Few experiences are so terrifying and surreal — yet so absolutely ordinary — as riding a bicycle down Highland Road to campus.
Perhaps I never got desensitized to the idea of cars zipping by, inches away from my body. Or maybe I wasn’t fond of the pocket of fast air such motion creates, that momentary pressure drop that always seemed intent on playfully whisking me into the adjacent vehicle.
Turn the tables, and the situation does not grow any brighter.
I’ve been on packed Tiger Trails buses as they’ve veered into oncoming lanes, intent on bypassing cyclists or traffic obstacles — only to see every car behind us risking the same maneuver.
And when all is done, when everyone has reached his or her respective destination, you step back to realize that when such chaos occurs, no one wins. Everyone loses.
But this is nothing you haven’t heard. It’s the same old show starring the same old actors — the frightened, agitated cyclists and the furious motorists — that has been playing out on the streets of Baton Rouge for years.
Spearheaded by the deaths of dozens of cyclists over the past decade, the biking culture in Baton Rouge has taken the form of a grassroots revolution.
Biking organizations such as Critical Mass and the Tiger Cycling Foundation have been successful in increasing the visibility of bikers in the Baton Rouge area, but the impetus for new legislation came after a tragic incident in 2008 that saw the death of Dr. Colin Goodier, a New Orleans surgical resident.
“Louisiana 3 Feet,” signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2009, was designed to give cyclists a three-foot zone of protection along Louisiana’s road systems.
Motorists who violate this statute are subject to the same due process as any other traffic violator.
For the majority of Baton Rouge’s roads, streets and highways, this may be effective enough to prevent most collisions between cyclists and motorists, but for some parts of Baton Rouge, this is nothing more than a thin blanket of protection.
I became privy to this revelation summer 2010, when I decided to use a bicycle as my main mode of transportation to campus.
With no car at my disposal and only one active bus on my route, I viewed the one-mile expanse between my Highland Plantation Apartment and the South Gates as a trivial journey.
How wrong I was.
Too green and inexperienced to take to the streets, I settled for the side of the road.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, that one-mile street is none other than a gauntlet of overgrown vegetation and steep gullies, literally carved out by previously passing cyclists.
Even worse, I later discovered taking to the sidewalk was an illegal action, according to Baton Rouge ordinances.
So what choice was left?
I could have endured the hazards of the road, pretending to be a car as instructed by state law, or I could be flying face-first into a drainage canal.
Do you want the frying pan or the fryer — and fries with that?
Needless to say, my bike has been chained up on the second floor banister of my apartment complex, rotting away from disuse.
It has been two years since Louisiana 3 Feet was passed, and Highland Road is a major thruway that needs updating.
As the current laws stand, neither party is protected, as there are pockets in this city that are essentially death traps for cyclists and collision magnets for drivers.
Paint a three-foot bike lane, expand the sidewalks to bikes, build a Jetson-esque hollow tube for speedy transit — I’m not partial to any particular solution.
But do what you have to do, Baton Rouge, because at the moment, our transportation infrastructure is looking rather ragged.
 
Chris Freyder is a 21-year-old biological sciences senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Cfreyder.
 
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Contact Chris Freyder at [email protected]