To Be Able to Ride Your Bike Safely

The wheels are turning here in Dunwoody about sustainability, and I’ll tell you where I’m seeing it the most. Not in a big push for home or community gardening or pesticide-free lawns, although interest is rising. Not in a sea of residential eco-renovations or an enthusiastic embrace of recycling, although there certainly do appear to be more blue boxes out there. Not in noticeable support of No Idling efforts. Not in rain barrels or certified backyard wildlife habitats or an explosion of pedestrian traffic or MARTA use.

I’m seeing it (and I’m guessing you are, too) on the roads, or should I say, on the sides of the roads. On bikes. In lycra. Our city is apparently home to an ever-growing group of enthusiastic, informed and connected adult cyclists. As a result of my work in sustainability (and the fact that I ride that paint-splattered, pannier-equipped bike of mine), I keep crossing paths with the Bike People. In fact, two passionate cyclists (Paul Lowry and Mitch Garber) are on the Sustainability citizen advisory commission and are fonts of knowledge about cycling issues and opportunities in Dunwoody and beyond.

Last night, I had the opportunity to interview Wallace McRoy, president of the Southern Bicycle League (and a Dunwoody resident). Retired from BellSouth, Wallace is tough to catch because he in out there on that bike for hours every single day. But it was dark. It was late. He was home.

The Southern Bicycle League is a riding club that consists of about 1,000 members. Other groups include the Dunwoody Cycling Club, which has a Yahoo group consisting of about 300 members. Many cyclists who prefer trail riding are part of the Southern Off-Road Biking Association (SORBA). There is also a passionate constituency of triathlon enthusiasts. And, of course, there are folks just riding their bikes, without any group or affiliation.

Considering there is so much talk about bike lanes, bike lanes, bike lanes in the media as more citizens and city leaders debate ways to make their communities more livable, Wallace surprised me by saying that he is not a fan of them.

“With bike lanes, every single driveway becomes an additional intersection,” he explained. “What many cyclists want are wider shoulders so that they can ride with the traffic more comfortably and safely."

Wallace agrees with an Atlanta Regional Commission recommendation about narrowing lanes down to 11 feet on roads with speed limits 35 miles or below in order to slow traffic, and then dedicating the additional space to wider shoulders for cyclists. He says that this is an easy change to make whenever a road is repaved or restriped and it should be a requirement.

Other easy changes Wallace recommends:

• Public education about safe driving around cyclists. Wallace suggests that if you cannot safely cross the yellow line to get around a cyclist, then you don’t have enough room to pass. People driving cars typically pass way too closely, and three feet is a minimum standard for how much room you need to give. Wallace says he is passed regularly by drivers whose cars he can touch or whose side-view mirrors graze him.

• Police ticketing of drivers who drive too aggressively around cyclists.

Mostly, Wallace wants you to know that those cyclists you see out there are your neighbors, your friends, and your coworkers. If you hit them , you can kill them and leave their families without a parent or a son or daughter.

Joe Seconder, founder of Bike Cobb and a new Dunwoody resident, started a group on the Dunwoody Sustainability community forum site called Bike Dunwoody. He posted several documents, which I read last night. The Complete Streets information gives an overview of the national movement to reclaim our streets for everyone, not just motorists. (If you want to see Complete Streets in action, click here.)

The ARC Atlanta Region Bicycle Transportation and Pedestrian Walkways Plan (the Bike/Ped Plan) updates a previous plan with task force recommendations for creating both a regional-scale bicycle network that includes both on-road facilities and shared use pathways, and a pedestrian network focused around major activity centers. I draw your attention specifically to Chapter 4, which outlines recommended bicycle-friendly policies for local jurisdictions as well as examples of local best practices, and I invite you to join the Dunwoody-wide conversation starting soon about the specific components of a City of Dunwoody Transportation Plan.

Here are a few links to initiatives that pop up when reading the Bike/Ped Plan and other related documents:

ARC Livable Centers Initiative (LCI)
ARC Regional Transportation Plan (RTP)
Safe Routes to School (SR2S)

As for children, you can see as plainly as I can that there are hardly any children out there riding on our streets. I wonder if they think to themselves, “Cycling is something that grown-ups do.” Wallace says that if he had a 12-year-old, he wouldn’t let him or her ride in the streets without him right now. Can you imagine being a 12-year-old and not being able to ride your bike? I’m not sure where you grew up, but for me this would have basically cut me off from my entire life at that age. (FYI: children under age 13 are allowed to ride bikes on the sidewalk.)

Wallace and I talked about the importance of “transfer of knowledge” from generation to generation. When I was a child, we took a field trip each year to a county-sponsored place called Safety Town, where we learned the “rules of the road” for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists through hands-on (feet-on) experience. Currently in Dunwoody, we have no formal education for our children about these important life skills. An organized series of Bike Rodeos where we tap into the knowledge base of our community’s dedicated and experienced cyclists, along with that of REI and Performance Bikes, could go a long way toward engaging our youth in the joys, convenience, cost savings, and health and environmental benefits of cycling as a mode of transportation and a plain old fun thing to do.

As for right here in Dunwoody, right now, look for a group of cyclists next Tuesday morning, March 3, at around 9 AM as they make their way to Roswell City Hall for the 4th Annual Georgia Rides to the Capitol (in which 20 mayors and over 1,000 cyclists are participating) in order to raise support for improved conditions for cycling, including the development of regional systems of both on-road bicycling facilities and multi-use-trails.

Give them room, please, and if they slow you down briefly, take a moment to remember what it felt like to be 12, and to be able to ride your bike safely. If you grew up here in Dunwoody and never had that experience, you are in for a treat one day in the not-too-distant future, perhaps right here in Dunwoody (if not, most definitely in neighbor cities, such as nationally-recognized Bike-Friendly City Roswell). Start thinking about what color bike you have always wanted. And, yes, you can get pretty pink streamers or add baseball cards in the spokes. Like you’ve always dreamed of.