Cycling can be a route to making Pa. (and Montana) healthier

Gov. Schweiker headed off on his bicycle yesterday, leading bicyclists of all ages on a two-day jaunt along the Delaware River from Milford to Philadelphia. It’s the annual Keystone Ride to promote tourism and safe bicycling in the commonwealth.

By Thomas Hylton -Philadelphia Inquirer

We can be proud to have a healthy, active governor who delights in Pennsylvania’s outdoors and encourages others to do the same. Still, I hope to see our next governor saddle up more than two days a year. The photos of Schweiker in cycling togs have a decidedly recreational air. They tend to reinforce the perception that bicycling is primarily a sport.

But bicycles can be – and should be – a lot more than that. For short trips, they are a superior means of basic transportation: cheap; healthy; energy-efficient; environmentally friendly. Bicyclists can move three times faster than walkers, and thanks to saddlebags, they can carry a respectable amount of cargo.

One quarter of all daily trips in America cover less than a mile. On a bicycle, such a trip takes no more than five to eight minutes. In metropolitan areas throughout Western Europe, anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of all trips are made by riding a bicycle. That’s an enormous amount of energy saved and traffic congestion prevented. Using bicycles instead of cars for those trips reduces the need for expansive (and expensive) highways and parking lots.

Nine years of daily cycling in my hometown of Pottstown, a borough of five square miles, have convinced me of cycling’s merits. Few destinations take more than 10 minutes to reach, parking is never a problem, and daily exercise has become ingrained in my life. Morever, I enjoy my town at a much more personal level than I ever did by car – really seeing people, buildings, and yards that, from behind a windshield, are just a blur.

Anyone who has visited the Netherlands knows just how much bicycles can add to the quality of people’s lives. Nearly a third of all trips there are made by bicycle. Bicycle lanes adjoin virtually every street, and many lead places cars cannot go. Cycling is routine for folks of all ages: children, young people (even on dates!), men in business suits, carefully coiffed women, the elderly.

Widespread use of bicycles means Dutch cities and towns are not checkerboarded with surface parking lots. It means they are quiet. It means the streets are alive with people, integrating the old and young to a degree seldom seen in this country. In Amsterdam, the largest Dutch city, you can safely ride a bicycle from the heart of downtown to open countryside in 25 minutes.

Back here in Pennsylvania, it’s not so easy to get around. Traffic congestion is increasing throughout the Philadelphia region, and all those slow-moving cars raise noise levels and air pollution. Short trips take longer and longer. And because we’re sitting so much, more than half of us are overweight.

In recent years, PennDOT has formally recognized that bicycles have a serious role to play in transportation. Since 1999, it has directed $26 million in mostly federal funds to bike and pedestrian projects in southeastern Pennsylvania. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to our spending on highways and parking lots.

I hope our next governor will make it a priority to highlight everyday bicycle use. His daily commute is perfect. The executive mansion is 1.5 miles from the capitol building – about 10 minutes’ pedaling. Why, he won’t even break a sweat. But he’ll set a great example for all Pennsylvanians.
Thomas Hylton (hylton@ptdprolog. net) is author of "Save Our Land, Save Our Towns" and host of the Public Television documentary "Saving Pennsylvania."

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/4207706.htm