Bicycle Advocacy - #2

The Weekly (lexweekly.com) has an article in the April 26 - May 2 issue discussing the opening of the Brighton East Rail Trail.

An appropriate addition to the news I mentioned in my "Bike Trail Advocacy in Lexington" post.

Also check out the Kentucky Rail Trail site (kyrailtrail.org) for additional information on the Big Sandy proposed trail.

Bike Trail Advocacy in Lexington.

Business Lexington just ran an article on bike advocacy issues. If you are interested in this topic, I would suggest that you check out the article. It provides a nice overview about the current status of incorporating bike friendly civic planning and trail development into the Lexington area.

To be honest, I have not been involved in cycling advocacy and open space advocacy since my work with the Divide Park Board and the little help I could provide Kevin at the Teller County Parks Department. Hopefully that will change soon! This is an important time for bike advocacy in Lexington.

My response and thoughts about what I read:

1. This issue is behavioral and environmental. This is a very important concept to keep in mind when planning and designing new routes. It will impact most variables in a design.

Reading the article, I got the impression that a "Field of Dreams" mentality might be leading some movement. "Build it and they will come," doesn't work when implementing trails and bike lanes. If a person is unfamiliar to riding a bike or walking for pleasure or transportation, then adding a new lane beside current traffic adds little motivation to begin.

I love the concept of creating trails that display historical places and tourist attractions, but they will do little to motivate changes in local residents' everyday lifestyle. It may get people motivated to use the trail once, maybe even twice, but the adoption of a cycling or commuting community is unlikely.

2. The design must give people a reason to cycle - everyday. When the novelty of a trail wears off, there still needs to be a purpose for its everyday use. When someone decides to adopt a bike commuting lifestyle they need to be able to accomplish everyday actions. This includes:

a. work commute
b. take children to school
c. grocery shop
d. attend dining out / entertainment options
e. shop for basic goods

A design that incorporates all those options begin to give the cyclist a true motive to commute. It creates an option that supports their normal life pattern, not just their weekend interest around viewing history in the Bluegrass.

Learning from Examples

My current commute - Upon returning to Lexington, I made a decision to also return to a predominantly bike commuting lifestyle. It worked fairly well too as I found a route that could accomplish most of my needs. After a few twists, I was able to get to Chinoe Road. This allowed me to get inside New Circle without too many problems. It also allowed me to pass the Kroger and other shopping available in the Chinoe Shopping Center (a very nice commuting option, especially when you forget a wife's birthday as I did that first year). That commute also allowed me to use Alunmi or Cooper Drive to get to work at UK. It is with no mistake that I had this route, as I chose our apartment partly due to this option.

Now as Nikki and I move towards the Hartland area, the route options become less optimal and they take away all shopping options, unless I add additional miles and circle around to the shopping within Hartland (and then would eventually pass Chinoe Shopping Center too). I wonder what it would be like if Tates Creek was a viable commuter road?

Lincoln's Trail System - I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska while in my undergraduate program. One thing that Lincoln did very well was create a system of paved multi-use trails throughout the city. I commuted 5 miles across town to attend classes my junior year. It was great, with one major problem - I could only attend classes. The trails were poorly linked to shopping, business or grocery options. So I regularly commuted to school and back home, only to hop in a car and head to work or get groceries. Many others chose to not even bother with a week day commute. During the week, I would commonly see a couple commuters along with a few recreational users, but during the weekends they were over crowded. They were a great option for recreational lifestyle, but they did little to promote bike commuting or decrease crowded roadways.

3. The safety of a cyclist must be considered. This seems obvious within this discussion, but possibly not seriously considered. All I have to do to point out this observation is highlight the fairly recent bike lane added to Richmond Road. The additional lane is nice to see, but poorly implemented. There have been few steps taken to reduce traffic speed making cyclists safer. There have been no attempts to provide any type of "barrier" between vehicle traffic and pedestrian traffic (barrier being used in a psychological and literal sense). In fact, traffic has to regularly cross and use the bike lane in order to turn off Richmond Road and enter shopping outlets. The lane added to Richmond Road could possibly turn into a wonderful asset to Lexington's commuting community, if they can find a way to calm the local traffic and connect the route to more dense housing stock.

Chinoe Road could also be a great route for many possible commuters. To improve the safety along this road there needs to be changes in lane width (the road is incredibly wide and already prime for adding bike lanes) and address the square edged curbs by implementing round edged curbs from Alumni to Richmond Road.

Final Thoughts

There are many more issues to address when looking at the bikability and walkability of Lexington's streets and I'll share my thoughts once the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government publishes their plan on their Bike/Walk Lexington site.

This discussion also has done nothing to talk about the walkability concepts that should be addressed in the downtown Lexington plans. If you are interested, I suggest you check out www.walkable.org. I learned more in one day listening to Dan Burden, when we brought him to Teller County to do a walkable audit, then I've learned in all my reading combined. I hope and pray that some of his concepts can make it to Lexington.

For now, I ask anyone with an interest to get involved. The time for change is coming quickly and if we don't speak up now, it may be too late?

Reconstructing my life with pinciples of simplicity.

There has been one concept that returns to my life on occassion that I find very appealing - simplicity. What do I mean by simplicity? From my perspective, simplicity means to live in a way that all actions, energy and behavior are used in a way that properly reflect one's priorities.

The best thoughts on simplicity and living accordingly that I have read over the years are Thoreau's Walden and Thomas Merton's own journey, The Seven Storey Mountain.

It should be easy to live a simple life then, right? Do not most people live a life that is lead by what they value the most? I have found that the answer to both of those questions is - no.

Here's an example

It is common to see people who say they value their health and commonly they do on an intellectual level. They at the very least begin to value their health because they have found themselves in a situation where they do not have much health left. So what are they willing to sacrifice in order to get their health back? They'll give up six to eight weeks and spend a couple hundred dollars. There is something out there on the market that guarantees that they will be "like new" in that timeframe and at that cost.

Then eight weeks comes along, they make a little change in their behaviors and habits, but then something "more important" takes away their attention and motivation. The question becomes, do they still value their health? Again, probably on an intellectual level.

If simplicity is really just living according to what you value and then dismissing or minimizing all the outlying distractions, how am I doing?

The reconstruction in progress right now.

The last year and a half has gradually picked up momentum in regards to the level of distractions that I'm allowing to control my time, relationships, health and finances. The irony in this realization is that Nikki and I moved back to Kentucky from Colorado in order to decrease my work life stress and allow us to build a solid foundation for our marriage. The upside to all these extra committments that we've taken on over that period is that it may allow us to live a more fullfilling life soon, especially as we see some of our goals being accomplished.

To be specific about areas in my life and the current process:

Work: Last April, Nikki was able to quit working at the YMCA as an Aquatics Director and start personal training on more full-time basis. That decision was great for us because it increased her happiness and daily fullfillment. She felt positive about the work she did. It took a while, but just recently it has become a positive decision financially too.

That same decision is one that I have been able to make recently and have begun trying to fill my client list to become a "full-time" trainer. There is a lot of freedom and satisfaction that comes with seeing a dream of mine come to fruition. But I also realize that it will be hard work to make a small business succeed.

This move also allows me to spend some additional hours with our coaching partnership, Mideast Multisport. With five partners, it will be a while before that venture will provide any significant income, but triathlon and endurance sports is very important to me.

These decisions are a move towards simplicity, in my point of view, because they allow me to follow my passion. My occupation is in line with what I value.

Financial: We are currently in week 4 of Dave Ramsey's 13 week Financial Peace University series. Check out the site for all the details, but as we start working on the steps and analyzing our behavior, I have already felt a sense of simplicity. For us, it has meant all the difference just to have the financial information put in an organized manner.

This is a move towards simplicity because when you have a peace about financial matters, it can allow you to put that wasted energy (anxiety over finances) into other areas that are of more value to you.

Home Ownership: Home ownership and simplicity may or may not be consistent. In fact, I would say over the past 2 weeks these two terms are very much not in line. Nikki and I just purchased our first home, which mysteriously has given us a stronger sense of "family". I don't know how to say it, maybe it is just a buyers' high we both received. Since buying the home though, there has been lots of painting, decorating decisions, etc, etc. Non of this activity can be interpreted as living in simplicity.

Luckily that process is about finished and we will move in. Once that process is compelte, the simplicity will come from not having a continuous debate, discussion and anxiety over the decision about whether we should buy or not. We are also fortunate that we took what we thought we could afford and cut that dollar amount by 30% and found a home in that price range. This makes our home ownership a blessing and not a financial burden. That's simplicity at work, taking expectations, ego, marketing and then cross-checking that with your values.

We value having a home to call our own. We value time together. We value being able to spend our spare time being active outdoors (riding bikes and running, not mowing lawns). Therefore not falling for the "buy the most house you can afford" advice we received a lot has opened up our life in the near term, not 30 years from now.

Triathlon Training: This blog is mostly about training, so how does all of this apply to my training? Well, the last 3 weeks has been very "un-simple". As these transitions are taking place it seems that life is almost out-of-control, but the corner is about to be turned. This has meant that my training for Ironman Wisconsin has not been optimal the last two weeks. But by taking a step back from my ego driven training plan, I have been able to see this going on and hopefully stepped back a little from what-I-should-be-doing to allow for some rest.

This has allowed me to be consistent in my workouts and once the work-life and home-life air clears, I'll be ready to get to another level of fitness this summer. Right on schedule.

Simplicity is a pretty powerful concept if it can be made into a style of living. I definately have not mastered it, nor do I have a solid understanding about how to implement it in a long term life-planning-process kind of way. But we are trying hard to live into the things we value most first. So at the top of our list are things like, spiritual, relationships and health. They get the most attention, not the left over minutes we can spare.

I'll post again once the dust settles.