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November-December 2001
Downtown businesses and streets with no bicycle parking and now-you-see-it, now-you-don't bike lanes receive Goathead and Flat Tire Award for November-December
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This is the only easily accessible and readily visible bike rack in downtown Bakersfield. Hardly state-of-the-art. |
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| Bike lane on Chester at 19th Street. "Beautification" curbing suddenly and without warning blocks the lane. Would they do this to a motorist lane? | |
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Result: bicyclists are left to improvise when it comes to parking |
Bike to downtown Bakersfield and you'll have to hunt to find any secure parking for your bicycle. And if you ride Chester Avenue, you'll have to contend with a curb that suddenly takes over the bike lane (part of the downtown "beautification" project). What does Bakersfield have besides the rack above? One bike rack hidden inside the Superintendent of Schools parking structure (hard to find), a few bike parking slots (unmarked) behind Bakersfield College's Weil Center, and one good bike rack in front of the city police department several blocks from downtown. Every bicyclist means one less car. The City and downtown businesses might want to consider this when allocating resources for downtown parking as the downtown expands and grows. |
Santa Barbara and many other bike-friendly cities have bike racks on every block of their downtown, and beautification projects that don't make life ugly for bicyclists. As a result, they have more people bicycling. Hey, it isn't brain surgery. Provide facilities that make bicycling easy and pleasant, and people will do it. Provide "facilities" that make it difficult and even dangerous, and they'll choose to drive instead. Pollution will get worse, the city will become less livable and people will remain sedentery, unhealthy unfit and continue to die prematurely of cardiovascular diseases.
