Mayors Bike Ride 2019

One year after rain forced cancellation of the event, the Labor Day Mayors Bike Ride was back on an utterly gorgeous day. Hundreds of riders participated, most of them enjoying the long route that began at Ellis Park on the northwest side. Among them was Brad Hart, mayor of Cedar Rapids, whose blue shoes you can see at lower left in the picture below. (For the record, the rest of Mayor Hart was attached to those shoes; it is just not pictured. He is in conversation with Councilman Dale Todd and my Coe colleague John Chaimov.)

A guest dj played pop songs of the 70s and early 80s, beginning with Peter Schilling's homage to David Bowie, "Major Tom." Attendees brushed aside the morbid nature of that song, and enjoyed complimentary coffee and doughnuts, along with information about trail development

 and bike safety.

Adequately caffeinated and doughnuted and safety-tipped, I headed out ahead of the crowd to my station on 10th Street SE, where I waved riders through and pressed the crosswalk button to keep the light green as long as possible. Due to construction on 3rd Avenue, the ride went down 4th Avenue, so I was a block away from my usual spot.

From there I had leisure for the following random thoughts:

1. Cycling in Cedar Rapids has come a long way. I wish for some exact numbers, but you don't need them to know that far more people are commuting by bicycle than were doing it ten years ago, when I first began volunteering at this event. The trails fill as fast as they can be built. A lot of credit goes to advocates like the Linn County Trails Association, the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, and receptive people in city government like former Mayor Ron Corbett and City Council member Monica Vernon, who pushed for bike lanes and one-way to two-way street conversions. At least downtown and in the core neighborhoods, streets are more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians. Case in point: I don't know that this event has gotten more popular, but along my route I saw a lot of people riding other places, which is a change from even ten years ago. Even so... 

2. The Mayors Bike Ride still seems to surprise a lot of people. Enough people are plugged in to the event that it is annually a big deal. But I wonder how many other people are aware of it?--that is, before they encounter a huge cloud of cyclists as they make their way around town. A map of the route in the Gazette on Labor Day morning would let people know what streets are likely to be congested, so they could avoid them. (Yes, a lot of people in our town get their news from the paper version of the paper.) Today, one cyclist and one driver stopped to ask me what was going on. "The Mayors Bike Ride." "What's that?" I hope they join us next year!

Maybe this would be overkill for the Mayors Bike Ride, but we knew what was coming

3. Crosswalk countdowns can be confusing. I don't go as far as the prophet Jeff Speck, who argues in Walkable City Rules (Island Press, 2018) that cities should "Ban the beg buttons and countdown clocks," although it's a fair point that Anyone who drives in cities with these signals will tell you what its inventors should have realized: the rapidly ticking off seconds, in addition to informing pedestrians of remaining crossing time, also encourage drivers to gun it to beat the light (pp 178-179).

I will argue that where installed, the countdowns ought to be accurate. I've spent enough Labor Days at 3rd Avenue and 10th Street to tell you that at that traffic light, for which after all our conversations I've come to feel something like friendship, 0 means 0. At 1st Avenue and College Drive, on the other hand, the light continues to be green for maybe 20 seconds after the countdown runs out and before the green left-turn arrow.

At my station today, 0 meant 0... until the first wave of bicyclists came through. When the countdown came to 0, I held up my hand to stop them. This time, the light stayed green, which earned me a good bit of jawing from one thwarted rider. Subsequently I noticed that sometimes the light turned yellow when the countdown got to 0, and sometimes it stayed green for awhile. What this achieves I can't imagine.

View to the south, with the eccentric traffic light in foreground

4. 4th Avenue is still dreary. Standing too long at this intersection could depress a dachshund. Except for the lovely brick building housing the invaluable Catherine McAuley Center, we are pretty much in parking craterville.

View to the west across 4th Avenue SE 

Being in the MedQuarter means monotonous development and oceans of surface parking, albeit with banners...

and truly top-notch medical care should you require it. (I do.) This is too close to the center of town for the design to be this bad.


Is there still a point to the Mayors Bike Ride, besides an enjoyable activity on Labor Day morning? Bike infrastructure in Cedar Rapids has come a long way in the last ten years. State Senator Art Staed (D-Cedar Rapids), one of the elected officials who rode with us today, said it was "Exciting to see the progress our city is making to become super bicycle friendly!" We are working towards a goal of plural transportation, in which drivers, cyclists, pedestrians of all abilities, bus riders, and, yes, scooter riders, co-exist. Another goal is to encourage the physically active, environmentally friendly, and neighborly habit of cycling. Just as we individually need to get places, so do we as a community and as a world. Events like the Mayors Bike Ride, Bike to Work Week, and the MPO Ride can help us get there in an educational, enjoyable and neighborly way.

SEE ALSO: "Let's Hear It for Cedar Rapids," 5 September 2016

The dreaded sharrow: 4th Av & 10th St
(Bike lanes end in the 700 block of 4th)