Lincoln will be Bicycle City, USA by 2040

LPlan2040.org is Lincoln's online "Town Hall", where residents help envision what Lincoln will look like in the next 30 years.

Residents can currently add their thoughts to "Getting Around" (and vote on "Beautiful Places" additions added over the course of the past couple of weeks). The majority of the "Getting Around" suggestions (5 out of 9) promote cycling! As of 7/30/2010, cycling related posts are as follows:

• Distance/Landmark signs along the bike trails (I posted this one: tell people how short the trip can be with signs indicating how far you are from landmarks)
• Cycle-Friendly City (water fountains and shaded rest stops)
• Discoverable Bike Routes (plainly label on-street bike routes via the street signs)
• Count Kids who bike to school with a Freikometer (encourage kids to bike to school)
• Lower Speed Limits near schools and colleges to 12mph (!)

I like four out of the five suggestions because those four are (relatively) inexpensive encouragements towards cycling as transportation, as opposed to a punishment for making a transportation decision which fits a family's needs. (On the other hand, the suggester's example involves R street from 12th to 17th: good luck driving faster than 7mph during the day, regardless of the posted 25mph limit.)

Lincoln has a long way to go in terms of cycling infrastructure when compared to Minneapolis or Portland (Oregon), but can (and should) make a few small and inexpensive changes to make cycling a viable transportation option for the folks who live here.

I'm not selfish towards my own choices in riding a bike: when more people ride bikes, fewer people drive. A bike takes up 1/6 the space a car does. A bike route on a less-traveled street means one less car on the higher-volume roads. That's less traffic to get in the way of people who need to drive for a living, reducing the costs of everything transported for everyone.

We all win when bikes are included.