My Two Cents is a weekly opinion column from Bethesda resident Joseph Hawkins. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BethesdaNow.com.
For the record, I’m bike friendly.
When I was younger and more serious about exercising (think 20-25 years ago), I had four bikes and regularly participated in local and regional biathlons and triathlons.
That was back in the day when such an event was lucky if 100 people showed. Now, zillions of people show up and they’ve turned into massive charity fundraisers.
Earlier this month, Montgomery County officials held a bike summit. One goal of the summit was to discuss ways to get more county residents to bike. To do this, some said a change in mindset was needed — not just an increase in bike facilities.
Exactly how does that happen?
I think it happens by radically altering our landscapes now. Make long lasting and serious improvements to our bike infrastructure now and more people will bike. I believe it is that simple.
We need to turn our focus from these chicken-and-egg questions to real results.
Change mindsets first and then demand follows? With that approach, we’ll never get to a bike utopian state — no matter how many Capital Bikeshare stations we open.
The summits we need are ones where builders and transportation officials sit in a room tasked with duplicating the super bike culture of a place like Portland, Oregon. Everything else is just wasted words.
Here’s Portland’s bike blueprint. Here is some of what Portland has in place:
• 181 miles of bike lanes (Not to be confused with bikeways, or off-road facilities such as the Capital Crescent Trail)
• 5,000 publicly-installed bike racks (After all, when you bike for that bagel you want somewhere to park your bike, right?)
• 15 intersections with bicycle-specific traffic signals to improve safety by reducing conflicts with cars (Could you imagine stopping your bike at the any really busy Montgomery County intersection and not being in conflict with cars?)
Good luck finding this kind of commitment to bike infrastructure in Montgomery County. We have no serious bike infrastructure. And without it, dreaming about a serious bike culture is just that — dreaming.
Build it now and we will ride.
Joseph Hawkins is a longtime Bethesda resident who remembers when there was no Capital Crescent Trail. He works full-time for an employee-owned social science research firm located Montgomery County. He is a D.C. native and for nearly 10 years, he wrote a regular column for the Montgomery Journal. He also has essays and editorials published in Education Week, the Washington Post, and Teaching Tolerance Magazine. He is a serious live music fan and is committed to checking out some live act at least once a month.
