Cards on the table: I am a dedicated bicyclist. Since I blew out my knee, elbow and shoulder joints playing squash a decade ago, biking has become my sport of choice. I frequent Rock Creek Park trails in the early mornings and on weekends. I have done a few century rides in my day. I have been tossed off my bike by a pit bull, cut off by pickup trucks, dropped on hills by women with legs that were all coiled muscle.
So it was with great elation that I read news that Mayor Adrian Fenty wants to line major downtown thoroughfares with dedicated bicycle lanes. In the plan announced last week, bikers like myself would be able to cross center city safely on Pennsylvania Avenue, L Street, I Street. They could get through town heading north or south on 15th Street and Ninth Street.
Sounds fantastic, but I am concerned.
Let’s face it: Biking is so green and carbon free and good for you it could solve all the world’s problems. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all be friends and slim and bike together?
Statistics, however, show that few of us will hop on a bike in downtown D.C. Just more than 2 percent of commuters come to and from the city on two wheels and pedals. It’s farfetched to imagine all the lawyers pedaling in from Bethesda. How would they dictate memos by BlackBerry to their secretaries?
I fear we bikers are tempting a backlash from four-wheelers.
There’s nothing sudden about our current city leaders trying to encourage more of us to bike. Avid activists and steadfast bureaucrats have been trying to create and link bike paths to and through the nation’s capital for decades. I have witnessed two in action.
Paul Meier is the godfather of the Metropolitan Branch Trail, a biking path that follows the rail and Metro corridors from Silver Spring to Union Station. Meier, a Dutch-born physicist who taught at Catholic University, has been hectoring bureaucrats and lobbying for the trail’s completion since before Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton got $8.5 million in 1998.
Met Branch could eventually link to a “bicycle beltway” around D.C., as well as the East Coast Greenway, that connects trails from Maine to Florida.
Jim Sebastian has been the inside guy. Hired by Mayor Tony Williams, he’s been doggedly striping streets with bike trails, meeting with community folk, pushing the bureaucracy.
What’s putting D.C. cycling on steroids is Fenty, a triathlete, and two of his top aides: Planning Director Harriet Tregoning bikes to work and carries her folding bike around town; transportation chief Gabe Klein worked for years with Bikes USA; his father owned a cycling shop.
Rarely have the political stars been aligned in favor of retrofitting a major city for biking. European cities — and New York, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Denver and Gainesville, Fla. — are pushing hard to trade cars for bikes. Under Fenty, D.C. could become the cycling capital city of the country.
Are you ready?
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
