AARP Bulletin - July/August 2010

; Your World

Making a Community Bike-Friendly

always for cars. Still, Brunswick has made room for bike riders using an incremental approach that any town with a will can follow.

Business is good for Lee Huston, owner of Center Street Cycles in Brunswick.

As Brunswick, Maine, demonstrates, you don’t necessarily need a major program to lure bicyclists onto your streets. Over time, incremental changes add up. Here’s what you need to consider:

1. Get a sense of your
current bicycling situa-
tion by surveying where
people ride and by talk-
ing to people who ride to
work—they know what
works and where the
trouble spots are.
2. Assess your com-
munity’s biking infra-
structure. Do you have
a connected network of
streets, bike lanes and
bike paths? Do public
buildings and private
workplaces offer bike
parking? Do maps show
bike-friendly ways of get-
ting around?
3. Study what other
communities have done
to improve the lot of
bicyclists.
4. Consider building
your own community’s
“civic infrastructure,”
such as a citizens’
bicycle/pedestrian com-
mittee or hiring a town
bicycle coordinator.
5. Learn potential
sources of federal, state
and local funding.

These days along what is of- ficially Brunswick’s Androscoggin River Bicycle and Pedestrian Path, families poke along with kids on training wheels and toddlers in strollers; older people gaze at the river; recreational bicyclists wheel by the occasional youngster on a scooter, and in turn get passed by speed-demon roller-bladers, athletes training on roller skis and serious cyclists out for a long ride. The 14-foot path is wide enough to accommodate all of the traffic.

Its popularity “really opened a lot of people’s eyes about the benefits of having safe and convenient bike and walking routes,” says Henry Heyburn, 53, who co-chairs Brunswick’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

As a result, the town routinely widens shoulders when repaving roads, then stripes them to create bike lanes—more than 40 miles over the past 10 years. Crews get out in early spring to clean up the sand and grit left from winter—a hazard to road bikes’ thin tires—and are gradually replacing road grates with less hazardous designs.

Brunswick’s new downtown train station will have plenty of parking for bicycles. And every school participates in the state bicycle coalition’s safety education program.

The efforts have yielded a noticeable increase in bicyclists—many over 50—on the town’s streets and country roads. This mirrors a national trend. Though Americans still vastly prefer to travel by car or transit, the nation saw a 43 percent rise in bicycle commuting between 2000 and 2008, according to figures compiled by the League of American Bicyclists.

Communities encourage this trend for several reasons, says Bill Nesper, who directs the league’s Bicycle Friendly America program. They’re paying more attention to both the physical health of their residents and overall environmental health—especially given mandates to reduce carbon emissions. Even more important in officials’ eyes, though, is economic development.

These investments help communities that compete “to attract young workers and retirees, who want to live in a place with these kinds of amenities,” Nesper says.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s recent announcement that his department will give bicycling and walking equal weight with cars and trucks may bring even more local interest in making bicycle-friendly improvements—if Congress delivers the funding.

A key force in Brunswick has been the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, which the town council created during bike path planning. It’s worked hard to keep its issues in front of officials and groups in the region. The committee’s first task, over a decade ago, was to create a long-range plan. It has guided its members and officials as money and public-works schedules permit.

“There’s a grand plan,” says Jeff Reynolds, 53, a part-time professor of religion and philosophy at the The group worked with town planners, for instance, on the new train station and the design of the road leading to it; with the regional land trust to find ways of encouraging people to bike to the farmers’ market on a farm the trust owns; with the police to understand the rights and responsibilities of bicyclists ( 30 of 37 officers are licensed bicycle police); and with local business owners to help them take advantage of Brunswick’s location along the emerging East Coast Greenway path, which runs from Florida to Maine.

For all the progress it’s made, Brunswick still has a way to go. “Our committee decided years ago that our benchmark was that a middle-school-aged child should be able to bike anywhere in the town of Brunswick,” says John Balicki, 60, an Episcopal priest who was once the state bicycle/pedestrian coordinator at the Maine Department of Transportation. “We’re not there yet. That’s our next frontier.” ;