Bike Trails Pros & Cons

As rising fuel costs draw more attention to transportation alternatives like bicycling, classic cycling & trails issues are appearing more frequently in mainstream news. Here are a few examples from this weekend:

- Adair: Welcome the bike trails

Using his own experience and testimony from a local police chief, Metro West Daily News columnist Jeff Adair suggests that fears of those opposing bike trails (such as perceptions of negative environmental, financial or safety impacts) are unfounded and should be set aside.

- Woman raped on bike trail

This past Saturday at about 10:45 am, a five months pregnant 20 year old walking along Modesto's Dry Creek Bike Trail was raped by a cyclist on a trail section not visible from nearby streets.

Although local police suggest that women avoid walking alone on this trail, other comments about the trail on DirtWorld.com and CaSkating.com indicate that the section where the rape occured is clean, scenic and family friendly. There were rapes on other local trails 2 years back but police don't believe that they're related to this rape.

- Cycling past apathy

This editorial in the Cincinnati Post suggests that apathy to bike paths and other bike-friendly infrastructure is no reason to delay the creation of a regional bicycle transportation plan for the surrounding tri-state region (Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky). Some communities in the region have moved forward with bike friendly developments (such as Cincinnati's famed Purple People Bridge trail over the Ohio River) but that's not enough.