One of the joys of biking everywhere is that I get to really see and experience my community.....I mean REALLY experience it........in a way that's not possible when you're in a "box." It's hard to "connect" to your community when you're travelling 55-65 mph on a limited access highway and listening to the radio or talking on a cell phone.
When you're cycling 18-20 mph along High Street and pass folks standing at a bus stop, you can almost reach out and touch them. You can look in their eyes and sense a connection......through a smile, a nod, or just the look in their eyes.
Sometimes the experience makes your heart hurt.......like last Wednesday.
I had a 7 am meeting in the Ohio State University area with my friends, Catherine and Austin, to discuss our upcoming "Bike to Work Week" (if you haven't signed up, go immediately to www.b2ww.org) and other matters concerning the CBus biking community. Catherine heads up the University Area Enrichment Association that works on multiple fronts to make life easier for youth, seniors and families living in the University district, an area that behind the facade of Ohio State University sports an 80%+ poverty rate.
Catherine has recently been advocating for the implementation of traffic "calming" measures along Summit Avenue to make it safer for children, seniors and cyclists who live, walk and ride in the neighborhood. Summit is a main traffic artery for folks that live in Clintonville and north Columbus to get downtown to work. The posted speed limit is 35, but autos generally seem to go much faster. Several pedestrians and cyclists have been struck by cars and even killed in this area. Catherine has made some progress, but it seems that traffic engineers may be more concerned about moving traffic through this neigborhood and accepting the collateral damage as just another "cost of doing business." (my words, not theirs......Columbus traffic engineers are good folks generally sensitive to biking and community concerns)
From my meeting, I headed to the Ohio State Bar Association in Grandview for a seminar that concluded at 3 pm. I headed for home along Northwest Blvd through Upper Arlington, just as school was letting out. Northwest Blvd is a main traffic artery through Arlington, but doesn't have near the volume of Summit Avenue. Nevertheless it has many more stoplights and I got caught at two of them along a 4 block stretch near an elementary school. The lights remained red for what seemed an inordinate length of time while the school children crossed the street, assisted by crossing guards. Then I noticed something I had never noticed before......the stoplights were red and halting traffic coming from all four directions. Perhaps this is now the law everywhere, but I had not experienced it before. It makes good sense as it stops all cars in the vicinity of where children are crossing the street. Is this true everywhere or just in Upper Arlington? Perhaps someone could enlighten me?
In any event, children in the University district and throughout our community deserve to be protected in accordance with the type of "best practices" being used in Upper Arlington. The TwoWheeling community is hoping to get more children walking and biking to school to help combat the childhood obesity epidemic raging in our community and we need to make sure that they have very safe routes to do this.
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