Bicycle Mobility in Salt Lake City

     

     It seems like everyone that I spend time with is comfortable biking in Salt Lake City. My partner is a bicycle courier, my mother does Triathlons and trains in the city, and my dad uses his bike to get from place to place. This is CRAZY to me. I enjoy riding, but I don’t think I’ve been on a bike in Salt Lake City since I turned 12. Even on slower traffic days, I don’t feel safe even as a pedestrian, let alone as someone who has to constantly compete for road space with cars and buses (buses are great, but they can be terrifying to be around.. bus drivers just go). I think that my lack of confidence in my safety continues to get worse every year as I continue to not bike. Do I have the stability to signal with one hand off the handlebars? I don’t really think so. 

     Wouldn’t it be great if I could have a wide protected bike path or even a separate bikeway where I could learn to be comfortable on a bike again, and hardly ever have to worry about cars? I think so. I feel shamed whenever my partner asks me to go on a bike ride with him downtown and I say no. I don’t know if I should feel comfortable biking on our city roads. I don’t and that makes me feel like I am missing out on something that I shouldn’t be. I mentioned that my mom is an avid biker. She’s been in bike/car collisions many times as a biker, but just recently I asked her about a small dent in her car door, only to find out that she and a biker collided because of a lack of bike lane and a misunderstanding about a right hand turn. If you know my mother, then you know that this would NEVER have happened except for the complete lack of infrastructure around biker safety. Bikers feel like they have no space for themselves on the roads and sometimes make risky decisions because that is the only way to get where they need to go. 

Copenhagen Rocks. Look at that happy baby.

     I really feel that if we made safe space for cyclists (for ourselves as cyclists) on our streets that downtown would be a better place. This is where I spend most of my time, and I think that the more bikers we have feeling comfortable on our roads, the less car traffic there would be. The less car traffic, the healthier people would be, and the easier it would be to get around on foot. I would definitely ride everywhere that I currently take public transit to if I felt safe doing so. If bicycle riding was an accessible transportation option for people, I think that mental health quality would be greatly increased in Salt Lake City A) because you mentally realize that you are becoming more fit when you’re physically exerting yourself, B) because increased blood flow is good for you in general, C) because being able to see people as individuals as they go from one place to another is much better than seeing a mass of cars, and D) because, as my partner says, “bikes just make people happy."