the couch and walk with them. You’ll be doing something good for yourself and your child.  And I could cease the head banging over here.