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Alan Dep/Marin Unbiased Journal
I’ll admit it — once I wrote in assist of the $20 million bike path on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge virtually 4 years in the past, I wasn’t fairly positive that my “construct it and they’ll come” enthusiasm would truly pan out. I’m conscious that biking isn’t at all times accessible to everybody, whether or not financially or bodily or emotionally or some mixture.
Nonetheless, coming again to Marin from visiting my youngest son, who calls the East Bay house, on Labor Day, I counted dozens of cyclists and pedestrians on the bridge, and I felt a tad smug.
That is occurring, I believed to myself. Even when it’s not how persons are going to get to and from work or leisure or no matter each day, by some means, someway, some are drawn to a special manner of experiencing the Bay (though some could haven’t any different alternative).
And, hopefully, sometime, a special option to get to the place they want or need to go. It’s fantastic that the federal government is encouraging folks to purchase electrical autos by providing rebates and and so forth. Fossil fuels are destroying our planet — local weather change is an existential disaster. However electrical autos are nonetheless autos and whereas they go far in lowering our carbon footprint, they nonetheless are autos and thus, a part of our seemingly unending street congestion and street rage. And accidents.
Have you ever seen how pricey automobile insurance coverage has gotten? That’s as a result of the variety of automobile accidents, particularly deadly automobile accidents, jumped because the starting of the pandemic, serving to to push up automobile insurance coverage charges.
I’m shocked there aren’t extra accidents as a result of I see close to misses virtually day by day as I attempt to cross a most important avenue close to my home whereas strolling my canine, even with the crosswalk lights flashing. The opposite day 4 vehicles blew by means of the crosswalk although there was a teen patiently standing there ready to cross. Not one driver even gave the little “sorry” wave some do after they notice what they’ve performed. No, there have been no waves. They by no means even noticed him.
So it’s no marvel why some folks have given up street biking, fearing for his or her life. There have been 1,410 automobile accidents in Marin between 2011 and 2020 that concerned not less than one bicycle owner, killing 9 cyclists, according to a current examine. I used to be so rattled once I was nearly hit by a car on my bike a number of years in the past in a crosswalk by the Mall at Northgate, a close to miss that despatched me flying off my bike and onto my left arm, breaking it — the primary time in 60-plus years of dwelling that I used to be ever in a forged and that also has restricted my mobility — that I, too, virtually gave it up.
Whereas I fear concerning the teenagers zipping round city on these no-pedal assist fat-tire electric bikes which might be actually motor scooters — currently, I’ve seen police ticketing children for ignoring the principles of the street — it proves that youths can simply get round and not using a mum or dad driving them. It’s serving to to get vehicles off the street.
Though it’s too quickly to know if numerous proposed housing developments across the county may also assist get vehicles off the street, most might be shut sufficient for residents to stroll, bike or entry mass transit to parks, faculties, procuring and different facilities.
My older son and his associate not too long ago landed in Petaluma in a home that’s walkable and cyclable to a lot of what they need to do — grocery store, dine out, folks watch at an area espresso store, hearken to dwell music. It’s an enormous high quality of life enhance, he says, particularly after a number of years of dwelling in an Atlanta suburb that, sure, provided a lot bigger housing that was far more inexpensive however was a 20-minute drive to get to something.
And isn’t a greater high quality of life one thing most, if not all, of us need?
So I’m inspired by recent efforts round Marin to consider cyclists every time there are upgrades being performed to infrastructure.
Construct it and they’ll come? It positive appears so. However we will truly begin now, too.
Vicki Larson’s So It Goes opinion column runs each different week. Contact her at vlarson@marinij.com.
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