ABC Ride: SUNDAY, June 8 at 10:30 a.m. from the Warren School in Ashland
Joel Arbeitman
The Ashland Bike Club’s next ride has been scheduled for SUNDAY, June 8 at 10:30 a.m. from the Warren School in Ashland.
GPS Address: 73 Fruit St, Ashland, Ma
Route Name: ABC – Ashland, Holliston, Sherborn, Millis, and Medway II (get the right version!!)
Ride
Rating:
Distance: Moderate (25.5)
Elevation: Moderate-Challenging (50)
Total Gain: 1282 feet
Steepest: 6.2%
Sunday’s Weather
Well, we
had to move Saturday’s
ride to Sunday … again. This
must be
some kind of record.
SUNDAY’s forecast calls for a mostly cloudy day with temps in the low 70s.
The
Ride
This
five-town ride includes a little bit of everything. The route travels on quiet,
scenic, country
roads with lots of farms and natural settings. This is a
beautiful route but
you’re going to have to work for your scenery.
Most of the ride is “roller coasterish” with lots of ups and downs. Most of the hills are fairly easy but there are a few tough ones on the route as well. Overall, we’ve rated the ride distance as moderate and the hills as “moderate-challenging”.
Here’s a link to a map of Sunday’s route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/47004880
You can print our “official cue sheet” for the ride by clicking the link above, then click “More”, then click “Print Map and Cue PDF”, and finally click “Print Official”.
EAST BAY BIKE PATH NEXT WEDNESDAY?
The weather still looks perfect for our
wildly
popular East Bay Bike Path ride on Wednesday, 6/11. Don’t miss this one … it’s
a club favorite! Put
it on your calendar. Stay
tuned for details
…
Off the
Route
Our “Off the Route” feature
includes interesting
topics that we think are worth sharing with the ABC cycling
community. Please let
us know what you think.
Speed Limits Don’t Matter
Today is D-Day. During
the
Korean War, 36,000 Americans died in a war that lasted three
years (12,000 per
year); in the Vietnam War, 58,000 Americans died in a war that
lasted 20 years
(about 3,000 per year). Close to 40,000 Americans die each and
every year on
our nation’s highways. We are in a war, but searching for
solutions isn’t being
given the urgency it deserves (and we deserve).
Why is this and what can be done about it?
We hear all kinds of solutions. We have drunk drivers; we have distracted drivers; people drive too fast; we need more enforcement of our traffic laws, better driver education. All of these ideas can help but they miss the number one problem.
Study after study points a finger at road design. Way back in the 40s and 50s, traffic engineers made a really, really bad call that is still affecting us (and killing us) today. Wider roads with “clear areas” on the sides have encouraged faster driving, more accidents, and more deaths. Where roads have been re-engineered to encourage drivers to slow down, traffic deaths have significantly declined.
This excellent video, that clearly shows what we have to do, needs to be widely circulated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6LIYQRglnM
If you build it, they will come
It’s no easy business being an advocate for increased
cycling
infrastructure. When you go to your city or town and ask for
more bike lanes,
especially “protected” bike lanes that separate bikes from
cars, or you ask for
bike paths, or better safety signage, it’s common to be met
with “but there are
so few cyclists we can’t really justify spending money on
them.”
In response, one cycling advocate replied to this nonsense: “Estimating the demand for an unbuilt [protected] bike lane by counting the riders on dangerous roadways is like planning a bridge by estimating the people swimming across a river." It’s crazy to dismiss the demand for safer cycling by citing statistics that measure the current demand. Current demand is based on the absence of a safe-cycling infrastructure. The minimal number of cyclists should highlight the need for safer roads. Current thinking is getting it totally back asswards.
Poll after poll after poll makes the problem with cycling painfully clear: most people don’t feel it’s safe to cycle on the roads. We need to make major changes in how we transport ourselves. Bicycles, not more and larger cars, have a major role to play. What is being done today falls far short of the policies we need. The transition won’t be easy but that doesn’t make it any less necessary.
If you build it, and you build it so that people will feel safe, they will come. Keep doing what is being done today and they will definitely not come. If we’re serious about making bicycles a much more common element in our transportation mix, we need to make major changes in how we’ve been approaching the problem.
Check out the article: https://www.jalopnik.com/1876079/making-bicycles-safer-to-ride-gets-more-people-to-ride-study/
Be sure to check your email after 9:00 a.m. SUNDAY morning to make sure we didn’t cancel or postpone the ride and … don’t forget those helmets.
See you soon.
Joel