The last few weeks have seen a pretty big shift in my commute pattern. I am teaching an undergrad transportation class that starts at 8:00 on Tuesday and Thursday and Avah started preschool and goes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The big challenge was trying to find a way for me to drop her off in the morning on my way to school. The challenge comes with her not being able to hop on the back of my Vespa (at least without getting some evil stares) and her school being completely inaccessible to non-motorized transportation. Well, the solution became, riding the city KAT bus to her school in the morning (on the way to work) and bringing my bike along. The bus drops us off at her school on Kingston Pike and I check her in. From there, I do some hair-raising road crossing to get to the other side of Kingston Pike and ride in the wrong direction down the sidewalk (yikes! for everyone involved) until I get to a point where I can get into traffic safely and not be mowed over by 50mph driving soccer (or hockey) moms. This has worked better than expected despite the one time we missed the bus, which comes every hour. I get to spend some quality time with Avah, she gets a kick out of riding the bus and can get some exercise and get to the office at the same time. This leads to the question though of whether bicycling can be taken seriously in a city like Knoxville. There are a lot of good efforts by the MPO to develop bike infrastructure, but so many critical links are not safe for bicyclists. The parks and rec department has built some wonderful bike trails, but they can be circuitous and the don't necessarily go everywhere. Most of the people I see are out there for recreation. Is it just that Americans aren't ready to commute on a bike yet? Would they if they had the chance (infrastructure)? How much would someone invest in a decent bike to 'give it a try'? These are a few questions I have in mind when I am trying to get to the University and think about ways to introduce more sustainable modes of transportation into our "multimodal" system.
My family went on a bike ride organized by the Knoxville MPO (www.knoxtrans.org) last weekend. Some 250 bicyclists in a mob toured north Knoxville by bicycle, which surely allows you to see more compared to driving. We had a lot of fun, with the kids in tow in our small bike trailer. We had some problems/anxiety on Central Avenue as we were not with the pack and we were trying to ride our bikes on higher speed roadways (our entire family's lives in the hands of a 16 year old texting while driving). Well, we made it and when we got to the finish line, we were surrounded by bicyclists of all types. Most of whom seemed quite committed. The 20 year old Schwinn that I bought at the thrift store stood out like a sore thumb. This leads to the question, would Joe Public spend $1000 on a bike, then jump onto Central Avenue to get to work, just to try it out. I doubt it. I overheard a conversation with the owner of our local bike shop and he said that business hasn't increased despite ultra-high gas prices. Of course the average price of a bike in his shop is probably up around $1000 as well. He said that he sees people who are already into biking, using them more, but not many people running out and buying a bike. I wonder if bike sales have gone up at Walmart, and will an ill-fitting Walmart bike be something that will convert driver to biking? Where are the low cost, decent quality, commuter bikes? I haven't found too many of them. The classic transportation problem, is there no demand because of no (bad) infrastructure or is there no infrastructure because of no demand? Afterall, biking is a recreational sport.
