In the past few weeks, University students have become all too familiar with stand-still traffic, expensive gas and elusive parking. While these and other problems plague Baton Rouge, at least two groups are taking heart from the city’s growing pains.
Bicycle shops and the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee, an organization devoted to developing Baton Rouge’s potential as a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly town, are hoping the sudden increase of carless residents in Baton Rouge will force the city to expand its alternate forms of transportation.
The appearance of more bicycles on the road is also causing the shops and the committee concern about cyclists’ safety in a traditionally bike-unfriendly town.
When New Orleanians evacuated for Hurricane Katrina, some left behind valuable possessions – including their cars.
Many of the people who are settling down in Baton Rouge are coming in droves to bike shops, looking for affordable transportation.
Joshua Rosby, mechanic at the Bicycle Shop on Highland Road, said evacuees have inundated the store, looking for entry-level mountain bikes to replace lost or flood-damaged vehicles.
Rosby said he has also seen an influx of Baton Rouge residents and especially University students in the shop, who said they are fed up with increasingly scarce parking, dense traffic and expensive gas.
Kerry Stamey, also a mechanic at the Bicycle Shop, said students are also dragging old bikes out of storage and bringing them in for extensive repairs.
Rosby, Stamey and others are using the increased traffic congestion in the city to call attention to Baton Rouge’s lack of
accommodations for cyclists.
The Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee hopes the recent change in Baton Rouge’s population will force more people to notice this lack, allowing it to foster support for its projects, which include extending and improving bike paths, adding route signs on major streets such as Florida Boulevard and Airline Highway and educating people on the safe way to ride a bicycle in traffic.
“Baton Rouge has a plan to become more bike-friendly,” said committee leader Bruce Wickert. “For the experienced, you can get around. But for the inexperienced, Baton Rouge can be a hazardous place to ride a bike.”
In a presentation to Mayor-President Kip Holden, the committee said the construction of bicycle facilities will decrease traffic, pollution and obesity.
The committee said it not only hopes to improve the safety of current cyclists, but also to convince motorists to use their bikes for short commutes.
Stamey said more bike lanes in student areas would significantly decrease traffic congestion. He said he is unable to commute from home to work, which is four miles down Highland Road, because there is no bike path.
Greg Beaman, history graduate student, said he must rely on the generosity of friends to get around town because he does not have a car. Beaman said he would prefer to use his bike, but cannot because of the lack of bike lanes.
Vita Fontenot, library and information science graduate student, said she also would consider using her bike to get around town if more bike lanes were available.
“I like getting around on my bike, especially now with traffic,” Fontenot said.
According to a bicycle map published by the committee this past year, Baton Rouge has about 50 miles of designated bike routes, which means only 3 percent of the city’s 1,600 miles of paved roads make accommodations specifically for cyclists.
Rosby said he is skeptical Baton Rouge will ever fully accommodate bicycles.
“The layout of the city is just not conducive to [bike routes],” Rosby said.
Rosby said Baton Rouge was planned assuming everyone had a car.
Rosby said the city should concentrate on better educating motorists to share the road. He said he commutes about 12 miles to work and deals with motorists who do not obey the law that bicycles must be granted the same rights of cars on the road.
Wickert said cyclists are also often to blame in crashes.
“The vast majority of bicycle crashes do not involve a motor vehicle,” Wickert said. He said injuries usually occur when a cyclist rides inattentively over railroad tracks and sewer grates or crashes into a parked car.
Conflicts with motorists arise, Wickert said, when cyclists do not “ride assertively.” Wickert said bicyclists are safer when they “take the lane” as opposed to riding to the far right, where they are in danger of hitting parked cars, being run off the road by passing vehicles or being “doored” – hit by an opening car door.
Although Louisiana law stipulates that a cyclist must ride as close to the right side of the road as is safe, Wickert said safety mandates the rider to take the center of the right lane, unless a shoulder or marked bike path is provided. In this way, he said, drivers are forced to recognize the cyclists’ right to occupy a space in traffic.
Still, Wickert said he refuses to ride his bike 10 miles to work because it includes a four mile stretch down Joor Road, a street designated by the committee as “low ease of use” because of its narrow lanes and low shoulders.
Wickert said if the city acts quickly to provide facilities for the sudden surge of bicyclists in the city, Baton Rouge stands a chance of transforming into a place more like Austin, Texas or Boulder, Colo. – two cities known as the most bicycle-friendly in the country.
If the city lags, Wickert said, evacuees will simply go back to using cars, and Baton Rouge residents will become even more familiar with what John Ames, committee member, refers to as “the New Orleans crawl.”
Contact Jenni Payne at jpayne@lsureveille.com