In expanding urban cities, biking is becoming a more popular and eco-friendly method of transportation and our city is failing at providing safe ways for bikers to commute around the city.
There have been many accidents in Baton Rouge involving bikers and cars because of Baton Rouge’s lack of proper bike lanes, especially on more trafficked areas and large connecting roads, such as Perkins and Highland.  
This past week the City-Parish Planning Commission took a step in the right direction by creating an online interactive map database called BikeBR. The database aims to help bikers determine which areas of the city are easily bikeable and those that are not. You can place two points on any area of the map and it’ll calculate the safest and fastest roads and paths to bike on.
I calculated the route I’d have to take to get from my place of residence off of Lee and Highland all the way to the stadium, which is where I normally park for school.
I expected it would just tell me to bike down Highland and cross onto Nicholson Extension, but instead the algorithm led me away from Highland. The route involved cutting through neighborhoods and biking on smaller and safer streets that people might not be aware eventually cut through to larger and more connected ones.
Another handy feature of the map is you can check off a “layer of interest” and it’ll appear on the map. Some of these include bike lanes, shared-use lanes, bike racks, coffee shops, drug stores and police stations.
This bike route database is a helpful piece of technology, but the reality of the situation is that bikers are still being forced to bike on heavily trafficked and dangerous roads.
The first layer of interest on the map shows the areas of town with the most bike crashes from 2009-2011. Of the entire city, the area with the most bike crashes is LSU’s campus, large sections of Burbank, Nicholson, and down Highland from LSU Avenue all the way to E. Washington Street and the I-10 split before the bridge.
In theory, LSU is supposed to be a pedestrian- and bike-friendly campus. For the most part, I feel that it is, but there are many flaws in this system.
For one, bikers shouldn’t ride on sidewalks. Sidewalks are for pedestrians, and streets are for bikes and motorized vehicles. But almost every single bike rack is located on or right off of a sidewalk. This means bikers are forced to ride or walk their bikes to these racks.
Secondly, bikers get frustrated when cars are tailgating them and trying to pass and cars get frustrated being stuck behind bikers that are going 10 mph. Cars get too impatient, and some bikers are too oblivious.
Lastly, if bikers are going to be sharing the road, they need to use the proper hand signals for turning and have proper reflectors and lights on their bikes. Bikers also need to follow the rules of the road, for the most part. If there’s a stop sign or stoplight, it puts everyone at risk when bikers don’t abide by the law.
This database is the first step of what I hope are many more to improve biking conditions.
The push for bike lanes won’t end until the city makes every major road in Baton Rouge biker friendly.
Bikers are ready to get off the sidewalks and back onto the roads.