Eric Westhagen wrote: > Dear Mitchell Nussbaum, > > I am happy to hear that your bike culture in Madison is so classless. > As I said, Madison would be the ideal city for such a Copenhagen scheme > for bicycle distribution. It did seem to me, though that these pages > have been somewhat devoted to Madison bike awareness--funding and > promotion. I am happy to hear from Mitchell Nussbaum that is not > necessary. <quote: Mitchell Nussbaum, "It's socially acceptable to ride > a bike in Madison, and all kinds of people do it -- old people, young > people, students, office workers, bartenders, musicians, dishwashers and > janitors and totally nondescript people.">
I don't think Madison needs to "distribute" bikes. People buy their own bikes; if they don't have money to buy one, they can borrow a red bike or build a bike from spare parts at Freewheel. It would be nice to be be able to rent a bike from a streetcorner kiosk, but it would take a lot of resources to set up a system like that, and I think there are better uses for public resources. Instead of giving out bikes, I would prefer to have the City, and other major institutions, concentrate on public amenities: safe bike routes, secure parking, bicycle-friendly signals, intelligent enforcement, etc. "Creating awareness" on its own is usually pretty ineffectual, but if the facilities are in place to make it safe and pleasant to ride a bike, awareness will follow. People vent a lot on this list, but I think most of the substantive discussions are about bike amenities, not a paternal government that will turn us all into bikers. > > That has not been the case in less progressive towns and cities in > Wisconsin. Maybe most of the bike awareness money should be directed > toward them. There was a man in Ripon who rode a bike to his job at the > Speed Queen plant. I remember as a small boy that this man had won the > "Ripon Strong Man" contest for carrying a hundred pound flower sack the > farthest. But later in modern times he was put in the hospital, pushed > over by fellow workers just because he rode a bike as he described the > event to me. For the past twenty years as I have ridden my own > "training course" of between fourteen and sixteen miles, I have only > come across two other bicycles--in the entire time. I'm sorry to hear about the man at the Speed Queen plant, but this event apparently happened a long time ago. Do people still get persecuted in Ripon for riding bikes? Are there elite riders who snub ordinary people who ride to work on ordinary bikes? And do the ordinary people even notice that they're being snubbed? > So there are two > worlds of bicycles in Wisconsin. The Madison community where Mr. > Nussbaum's "rusty old commuter bike" is fine and the areas I have seen > where there are simply too few bikes to count. I am presuming that Mr. > Nussbaum does not have his special bike and gear for weekends? > > Eric Westhagen I do have some nicer bikes: a Schwinn Sierra that my wife found on a trash heap (I replaced the chain and made some adjustments, and it rides pretty nicely now), and a pretty nice road bike, with Campagnolo hubs, that I ride out in the country on the rare occasions when I have time to go for a ride in the country. But I don't have any "special gear." I wear my ordinary clothes. Out of consideration for my fellow Madisonians, I don't wear Lycra shorts. If I went on long rides, I'd get cycling gloves and shoes, but ordinary clothes work fine for my purposes. > > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies > > _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
