Budgeting Will Allow the City of Fort Collins to Prioritize Bicycle Safety

First published in the Coloradoan July 2, 2012

By Rick Price

How can we get more people to use their bicycle for transportation in Fort Collins?  Offer more classes in safe cycling skills?  Build more bike paths?  Hire a marketing firm to advertise the health benefits of bicycling?  Continue to offer a free bicycle lending program to encourage tourists to ride bicycles?  

Gimmicks are great to increase the visibility of bicycling.  But they don't teach bicycle safety.  The City needs a solid bicycle safety education program aimed at school children, their parents (who are also drivers of motor vehicles) and college students.  The current budget development cycle presents a perfect opportunity to prioritize bicycle safety education in City bicycle policy.

Last January I conducted a survey of interested citizens in order to provide input to City Council on these priorities.  Five hundred thirty-six people responded to the survey.  87% of respondents felt that the City's bike program contributes to their personal well-being and quality of life and 84% felt that our bicycle programs and culture constitute an economic driver, enticing businesses and residents to move here. 

When asked to rank programs, including law enforcement, the bike library, and education programs for children, college students and motorists, education for children came out on top, supported by 82% of respondents.  Second was educational outreach to motorists which attracted the support of 68% of respondents.  Third was support of the bike library (67%) with summer bike to work day close behind at 64%. 

Respondents in this survey were not asked to allocate funds in a hypothetical budget but they were asked a number of times to prioritize programs.  Bike safety programs for school children came out consistently at the top of the list with three quarters tagging this as “very important” and another 21% identifying it as “somewhat important.”

Two popular programs that give bicycling great visibility in Fort Collins came in near the top of this list of priorities.  They are the bike library and summer bike to work day.  But answers to additional questions made it clear that most people feel that these are programs that the City should continue to sponsor but not pay for entirely.  Only a quarter of respondents felt that the City should continue to fund the free bike library while a majority (66%) felt that the program should be self-supporting.   A similar sentiment was expressed with Bike to Work day.  32% encouraged the City to continue to sponsor this while 57% felt that local businesses or bicycle advocacy groups should assume more of a role in financing bike to work day.

Among the bicycle programs that had less support in this survey were the Bicycle Ambassador Program (only 25% of respondents supported it), the Bike Safety Town for school children and Winter Bike to Work Day, both with 43% support.  In my view the Bicycle Ambassador Program and Bike Safety Town, if properly launched and funded, could be the mainstay of an educational outreach program in the schools while winter Bike to Work day could easily be passed to the private sector.

As staff finalizes the 2013-2014 budget recommendation for City Council approval later this fall they should consider the results of the above survey.  The community is asking for more bicycle safety programs and fewer costly, headline-grabbing initiatives. 

Bicycle Program Priorities in Fort Collins

Results for the Bicycle Priorities Survey are available at this link:     http://tinyurl.com/FoCoBikeSurvey

Survey results also allow you to click through to view an "other" comments made by respondents.

CSU Can Avoid Being a Chaos Box for Cyclists

 by Rick Price

First published in the Fort Collins Coloadoan, Sept. 5, 2011

One of the bicycle handling and safety drills that we do with elementary kids is called the “chaos box.” It teaches younger children, especially, why we have rules of the road.

A chaos box involves the creation of a thirty to forty foot square or circle on the playground or in the school parking lot. Participants are encouraged to ride anywhere inside the box without putting a foot down or losing their balance. The more kids in the box the more chaotic it becomes, sometimes to the point of gridlock which, of course, is the whole point.

The chaos box works best with younger kids since they don’t know the rules of the road. Older children or adults know, for example, to keep to the right while younger kids haven’t yet figured that out. The result with older children and adults is that soon everyone is flowing in a counterclockwise direction around the box because they know to keep to the right.

With the younger kids a teaching moment occurs when you stop everyone and suggest they try keeping right. Immediately they find that they can continue pedaling without running into one another.

I am reminded of the chaos box when I pedal across the CSU campus this time of year. The entire campus is a gigantic chaos box where the rules of the road are unclear to many. What a teaching and learning opportunity! How can we make the most of this?

With elementary kids we let chaos reign for a few minutes in the box and then we stop everyone and talk about rules of the road including keeping right, signaling, not tailgating and so on. A chaos box needs a coach or referee, in short.

Getting scofflaw cyclists to stop to hear about rules of the road doesn’t work well as they’re gone before you can say “excuse me.” So we need a plan B to stop cyclists in the CSU chaos box so we can talk to them about rules of the road.

So here’s a thought. Just two weeks ago Trevor Hughes reported in this newspaper that Molly North, Assistant Bike Coordinator for the City of Fort Collins, took up a position at West Plum and Shields Street to coach campus-bound cyclists on how to use the newly installed “bicycle box”. Mr. Hughes produced a video that may be the perfect example of how we could deploy “bicycle ambassadors” to educate novice bicyclists on how to ride before they become scofflaws.

Bicycle ambassadors teach bike safety and provide information on rules of the road, best practices, and smart cycling procedures. Imagine a cadre of 30 bicycle ambassadors deployed at most of the thirty-nine streets leading onto the CSU campus to share the smart cycling story with new students during the first two weeks of CSU classes.

This is the type of outreach that a “bicycle friendly” university should be undertaking. When can we start?