on this episode, we talk with the chair of the maryland bicycle and pedestrianadvisory committee. then we drop in a protest over a canceled bikeway in maryland. we meet a bicycle commuter in richmond, virginia. finally, we learnabout the american lung association of virginia. stay tuned. we're in bethesda, maryland, talking withcaroline wainwright, who is chair of the maryland bicycle and pedestrian advisorycommittee. what is the committee? john, the committee is appointed by thegovernor to advise him on issues affecting bicyclists andpedestrians in the state of maryland.
it's made up of members of thecommunity from all sections of the state, as well as representatives of government agencies. for instance, we have representativesfrom the department of education, the department of health andhuman services, the department of planning, certainly thedepartment of transportation, which is the department thatstaffs our committee, and several other departments thatare integral in making sure that we have the bestexpertise as we look at
issues and make some recommendations tothe governor. how is the committee organized to carry out its work? well, as you canimagine as the title says they are two basic gary is that we'relooking at we r interested in issues that affectpedestrians who were also interested in issues that effect bicyclist and we wanted totake a look at what those issues are and maybe where some some areas coincide and so we sort of da day out his roundtable discussion to talk about what
those issues were and we came up with for areas that we've outward cover just about everything oneis transportation and commuting i the other is legislative affairs athird guy area is education and awareness and the fourth the area is trapped istrails and tourism and sell the committee members are signed to these four subcommittee area is anddevelop a work program back helps guide the workout thecommittee
throughout the year as we work on thesevarious issues or is some issues come to us we will assign them to the appropriatesubcommittee for further detail work and then theycome back to us with some recommendations which we then forward to the platinum what service using even looking atlately well i guess the highest one lately has been the issue with the icc as you know here in montgomery cannyhave
be icc that's that nickname for it it'sactually the inter-county connector is a proposed roadway that would go from i 95 in prince george's county to hook up where a the is the city ofrockville and take you across kami and across county lines at the end a commute i there's been lots adiscussion about the essay and actually proposals for the icc have been going on probablyfor about twenty or thirty years or more latelythe issue
is whether or not i the icc will have is part its design a parallel trail on this is an importantissue for many folks peak eyes thereof many people out there who do usetheir bicycles is commuting and when you sort of take a look at thiscanny there's a lotta traffic congestion inseoul bicycling to work is a very good alternative so the question iswhether in night a a trail is a is a is a party to theicc the second question is how big howlittle
that trail should be and third questionof course would be the funding at that trail act committee a has taken a look at itspecifically the commuting in transportation subcommitteehas taken a look at this issue and made some recommendations they and have a forwarded thoserecommendations to secretary flanagan we had an opportunity to talk with him about the importance ofthe trail yes we support a the full
18 miles up the trail i'll but we alsomade the point that if a lesser configuration needed to beconsidered that it was important to have portions and that trail as partthe icc over our design so that's been a pretty high issue i for ayr education committee they've beenwith a finished a project that was extremelyimportant especially to school children we looked at dusksafe routes to school this is an international concepts but assubcommittee i took a lucky at does safe routes toschool and what we've done
is developed a special handbook thatpeople who are all one big grassroots levels in communities can you use to developtheir own committees can do an assessment for safe routes india area can know whothe people are to bring to the table to talk about change can to make some improvements forchildren to walk to school why is this an important issue wellbecause many a paris hilton have good had the ability to walk toschool but it may not be safe for them
to get near some areas don't havesidewalks others don't have like pedestriancrosswalk gary is i another good reason for childrenconsider walking to school it's the healthy thing to do and does sowe developed this guidebook on safe routes to schools and we're veryproud of the fact that it's currently being distributed among several other jurisdictions the trails in tourism committee has beenlooking and working with the state department ofnatural resources recently
to look bad to them how trails in the various counties in regions canbe a effectively illustrate a and naturalresources new bike map and so that's been an excitingproject that's currently dying earn at a legislative affairscommittee gets pumped up every year when thegeneral assembly begins to come together we take the lead of a on propose legislation we are advised a by the legislative analyst
on as to how certain that these pieceslegislation affect bicyclists and pedestrians a we also meet bien annapolis in february to a take the great a look at thelegislation and also to visit arab particular representatives inannapolis i happen to be for instance they representative for thebaltimore city area as a citizen and sell i make sure that my legislators will represent baltimore
are aware the bicycle and pedestrianlegislation that is in the hopper and what it couldmean and sell i do that kind that educating tied to my legislators cell we getinvolved in a lot of things and a game the structure that we havehelps us to focus or ingest where how work gotta pay you got what going on how do you view your role as chairs the committee well i think it's pretty interestingconsidering the fact that i am not
in avid bicyclist i gel commute to workon a bicycle i do walk periodically for healthreasons have i'm not close to my job enough tobe able to consider walking to work i'm but what i'd do you do is dry and i am aware because i've been on thiscommittee have some of the issues that mycolleagues here the biking community have brought forth in terms a wider bikelanes a safety for bicyclists did those kinds ofthings because i am a driver so i'm now looking at those kinds of thingsi certainly is a pedestrian
and as a grandmother with young childrenwho are in school i'll when we were working on the saferoutes to school project and yep yet made me more aware of some lovethose kinds of issues with children walking to school and and getting back and forth so ithink one of my role is is as a facilitator at those issues thisis a large committee and we do have a lot of work to do andwe also have to keep focused so i tried to make sure that we saw tostay on point we have a lot of wonderful knowledgeablepeople on this committee that bring
alive experiences to the table by i also as you can imagine there is also there is balancing actbetween are we too much talking about bicyclist and leaving thepedestrian issues behind or should we be focusing more on seven thebest rate issues and bicyclists away their hands and say what a badass self my job i think is a facilitator and as a provider to i getting people tothink about any issue from a different side becausei may not be is deeply immersed in it
as others so i tried to take that role chastises citizen hot naked looking fromthe outside and say what about this what about bad how canbe come get some consensus on line mind these kinds of things would be written rinser spring maryland talking americaland is executive director the washing area bicyclist associationor whatever what is what our what is by water is the washington areabicyclist association where %uh local nonprofit bicycle advocacy groupi've been working towards
better conditions and safety forcyclists since 1972 so we've been around all one-time what are you doing out on this chilly january morning at this remote part is over spread well we'rehere to to protest the decision by the maryland state highway administration to removes the planned bike path from theinter-county connector i all the public meetings that hadpreviously occurred throughout the summer included a trail in
the alignment suddenly in a in what wethink is a rash decision a this state decided to drop the truckcompletely from the project citing environmental and cost concerns at all times and for people not from the media area what isthere in a kenny connector icc while the inter-county connector isa is planned highway that would connect ii 95.2% i 270 and in montgomery county area anda little bit in prince george's county i'll the path that we were hoping to gethis would be eighty miles long running
right along with the icc will connectcommunities across maryland i went trail systems into a morecoherent network voted by facility in that area is muchneeded there's a lot east-west rail so i'msorry lot in or south trails i what's really needed are the sweatsconnections in the icc i once built offers us the perfectopportunity to put in a world class by facility here how important is it to include by compared facilities when youcreate a new transportation corridor
like this hours it's absolutely critical and ithat's one of the things that we do it at our situation is try to make surethat all road projects no matter what size itcould be a small neighborhood road or arterial inner-city or a think i wouldlike the inter-county connector did we need to make sure that we providefacilities for pedestrians and bicyclists just toencourage other forms of transportation and to provide people with the overrecreational opportunities to improve their health good what's third
next step in the process is seems likethis has been going on for ever a with no what happens next that thestate does it or doesn't do it well it's it'sthats right now we're in the middle of apublic comment period i people can go to our website waba .org find out how they can contacttheir local politicians and we're just asking people to writeletters i'd just insisting that the trails includedin the icc and from from there i we're working withmontgomery county in prince george's
county council's a state delegates and a and federal representatives to write to the governor into the secretarytransportation saying that despite rumors to be included were in richmond virginia taking athree-day saltzman how long have you been a bicyclecommuter pretty much for twenty twenty-five years started and texas when george incalifornia colorado the bahamas west virginia diverging what
a i was bicycle commuting been differentin those different places experience you you face trained commutewell wonderful thing about colorado is amountain biked them and your front wheel disappears inthe snow it doesn't cut a groove it justdisappears just really beautiful in the bahamaswhen it rained which they don't have much in the way offlight control of course i be weird to be you writing through splitting the water and running overground regrets
try a different from all differentaspects in the so you like richmond a by scott commuting whether the the good things that the city might havedone that make it all easier and what are someother the obstacles and make it was pleasant but it might be what most the time that community inrichmond i come across the james river you know thethe the river vampire if it hadn't been for the james thebritish with nov taken over the entire
world and now the way it worked when i come from the south side to thenorth side is every morning i get up and go through the support tunnel which takes you over the railroadtracks and assist steps down to the river and you come out the tunnels actuallymade out of chain mesh fence fencing and come out and there'sthe james and funny it's just stunning every morning to feel so greatmen go down the river then you go across
the river arno and footbridge i so you always are feeling really greateffing decide to go on the bridge on them thecar bridge get this great view of the city ofrichmond coming into it so every every morning you got a great view really kinda meanie can create aninteresting place richman however has not been at theforefront bicycle commuting or writing whatsoever the
i had heard a man say that richman wasthe worst place in the country to ride a bicycle don't know that that'strue it i'm not scared of cars. cuz i've beendoing all my life and but most people are scared richman has very few bike lanes yeah no bike trails and i'm in all aware ofbesides mountain bike trails which one along the river so thereforethere is no place that the bike is protected from the car the two or three places that have bike lanes
are actually parking places for carswhich is not really positive thing because if you'rebiking along in that lane and somebody offers opens a door your obviously in trouble i'll but again you know if you write a lot itdoesn't make any difference find it very quickly that yours prettymuch safer on your bike then you're in the car you have a lot more options and if youever are hit you hit from behind usually like within their own a truck orsomething
and it is kinda fishy off to the side ofthe road so it's not it's not as fear for as most people consider and the goodthings of course is the beauty richmond earlier gorgeouslittle town gorgeous big city that masquerades smalltown vice versa depending on how you want to look at the number people that commute by bikein richmond compared with other places in virginia on how many people right here arewashing were very
its it's actually very rare but it'salso kinda difficult to tell the only numbers that have ever shown upthat i'm aware is the census bureau when they did thatextended form k which i think one out of every 100households gets it i never got myself the supplemental formis what it's called they asked that question how you get towork and according to the 2000 census one-fifth 1 percent richmond commuters arrive on two wheels bicycle commute towork i'm that compares to
northern virginia i dc as 1.6 percent nor the dc and the highest place in the state whichis williamsburg which has four percent williamsburg for the last almost 20years has been building bike lanes and bike trails the headplanter down there is a bicyclist as are the players forthe two counties surrounding james city-county york am civil and so they've been using the federalmoney cuz it's all built with federal dollars
ice-t_ money in cement money to build onthose bike lanes and bike trails and they have place where people feelsafe because the bike is protected from thecars know whether other than getting in a sphere the cityon the way and what are the benefits to the individualfor from forget to work by bike or by footfor that matter okay well um there's a great line thatcame out of the nineteen ninety earth day movement which was thinkglobally act locally every single time somebody bicyclecommuters serve pedestal commute
pedestrian commutes or i'm takes the bus they're doing thateven if they don't recognize it the united states with 2.7 percent ofthe world's oil reserves so 3 barrels out of the 100 barrels outthere 2.7 percent we have five percent of theworld's population and we use 26 percent of the world'smore no wonder the rest the world hates were stealing their oil from their wayof looking at well and where do we do with it aboutseventy percent of that goes into our gasoline tax
so we import about eleven point fivemillion barrels a day seventy percent going into it we use about $19 billion barrels a daybut only eleven point five million barrels is actuallyimportant it's all gone into gas okay and it goes into gas what thatmeans is that no politician the ones that i can think i've jerrybrown from the left h ross perot from right paul simon this from the dead manon john anderson for the middle all senatewe've got to get a handle on this we vote him out very quickly so
we ought to think about it so the worldcan hate us because my son just got back from iraq yeah thank god he got back okay i believe thepresident im definitely wants to spread democracy andi think that's the one of the best foreign policy so we get half however free in four people court in the p.e pewcharitable trust worldwide think that it's blood for oil that wewere over there after the oil so therefore no matter if thepresident's telling us the truth about
spreading democracy the world i believe him and of coursequite a few americans don't believe him but those americans if they want tobitch about his policies i think need to get out of their carsthey should take the bus issued friday shouldbicycle they should walk because our foreign policies beingbadly screwed up over it according to the national trust every year we spend nini point fourbillion dollars before the recent increase
9.4 billion dollars my oil overseas two in three barrels of oilline the purging of at the world oil reserves so where wegonna do about it from all looks like we're going to do iscontinue importing more more more until all of our wealth is over thereand wurster we've already been doing thatfor 25 years if we only stopped when john anderson paul tsongas and thoseother people set-ups we gotta we gotta think about her allusage we'd be a lot better shape we have with
what economists call elasticity i'm elasticity is the ability to substitutesomething else we don't have much abilities substitutesomething else i bicycle commute the longest bicyclecommute have ever done is 10 miles which is to me about a perfect comeauxit's about forty forty-five minutes so it's long enoughto go my heart rate up help my health i'll but most people would never everconsider that so what alternatives do they have in europe they have all kinds a masstransit
because they tax their gasoline afterthe 73 on bart we don't have that here we do have masstransit but except for a few places it's verydifficult to use course washington is one of thoseplaces where you're from pretty good metro system but the metrosystem 25 years old already talking about itb&b in really bad shape it takes years and it takes dollars andtakes money all the simple solution is to get outyour car right now for every short trip you can take
and bicycle walk the federal highwaydepartment did this national household transportation surveyin the late 90s and they found that forty percent of alltrips or less than five miles so in an urban area that five-mile trip car is about the same amount oftime is a five-mile trip on a bicycle simply because you caught in traffic allthe time car and a bicycle you pretty much freeto go the time were in richmond virginiatalking to terry reid is a community relations specialist with theamerican lung association a virginia
what is the association the associationis a public health organization that's been around for 100 years were celebratenow 100 here anniversary this year we were stab list in 1904 we focus on a number among health issuesas well as air quality and tobacco control have those issues change not serve your 100year history are very much so in the beginning we were focused mainly on tuberculosisand with the changing times we now have a focus so
war on tobacco issues air quality inasthma right now in turn this season is ourhigh ozone season that runs from may to september say our focus right now is air quality how we have a campaignthat's running this summer called clean commute day its statewide campaign has a number of partners said i havepartnered up with this to you our think this campaign successful a numberthose partners include vida virginia department ofenvironmental quality right finders the bicycle unfetteredfederation
for genius was leon countytransportation services your so what's going to be happeninghere in richmond i miss friday what what'sexactly's get involved in in clear day having three day what we'redoing in this friday is we're havin by confessed over at the richmondconvention center and its gonna be now i'm a date it's open to the public as wellas a pin to clean commuters what we're trying to do is to get thanksto you leave their cars in the garage that day were encouraging them to biketo work walk to work or carpool to work
that day i'm to increase air quality awareness and also to reduce vehicle emissionsthat day i so you can stop on my there were gonnahave lots of information available that day about what they can do to help theair quality here in their city as well as the %uh seated virginianwe're gonna have lunch available for them and a number drawings there's going tobe opportunities to win bikes things like that but what role can
walking and bicycling playing increating cleaner air well it the number one thing it does isit gets a vehicles offer the red one it reducescongestion but it also reduces vehicle miles traveled which reduces emissions so it improvesour air quality in the camp in the summer months made throughseptember we have higher zone days and that could be is created fromsunlight in vehicle emissions so if we reduce our emissions then we will have this ground levelozone that can cause us to have
you know hi are learnt days you seethose in the summertime such as we have some red alert days we have yelloworange and purple on very severe days the american lung association has aprogram called smart alert that folks can sign up it's a email listservthat war email you alerts on days that we have either yelloworange red or purple alert days and it gives you tips on whatyou can do you to you reduce emissions on that day as far as refueling afterdark i reduce the use over gas powered lawnequipment forward to combine aaron's reducingidling
when you're running aarons i'm or justtrying to telecommute or carpooling days or and also reduce your outdoor activity on very severe ozone dates visitors on the internet at www dot pedestrians .org
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