I really like bikes. I don’t own a bike. But I like them.
Al Gore recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting climate change. The former vice president probably would give you a hug if you rode your bike to class or to work because that would help address global warming. I would give you a hug, too. If you want hugs, ride by me on your bike. But if you get too close and almost hit me, like some bikers do, I will be incredibly angry.
Enough about hugs, and more about bikes. Riding bikes is good for a lot of reasons. It’s good for the environment. It’s good for your health. Friends of mine ride bikes. They ride bikes because gas is expensive and they love the environment, and they want to stay fit. Unfortunately, in their quest to keep our air clean and their bodies slim, they have come across some problems.
Automobiles are a major one.
People who drive cars can be careless. I know because I drive a car and I almost hit a bicyclist. A car recently hit my girlfriend. She called me shortly after noon crying. She said, “I got hit.” And then I asked my friend Ben for some help and we drove into the heart of downtown and there was my little lady, crying and bandaged up.
She’s OK. She didn’t even go to the hospital, though an ambulance did come to check on her. She came away with a pretty gnarly bruise, however, on her hip. It was black and purple and pretty disgusting.
When my girlfriend got up from the crash an old man stepped out of his car wondering what happened. After several expletives the old man was informed that he had just hit a biker. When he confronted that biker, my girlfriend, he asked her if he could buy her, of all things, a pizza.
This is, at the bare minimum, the third person I know personally to have been hit by a car.
As I reflected upon this with some friends of mine and a city-dwelling professor, we came to a conclusion: Grand Rapids is a terrible city for bikers.
This is a pretty big deal, of course, as Grand Rapids is one of the greener cities in the nation, what with our hybrid buses (which are all around downtown), our new LEED-certified art museum, and our alleged commitment, as espoused by the City Master Plan, to reduce dependence on the automobile, make streets more walkable, and establish a serious system of bike routes.
It’s sad, then, that bikers, who do their part to the air clean, are stuck riding in the street (which is the law in Grand Rapids), but do not have bike lanes and are not really looked out for whatsoever.
On top of that, the buses, another great means by which to get from one place to another, only have two bike slots, which places time constraints on the biker who may have to wait for another bus if the bike rack is full.
Like I said, I don’t even have a bike. But I can’t sit back and support this green city in its seemingly anti-bicycle sentiment. The only suggestion I have is ride your bike with caution because if a car hits you it’s really going to hurt.
Gary Nye is a student at Grand Valley State University. A version of this article was published in the
Grand Valley Lanthorn in Fall 2007.
Photos:
Bikes by GVSU's downtown campus
Bike by Van Andel Museum Center
Bikes in front of the Grand Rapids Art Museum
Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved
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