Well-timed for National Bike Month, another New Urbanism piece and this one is focused on how destructive cul-de-sacs are. In the years I’ve been riding in Seattle, Lake Washington Blvd (a standard Seattle-area bike route) went from a quiet road to a highway when I5 is gridlocked. Farmland I’d ride out and back to is covered in houses and the State widens roads just to have them fill up with cars.
Slow Down
Going out for coffee in Girona, we noticed that no one got “coffee to go.” They ordered a drink and then sat down to drink it.
Point is that part of a new urban community isn’t just less cars, road diets, and biking to work. We need to shift our thinking and slow down. An adjustment I made riding Bettie was that bike is slow and low. It takes double the time to get anywhere and I eventually got used to it.
If we’re to depend less on cars, we’ve got to eventually accept that we can’t zip around everywhere. Ride to get coffee and take a few minutes to enjoy it.
Hat tip to Seattle PI.
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