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In the exhibit hall of the Monona Terrace Convention Center, Madison-based Saris Cycling Group displayed its wares alongside other companies and government entities promoting bicycling and walking.
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Madison makes sense
The bike capital of the Midwest hosts
the Pro Walk/Pro Bike 2006 Symposium
by Joel Patenaude Think what you will about the People's Republic of Madison, Wisconsin, but bicyclists there are well served. That's as it should be, given there are probably more bikes than cars on the city's streets. The only question remaining is which came first: All those bikes or the nearly 100 miles of bike paths and trails to ride throughout the city.
Whatever the answer or reason, it wasn't a fluke when, last April, the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) designated Madison a gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) – one of only seven cities in the nation to be recognized as such. (But more on BFCs in a moment.)
City planners and bike advocates, working quietly but persistently on the bureaucratic margins, deserve but rarely get accolades. In the mean time, Madisonians get jaded. As a People's Republic expat, I still take for granted how safe and easy it is to get around that town without a car.
Years before I commuted by bike to class on the University of Wisconsin campus, I spent many a summer day biking there from Mt. Horeb – 20-some miles on the Military Ridge Trail, one-way – just to check out the, ahem, colorful characters inhabiting State Street.
I couldn't help but recall those days while back in Madison last month to attend a few sessions at the International Symposium on Walking and Bicyling. Also referred to as Pro Walk/Pro Bike 2006, the event took place at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center. The location of the conference was ideal: The Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired building overlooks the John Nolen Path which circumnavigates much of Lake Monona. And a stone's throw from the convention center lies Machinery Row, one of the largest of the city's many high-quality bike shops.
At the event, I heard several speakers (many hailing from much less bicycle friendly communities, apparently) tell of their hard fought campaigns for bike lanes and bicycle safety programs in light of alarming bicycle-motor vehicle crash statistics.
Despite all the physical and attitudinal obstacles – "Motorists offer a constant barrage of complaints about you bicyclists and pedestrians," said Don Cook, a traffic engineer from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan – I felt encouraged. Some 650 people from all over the country – and Canada, the U.K. and beyond – were concerned enough about these issues to come to Madison for a week. Subtitled "Making Connections," the symposium allowed a lot of out-of-towners to see that what was possible in Madison – and Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, etc. – could, in theory, be replicated in their communities.
Here's some of what I learned from some the Madison and Wisconsin contributors to the conference.
Bicycle Friendly Communities
Following Madison's lead, cities and towns all over Wisconsin are looking to identify themselves as Bicycle Friendly Communities to signal they put a premium on quality of life issues. More and more people are realizing that besides promoting fitness and reducing traffic congestion, good bike paths and services that cater to cyclists can increase property values and spur economic growth.
"Who doesn't want to be a bicycle friendly community?" conference presenter Robbie Webber of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin (BikeFed) asked rhetorically. "Tourism is our No. 1 industry in Wisconsin. Bicycling is a big part of that. Not as big as snowmobiling, motorboating and fishing, but bicycling is something we want to emphasize."
According a 2005 BikeFed study, bicycle tourism and recreation brings as much as $278 million to Wisconsin annually. Bicycle manufacturing, sales and service generates another $556.5 million and supports more than 3,400 jobs in the state.
But besides Madison, Milwaukee is the only other official BFC in the state, having won a bronze-level designation this year. (According to LAB, "Milwaukee, is creating a great bicycling community in a place where it isn't necessarily expected.")
Madison and Milwaukee may soon have company, however. Two other cities have turned in completed applications to LAB, three others have pledged to apply and 12 to 15 more have expressed interest in earning the BFC moniker, according Webber.
While she opted not to name these communities, Webber said she is working with local city staff and "citizen advocates" to first identify the facilities and programs they have or lack for bicyclists.
To get an idea of what LAB is looking for, let's again consider Madison. (Only Davis, California – where $14 million was spent on bike projects over the past decade – ranked higher as a BFC. Madison should shoot for that "platinum level" distinction when it reapplies in two years, said Webber, who also serves on the Madison City Council.)
The Madison mayor's office proudly touted the BFC title when it was bestowed upon the city. In a press release, the mayor listed the bike facilities and programs that most impressed LAB:
• "Despite brutal winters," Madison's physical environment encourages bicycling with the aforementioned bike lanes and trails, parking and "exceptional signage" for bicycles, according to LAB;
• A local "Share the Road" education program is "cutting edge," LAB effused. To further enhance that effort, BikeFed and the Safe Community Coalition of Madison and Dane County in April launched a pilot project to increase bicycle safety education through the media and in middle schools; inform communities and residents of upcoming bicycling events; and provide law enforcement training and overtime grants for local police departments.
Crucial to the campaign is funding from the Viking Biking Club, generated by the Horribly Hilly Challenge Ride; the Jessica Bullen Memorial Fund, named after the 29-year-old bicycling advocate who died July 3, 2005, from injuries sustained in a bicycle crash; and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. If the pilot project succeeds, BikeFed intends to take the "Street Share Campaign" statewide.
While the BFC application is lengthy and can be overwhelming, BikeFed offers a citizen's guide to the process (which, at 40 pages, is also daunting) and a helpful link to a "bikeability checklist" (the same link provides a "walkability checklist" too).
To learn more about how to win a BFC stamp of approval for your community, go to www.bfw.org/projects/wibicyclefriendlycommunity.php.
Crash analysis
On the road to making communities more bicycle friendly, researchers across the country are analyzing crash data. Using computerized mapping technology – specifically, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Analysis Tools (PBCAT) – "big picture" graphic depictions of who is getting killed and injured, where and how often is now possible.
For example, 2,065 people died in pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes in Florida from 1997 to 2001, representing 25.9 percent of all traffic fatalities during that period. That included 3.2 deaths per 100,000 residents of Miami-Dade alone. An additional 7,975 pedestrians were seriously injured in that metropolitan area.
The mapping of incidents, also referred to as crash typing, has helped identify hotspots in need of intersection improvements or education programs tailored for area schools and senior centers.
Thomas Huber, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT), was not apologetic that the death rate for bicyclists involved in crashes statewide paled in comparison to the stats for pedestrian fatalities in Miami-Dade.
"Our five-year average in Wisconsin is 50 crashes, and we think that's horrific," Huber said. Those crashes result in 13 to 14 bicyclists killed each year in Wisconsin.
The DOT collected the accident report forms for some 900 serious bicycle-vehicle crashes in urban areas that occurred in 1999 through 2004 as well as the less than 200 that happened in rural areas in 2003. The resulting analysis indicates that the number of crashes declined 14 percent over that six-year period, suggesting that education, engineering and other countermeasures are working, according to Huber.
DOT employed PBCAT 2.0, the latest software developed by the Federal Highway Administration and the /North Carolina Highway Research Center, to more efficiently categorize crashes and determine ways to prevent their reoccurrence. Coupled with GIS mapping, the program allows transportation officials to more quickly see how roadway conditions contribute to crashes.
Huber said the analysis of the 1999-2001 crash data revealed the following:
• 94 percent of crashes occur urban areas. Milwaukee County had the highest crash rate while Madison had the lowest;
• 70 percent of crashes in urban areas took place on collector and arterial streets, emphasizing the need for connections between bike lanes and paths;
• Crashes in rural areas generated a higher fatality rate, increased speeds of motor vehicles being a factor;
• 75 percent of crashes involved male cyclists, 50 percent between the ages of 10 and 19;
• Motorists were responsible for four of the top five types of crashes with bicyclists in 2003;
• Forty percent fewer crashes happened on 24-foot-wide roadways than on those 22 feet wide possibly because of the additional room for motor vehicles to pass bicyclists safely. The DOT produced an 80-page report of its findings it will make available on its website. That report and a manual for DOT staff to continue crash data collection and analysis was prepared largely by Mike Amsden, now with T.Y. Lin International and a consultant for the Chicago DOT.
Amsden said the project involved nearly 18 months of "grunt work." But now the state has the tools to continue tracking bicycle-related crashes and a manual it can share with other states interested in creating a similar database.
Wisconsin bicyclists would be reasured to know that not many crashes happened on the routes recommended on the state's "bicycling suitability map." The Wisconsin Bicycle Map (which is really a set of eight maps) was updated in 2005.
You can get the map for you're region by becoming a member of the BikeFed, which helped produce the latest edition, at www.bfw.org/projects/index.php#map. Ordering information is also available at www.dot.wisconsin.gov/travel/bike- foot/bikemaps.htm.
Helping obese kids get fit
New technology is also being utilized by a team of UW-Madison medical researchers and physicians to better understand childhood obesity. By putting overweight teens on treadmills and sending them off with GPS-equipped bicycles, the researchers are finding kids needing individualized help rather than one-size-fits all fitness programs.
Nearly one in five children in the United States is overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Obese children are at greater risk of developing cardiovascular and respiratory disease, diabetes and other health problems.
Although many people associate obesity with lack of self-control, the problem is more complex for young people. Hormones may affect appetite and metabolism, according to a July 2005 Wisconsin Medical Journal article by Dr. Aaron Carrel, a UW-Hospitals pediatrician and member of the research team.
For sure, sedentary lifestyles and ready access to high calorie foods lead to weight gain in children, Carrel wrote, but hormonal regulation and "genetic susceptibility" may be significant factors, too.
But rather than focus on a child's weight, his or her "fitness" ought to be the focus, Carrel argues.
"If we don't help obese kids, they will grow up to be obese adults with shortened lives. The cost to the individual is horrific and the cost to society we can't support," Jeffrey Sledge, team leader and a UW-Madison College of Agriculture researcher, said at the symposium.
To that end, Sledge said, "We need to tease out how children are actually playing." Carrel added that researchers need ways to scientifically quantify the physical activity of young people "because what they do doesn't always live up to what they tell us."
So 50 overweight kids, ages 12 to 14, from a middle school in southern Wisconsin agreed to take part in the study. The cardiovascular fitness of each child was assessed through "rigorous and invasive tests," Sledge said. Initial test results had to be scrapped because several of the children's VO2 max peaked at a level the researchers thought would be a baseline.
Sledge said these kids spend 55 to 60 hours a week sitting at a computer or staring at a television screen. "We thought we would see weight loss over the summer, but that hasn't happened. The trend is in the opposite direction," he said.
This points out the importance of schools offering structured physical education. Childhood is when life-long behavior takes root "and school physical education (is) a primary institution for promoting active lifestyles," Carrel wrote in the Wisconsin Medical Journal.
Yet few studies of children's fitness versus fatness have been done to inform educators, Sledge said. "Most of what we know comes from studying elite athletes," he said, specifically young, professional male cyclists.
The next phase of the study is to give the children GPS-equipped bicycles, courtesy of Saris CycleOps of Madison. The research team has already GPS'd bike routes and have employed GIS software. "We created a real-world lab in which we can get data from kids as they play and go about their day," Sledge said.
The research group's findings to date will be presented at the first biennial conference of the International EcoHealth Association October 7-10 at the UW-Madison's Pyle Center.
Carrel has already published an article in the Archives of Pediatrics of Adolescent Medicine (October 2005) about what happened when the same 50 obese children were split up between "lifestyle-focused, fitness-oriented" gym classes and standard gym classes.
"The children in the fitness-oriented gym classes," Carrel found, "showed greater loss of body fat, increases in cardiovascular fitness, and improvement in insulin levels." He went on to advocate for public health officials to partner with school districts "to improve the health of overweight children.
Break time = trail time
Over the course of the Pro Walk/Pro Bike symposium several "mobile workshops" allowed attendees to walk or bike trails and check out conservation areas. I struck out on my own. Starting from the opposite side of Lake Monona, I got in an 11-mile run on the paved Capital City State Trail. As I passed marshlands, restored prairie and the ski trails at the Lussier Center, I encountered many a cyclist: male and female, both fit and determined to get fit.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I saw bicyclists decked out in bright, poly-blend racing jerseys. Others wore work shirts and backpacks. Still others wore flip-flops with the legs of their jeans rolled up. Several other folks were walking or rolling by on inline skates. It occurred to me then I was on a successful trail. It's used as intended – by a great cross-section of people for recreation and commuting.
Madison is a living laboratory for alternative transportation. And its success as such was on display during the bicycle and pedestrian summit. But the health and safety issues raised there demand more attention from the non-active majority nationwide. So for those who attended, its now time to get to work – either by foot or bike – winning converts.
Joel Patenaude is the editor of Silent Sports. |
