Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Hard Core Detours

I headed downtown Monday afternoon for a meeting with The City: four cyclists and four city employees (The Planner, an engineer, a risk manager, and a parks guy). The four of them had already put their heads together to come up with something for us to look at.

They're not too excited about the term "detour." These will be "alternative routes." Apparently the term detour implies a level of safety equal to the intersection and automobile free bike trail. They are reluctant to encourage use of the road for cycling. It didn't occur to me until now they seem to be equally reluctant to encourage the use of the sidewalk for walking. The City would assume too great a liability to imply either is a safe activity.

"That is an S.U.V; Humans ride in them because they are slowly losing their ability to walk." - RJ, Over the Hedge

My favorite take-away from the meeting was an empirical measurement for a definition of hard-core cyclist. Ready?



That's all...1/2 mile. Ride that, you qualify.

It's always hard to measure what sort of progress is made (if any) from a meeting like this. The guys on the other side of the table have the juice, we're just the sweaty ones trying to help one or two more people ride their bikes for utility.

Snakepants wrote up a nice report of the meeting. I have a few comments there too.

7 comments:

bikingbrady said...

I'm proud of you FABsters and your progressive nature with the "City" folk.

Love your Over the Hedge reference. You should have continued on the rest of that conversation where the ask how many humans fit in it and RJ says "Usually....One". I thought that little exchange was a nice poke at societies ills...

mytzpyk said...

You mean this...

RJ: That is an S.U.V; Humans ride in them because they are slowly losing their ability to walk.

Penny: Jeepers, its so big!

Lou: How many humans fit in there?

RJ: Usually, one.

Snakebite said...

I think you are not too upset that you were forced to watch Over the Hedge again to get that quote right. ;-)

bikingbrady said...

That would be the exchange...classic stuff. Lots of good one liners in that movie.

Smudgemo said...

It's hard to explain why this stuff is important when the people you are explaining to don't get it. If it were only as easy as them getting it and having to explain it to the general public.

Snakebite said...

BTW - definition of hard-core URBAN Sioux Falls cyclist - skilled enough to ride on 41st street at any time on any day, smart enough to find an alternate route and use it instead.

SiouxGeonz said...

Keep hammerin' and yammerin'!