The slow but sure shift in public opinion about the benefits of bicycling by John Bennett was originally published in Connect Savannah on June 12, 2019.
IT’S AN understatement to say I was preaching to the choir. It was more like preaching to choir directors when I made a presentation on the benefits of bicycling and walking to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah’s “Green Team” on June 1.
These folks needed no convincing. The group’s vision statement confirms its members’ intention to “ally with like-minded communities to support the vulnerable, and evolve a resilient and sustainable way of living in our shared world.”
I’ve never turned down an opportunity to talk about how bicycling and walking can make our city safer, healthier, and an altogether better place to live. University classes, civic organizations, neighborhood associations — if they invite me I’ll be there early and bring a screen and projector.
While most of my audiences aren’t as receptive as the Green Team, the truth is the rooms are not as tough as they used to be when I started making presentations on biking and walking over a decade ago.
Early on I learned to stash additional “secret” slides after the apparent end of the deck that I could advance to when I needed to bat down popular, but inaccurate notions about bicycling and walking that frequently came up in post-presentation question and answer sessions.
I could depend on someone to erroneously assert that people who ride bikes violate traffic regulations more than people who drive or make the misinformed suggestion that people who walk and bike don’t pay their fair share of infrastructure costs. The Green Team harbored none of these notions.
As I was concluding my presentation, Brent Buice was disproving another misconception about biking and walking infrastructure: The idea that sidewalks, bike lanes, and trails are unnecessary because people don’t use them. Buice — South Carolina and Georgia coordinator for the East Coast Greenway Alliance and chair of Friends of Tide to Town, the nonprofit working to promote an urban trail system in Savannah — led a tour of a trail that doesn’t even exist. On a sweltering Saturday at noon, around 70 people turned out for a ride that showcased an envisioned route along the banks of the Springfield Canal.
