Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition Annual Meeting This Thursday Nov. 5th

[Bob Krzewinski]

The Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition annual membership meeting will be this coming Thursday, November 5th, 7pm, at the Ann Arbor REI store on the northeast corner of Ann-Arbor/Saline Road and Eisenhower Parkway. The meeting will take place in the meeting room in the back of the store. The meeting is open to anyone and everyone, WBWC member or not, interested in bicycling and walking in Washtenaw County.

 

The membership meeting will be split into two parts, first being a short “work” session, followed by a showing of the recently released short film, “Pedal Power”. During the business meeting, you the members will have a chance to elect new WBWC Board of Directors members, along voting on proposed changes to the WBWC Articles of Incorporation.

 

Going back to the "fun" part of the WBWC annual meeting, in the film Pedal Power, it is explained that the bicycle, a humble nineteenth century invention, is challenging the fossil-fuel automobile as the conveyance of the future. It’s the ideal city machine, light, portable, and cheap. Non-polluting. Good exercise too. Urban dwellers around the world are turning to bikes as the car turns them off. But with bicycles coming of age as a serious mode of transportation there are a few problems. Bicycles and automobiles have to share the same roads, a recipe for conflict, and many potential cyclists just won’t ride in the city because they see it as too dangerous. Add in the plague of bike theft and a lot of cyclists are simply leaving their bikes at home.

The film wraps around the story of Igor Kenk, a man variously described as the Greatest Bike Thief in the World, The Fagin of Queen Street, or the cyclists' Robin Hood. His well-publicized bust in Toronto pushed bike theft onto the front pages of newspapers across the country and around the world. Toronto, meanwhile, is grappling with whether to really embrace bike culture. What does it take to be truly bike-friendly like Amsterdam, Paris, or even New York City? A series of character mini-narratives propel the film through a study of what makes a city "bikeable". For more about Pedal Power, including film clips, visit http://www.cogentbenger.com/docs/pedalpower/video.php.

 

Bob Krzewinski

WBWC Board Member