Fayetteville is becoming a real bicycling town. The trails continue expanding, many students bike to campus, and there are more and more bikes on city streets. This is good in so many ways I can't list them all. I congratulate former mayor Dan Coody for having the vision to initiate the trail system, and Mayor Lioneld Jordan for the having wisdom to expand it.
The trails open a bouquet of possibilities. For example, when the Fayetteville-to-Bentonville trail is complete, Marie and I plan a three-day adventure: bike from Fayetteville to downtown Bentonville and check in at a downtown hotel; visit the Crystal Bridges Museum; bike back to Fayetteville.
But there's a gap in Fayetteville's commitment to biking. Bikers must be as safe as possible, and bikers must feel as safe as possible. We have two major problems: an excess of potholes and a deficiency of dedicated bike lanes. Bicycling won't achieve its real potential until we solve both.
At 80, I've commuted to the university nearly every day since the early 1970s, and I've had only two accidents that hurt me. But that's two too many. Both involved potholes. The first was years ago when my front tire ran into a hole a few inches deep that was formed by the cap of an underground pipe. The problem was, the cap had sunk a few inches into the asphalt, leaving a small hole that was apparently perfectly shaped to knock me over the handlebars. I wound up with a small concussion, requiring a short hospital stay. My helmet probably saved my life. I should have paid better attention and avoided the hole, but it's also true that, if this is to be a biking town, the hole shouldn't have been there.
The other was a few weeks ago. In the process of repairing underground pipes, workers in our neighborhood have removed sections of the sidewalk, sometimes leaving large temporary holes. I crossed such a sidewalk at a curb cut and ran into the hole, which was full of water and nearly invisible. Unluckily, the orange cone that should have been in front of the hole had been blown over by the wind and was several feet to the side. I noticed the fallen cone far to my right, but didn't notice the hole in front of me. The accident was much like my previous accident, only this time I landed on my hands and shattered some elbow bones. A small operation, followed by therapy, will soon fix it.
There are lessons here. Holes lurk at many places in city streets where bike tires could get stuck and throw riders for a loop. If we want to encourage bicycling, we must repair or brightly mark all such places. That hole should have been surrounded by a small fence of yellow tape.
Biking is a risk. But without some risk, you can't really have a life. The thing to do is to avoid irrational risks. For example, helmets should be required by law, for both bikes and motorcycles, and potholes should be fixed.
Fayetteville automobile drivers are generally friendly and careful about bikers, but things would be far safer if bikes had dedicated lanes of their own instead of competing in the same lanes with cars. The bike logos painted onto some streets are helpful in alerting drivers, but they aren't sufficient. I've come across only a few streets with separated on-street bike lanes. Some city planners might differ, but I've always thought this is the best way for bicycling towns to go. Little Rock is experimenting with "shielded" bike lanes that have a row of automobile parking on the street side of the bike lane, but I don't see how this can work. Bicyclers will not peddle in a lane where a passenger-side car door could suddenly open. A collision with an opening car door is a bicycler's nightmare. Instead, bike lanes should be on the sidewalk (one half for walking, the other half for biking) or street-side parking should be removed and replaced with well-marked bicycle lanes. I've found that drivers respect such lanes. Bicycling is, above all, fun, but it's more fun when one can relax and enjoy the ride without worrying about tangling with a car.
With well-chosen bike lanes, and safe, well-paved streets, Fayetteville will have many more people bicycling, we'll all be safer, healthier, and less polluted, and most of all life in our town will be even more fun than it already is.
ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 11/02/2014