Zoot Katz wrote:
>
> Mon, 24 Feb 2003 16:28:11 -0500, <
[email protected]>, zenit
> <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >Are you as offended by bike paths paid for with tax dollars...?
Not me. Soak the rich and build more paths, I say.
> Most assuredly, when the funds come from transportation spending instead of money appropriated for
> recreation.
>
> Bike paths are long skinny parks that don't necessarily go anywhere.
That is a common myth, but we are seeing more and more of these trails becoming connected providing
a great long distance cycling and hiking routes connecting cities across the U.S.
NW Indiana has a few rail trails. One connects the cities of Hammond, Highland, Griffith,
Schererville, and Crown Point. It passes many elementary, middle, and high schools providing a safe
route to school. It also passes several park areas and has an occasional trunk to a post office,
library, etc. I ride it partially to the Lake County Library, the Hammond Public Library, and as
part of my route to Chicago. Once I get to 71st St. in Chicago I hop on the Lakefront Path and can
traverse about 18 miles along it and go westbound onto streets to reach many important destinations.
The Indiana Trail Study
http://www.in.gov/dot/projects/trails/z-CompleteDocument.pdf reported that
25% of trail use was transportational.
Even trails that appear to be recreational in nature have a hidden benefit: they can become a segway
(hehehe) to transportation cycling. That's what happened to me. After a 25 year hiatus I got back on
a bike because the new trails would allow me to ride away from cars. Soon I was going on organized
rides on lightly trafficked country roads, then onto urban streets again shortly after that. Now I
routinely cycle throughout Chicago.
A path that might appear recreational can become an important transportation corridor for nearby
residents, especially children and elderly who might walk/ride to their friends' residences.
> Bike paths and special "SegWays" are not what cyclists nor Kamenites need if they're to be
> seriously taken as alternatives to the growing glut of stinking fossil burners clogging our
> streets.
If a Segway keeps a car off the street we all benefit. Many people just aren't going to compete for
space on the streets against the motorized thugocracy though. It's time to realize this and start
building paths and bike lanes and reinvesting in public transportation. I've got nothing against
converting a few streets here and there to paths either, nor against converting the occasional
street to a bicycle boulevard.
We in the USA should aspire to intermodal systems like this
http://pages.prodigy.net/rjmatter/gallery/bikesinholland22.jpg
Build paths, not bombs!
-Bob Matter Hammond, Indiana
----------------
"War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American planners in the
mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. The architects of this war were
not military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of weapons of mass
destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by
the left. The cause of this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence."
-- Ian Roberts, The Guardian
