That folks have complained about the new bike lanes along the Route 5 corridor in Hartford before, during and since their construction is unsurprising. In America, driving is sacred. Even proud liberals cannot rally around commonsense efforts to reduce carbon emissions by making it just a little bit easier to ride a bike. Imagine the yard signs: In this house, we believe love is love, science is real, etc., but keep your government paws off my vehicular traffic patterns.
I’m no bicyclist — too weak and clumsy — and I love driving five-speed, gas-powered cars so much that most of my friends know the names I’ve assigned to my VW Cabrios. But I previously considered writing in support of the bike lanes because I thought they were great and I was bummed out by the histrionics. As a daily driver between the Hartford High School complex and the intersection of routes 4 and 5, I’ve felt much safer behind the wheel now that bicyclists have a prudent amount of space in that busy stretch.
Most importantly, I’ve seen plenty of people using the new bike lanes. In the fight against climate change, that’s the whole point. Let alone massive international polluters for a minute, and forget about the plastic straws that are easy targets for individual guilt yet hardly move the needle. Both locally and globally, one of the things we actually need is more people like me riding bikes more often, and we need the infrastructure to get us out there. I’ve never come as close to buying an electric bike (which I would need to get up those hills) as I have since the project wrapped, discouraged only by cost.
I was finally moved to defend the bike lanes after my dear pals and former colleagues at the Valley News editorial board panned them. In an editorial published Dec. 21, they argued the bike lanes “miss (the) mark.” My friends, say it ain’t so!
Their essential argument is that the bike lanes have made driving more confusing and therefore more dangerous for motorists and bicyclists alike, but I can’t see how. It’s not new that “drivers have to keep their head on a swivel,” even if that phrasing is a tad much. Drivers have always had to stay aware of what’s happening around them, not just ahead.
More to the point, bicyclists rode on the right side of the road before, and they moved into vehicular lanes when necessary, such as to make a left turn. All of this remains true. The difference is that bicyclists now have more room and green paint, and motorists have fewer lanes in most places.
The editorial traded in a fair amount of anecdotal evidence, and as a resident along the route, I’ve got my own to suggest that bikeridership there is on the rise. I see bikes frequently on Hartford Avenue, including an encouraging number of e-bikes in these colder months.
Again, anecdotal, but I would suggest that anyone worried about traffic confusion levels should take a hard look at the new vehicular stoplight patterns near the Co-op, such as the introduction of blinking yellow lights, which I like a lot but seem to perplex motorists on a regular basis. Regardless of whether they’re too much for Upper Valley drivers to handle, they have nothing to do with the bike lanes except that both appeared around the same time.
As for the argument that state bureaucrats use impenetrable jargon in describing these projects, you’ll get no fight from me. I wish they’d work on that. But I learned to temper my doubt of traffic engineers after the installation of the traffic circles at the top of Sykes Mountain Avenue a few years ago. I was sure they would be disastrous, but they’ve proven a major improvement. It’s worth reminding myself that those people have engineering degrees while I need my phone to calculate a tip.
The new bike lanes have improved not just my interactions with bicyclists, but with other drivers, too. Since that steep stretch on Hartford Avenue dropped from two lanes each way to one, the only thing I’ve lost is the privilege of getting raced uphill by teenagers (and adults acting like teenagers) pushing 60 mph in the left lane while I putted along a mere 5-10 mph over the speed limit on the right.
Perhaps therein lies the rub. I suspect most drivers’ real complaint about the bike lanes, consciously or not, is this: “I don’t like the new bike lanes because I like to drive, and I like to drive fast, and I like to have lots of lanes for driving fast, and I don’t want to be slowed or inconvenienced in any way.”
Listen, I already told you about my car habit, and my carbon-reduction efforts are far from perfect, and I don’t believe that the fate of the climate crisis — which goes unfortunately unmentioned in the Valley News editorial — hinges on average individuals’ good or bad decisions. But when it comes to local infrastructure, I’d argue that the considerations we give to cars and bikes are exactly the kinds of collective priorities we must urgently reexamine and adjust.
The editorial quips about how Hartford is not Amsterdam (from whence traffic engineers drew inspiration for the Route 5 design). I laughed at the joke because it was a good one. We are not very cosmopolitan, are we? But I also shook my head. Why wouldn’t we strive for the quality of life enjoyed in the Netherlands, which bests America on so many measurable metrics, from the success of its health insurance system to the life expectancy and happiness of its residents? Not to mention the rate of our carbon emissions, which one database calculated per capita as more than twice as bad as those bike-lovin’ Dutch.
The Valley News writes that “maybe the theory is that if you build them, the cyclists will come.” Yes! Otherwise, we’re sure to keep driving toward disaster. For now, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a good deal on a bike.
Maggie Cassidy is a former Valley News writer and editor. She lives in White River Junction.