"…After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable.  A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go.  You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow."  ~H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance.

Ray LaHood, the United States Secretary of Transportation, created some waves when he stood on a table at the National Bike Summit in D.C. and announced a "sea change" in the transportation world.  Bicycle & pedestrian advocates, he said, will share a seat at the table when it comes time for plotting out transportation policy.

LaHood, in his blog, said, "This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized…"

You'd a thought he had announced he was a closet Communist.

According to CBS News, "…Not so fast, say some conservatives and industries dependent on trucking. A manufacturers' blog called the policy "nonsensical." One congressman suggested LaHood was on drugs. The new policy is definitely a move in a new direction.  Previous Transportation Secretaries seemed to have trouble spelling the word "Bike," let alone adopting policies that didn't write bikes off the road!  So what possible benefits to our country can there be in riding a bike?

Let's see:

1. Decrease dependence on foreign oil.  Commuters in the Dayton and Cincinnati Cycle Clubs have personally commuted more than 1.5 MILLION miles since 1995, saving over 60,000 gallons of gas!

2. Every mile ridden is better for the environment than a mile driven.  Reduction of greenhouse gas emissons.  A bike that replaces a car for all travel is equal to planting 170 trees! The Dayton & Cincinnati bike commuters have avoided the release of more than 37 tons of pollutants into the air since 1995.

3. Economically efficient.  Cycling has a lower cost per mile than any mode of transportation except walking.

4. Personal benefits to the rider include better health, improved fitness and the sheer joy of riding a bicycle!  Getting kids on bikes will lower childhood obesity.

5. Finally, bicycles do little to degrade the environment people live in. They create no noise, no stink, no pollution, and no congestion. They do not require massive highways or extensive parking areas. In a collision, they are unlikely to kill, and a cyclist can more easily avoid a collision.  You can fit 12 bikes in a single car parking space.

Right now, more than 55 MILLION Americans ride bikes.  Bicycling and walking account for nearly 10% of the trips we take, and 13% of traffic fatalities but get less than 2% of federal transportation funding.  Out of those figures pedestrian fatalities FAR exceed bicycle fatalities - 4500 to 700. 

Can the bicycle change the world?  Clearly, encouraging more bicycle use can HELP the world be a better, cleaner, healthier, more fun place filled with healthier, energetic and happier people!  To me, that qualifies as changing the world for the better!

"…When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments.  Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man.  And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became.  Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others.  Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle…"  Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills

Picture this - New York City on Memorial Day. In the midst of a huge "Bike Boom," tens of thousands of New Yorkers are riding their bicycles through the city on a gorgeous summer day. Cosmopolitan magazine decides it would be a good idea to hold a car race on the streets of NYC that day... and they're off… six cars racing each other through the streets!

Mr. Henry Wells is doing well in the race but he starts to wobble and crashes into the vehicle operated by Ms. Evelyn Thomas. Ms. Thomas suffers a fractured leg and is carted, unconscious, by ambulance to the Hospital.

Sounds like another day in paradise, eh? Well, it was… except for three significant facts…

1. This bike/car crash occurred on Memorial Day in New York City in 1896...
2. This was the FIRST recorded automobile accident in the U.S. and
3. Evelyn's vehicle of choice was a Columbia…. BICYCLE.

Yes, friends, by 1896 that new fangled contraption, the motorcar, was already causing a ruckus on the streets. The same streets shared by pedestrians, folks on horseback, carts, buggies, wagons, bicycles and now … cars.

To understand why today's cycling advocates fight so HARD to protect our right to ride on the roads you have to understand where our DNA came from. Each strand of "Bike Advocacy DNA" contains bits of tens of thousands of incidents like the one in NYC in 1896.

By 1896 "Bicycle Advocacy" was already in full swing. The League of American Wheelmen [now the more politically correct League of American Bicyclists] was founded in 1880 and reached a MILLION members very quickly. The League was the driving force behind the "Good Roads Movement" - a powerful political movement that focused on electing officials who could get roads PAVED … so commerce could move freely and, oh yea, so bicyclists would have a place to ride! 

Cyclists did so well promoting their cause that the very first Vehicle Codes ever written, in Ohio and around the country, recognized the bicycle as a "vehicle" and permitted the operation of bicycles on the roadway.  That right was re-affirmed here in 2006 when the Ohio legislature unanimously passed the "Better Bicycling Bill."

May is National Bike Month. On May 19, 2010 the Ride of Silence was again held around the world and dozens of cyclists braved the weather to converge quietly on Fountain Square for a short ceremony. The Ride of Silence honors and remembers cyclists killed & injured the previous year while promoting awareness of road cycling.

There were 716 cycling fatalities nationally in 2008 -- trending down, down, down from a high of 1005 deaths in 1975. The Ride of Silence adds strength, unity, dignity and honor to the Bike Advocate's DNA.

We continue the fight to protect our right to ride on the public roadways – the same right Evelyn Thomas exercised from the seat of her Columbia back in 1896. The need to protect that right is stronger than ever today and we'll keep fighting…we're not going anywhere…

"Cycle tracks will abound in utopia..."~~ H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapter 2, Sec 3 [1905]