LEO covers Bike Summit II
Thu, 02/19/2009 - 12:43 — SushiK
This week's LEO features an article about the Louisville Bicycle Summit with the quirky title "Barry the Bicycle rides again." David Morse of CART fame and Barry Zalph of Bicycling for Louisville are quoted and described, respectively.
The author had some interesting perspectives on the Summit. I'm sure that there were ~250 different perspectives for each of the ~250 Summit participants. I know I had a different experience from the LEO author...for those who attended, did you?
Comments
my perspective
It was great to see just how much Louisville has improved its game from 2004.
It was also kind of humbling to see new people, transportation cyclists, drawn in and shocked, shocked, that we were spending gobs of money on recreational facilities. According to a national survey, half of cyclists are rec/fitness, and half are transportation riders. My current thinking is that except for a few happy cases (River Road), the struggle to improve to these two aspects of cycling is largely a coincidence, and one's progress is not at the expense of others.
Sometimes there's competition, sometimes there's cooperation, and sometimes we can do both in paralell. For example, building tons of bike trails in Jefferson Memorial Forest envolves the Parks Department, and doesn't take any attention from Public Works' efforts to build bike lanes in the suburbs.