The First Bike Tour Of The First National Park

At this time of year, most of the roads in Yellowstone Park are closed to wheeled vehicles or are being prepared for winter use.  As weather permits, brief periods of day cycling (as well as walking, roller-blading, roller-skiing and other forms of non-vehicular travel) are allowed. 



Back in 1883, those roads hadn't been built.  In fact, there weren't many paved roads anywhere between the Mississippi River and the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Any sort of travel was therefore arduous; one can only imagine what it would have been like to ride bicycles with sixty- or seventy-inch front wheels through the rugged terrain of what would become Yellowstone, the world's first national park.



Even in such conditions, a few intrepid cyclists dared to pedal (or, at times, push, carry and simply slog with) their bikes through woods, canyons and rivers.  Among those cyclists were C.S. Greenbaum, W.K. Sinclair and W.O. Owen of the Laramie Bicycle Club in Wyoming.

Yes, they rode through Yellowstone on those bikes!

At that time, there were two entrances to the park. One, in Bozeman, Montana, was 900 kilometers (560 miles) away.  The other went through Beaver Canyon, Idaho, some 1500 kilometers (900 miles) from LBC's home base.



The three men chose the Idaho entrance.  To get there, they took a train across Utah and met up with a team, wagon, outfit and guide in Beaver Canyon.



Rebecca Connell Walsh made this most interesting podcast about the three men and their ride, the very first through Yellowstone:



Yellowstone's First Bicycle Explorers

Paying People To Ride To Work: Will It Work?

Some people will ride their bikes to work because they enjoy riding.  Others do it for the exercise.  Still others pedal to their jobs because it's more convenient or less expensive than taking the bus or train, or driving.

Then there are those who won't ride to work--or even get on a bike--unless they're paid.

Apparently, the council members of a town in Italy were thinking of that last group of people. 

Nestled in the hills of Lucca, in the Tuscany region, Massarossa is about 35 kilometres north of Pisa.   The town has set aside 30,000 Euros (about 21,000 USD) for a pilot scheme that would pay workers to ride their bikes to their jobs.  Cyclists would be paid 0.25Euros for every kilometer cycled, up to 50 Euros per month.  Conceivably,  a bicycle commuter could pocket up to 600 Euros per year.

Now, as I said, some people could be enticed to ride if they're paid.  That begs the question of what kind of person could be so persuaded?

The answer might come from the experience of a similar program that ran for six months last year in France.  The country's transport minister enlisted corporations and other employers to pay their employees to ride their bikes to work. 

While the number of bicycle commuters increased, it could be argued that the program didn't achieve another of its stated goals:  reducing auto traffic.  You see, most of the people who took advantage of the program had been using public transport before they started pedaling to their workplaces. Relatively few made the switch from driving their cars to their jobs.  Of those who did, most were already carpooling.

I don't know how the folks in Massarossa plan to get people away from four wheels and onto two.  But some of the plan's logistics are interesting:  Cyclists will use a phone app to record how much they've ridden. And the plan will be funded from traffic ticket fines.  By law, those funds have to be invested in road safety.

Whether or not the plan works, it's worth trying, especially if someone can come up with a way to get folks out of their cars.
 

How Are Bike Share Programs Used?

Bike-share programs, as we know them, have been around for a decade.  That seems to be enough time to notice some patterns in, and draw conclusions about, them.

A Rice University study has done just that, at least in regards to the share programs in four US cities.  It notes two very interesting trends.



From Wikipedia Commons


The first is that in Sun Belt cities, bike share programs are increasingly used for recreational cycling.  That makes sense, given the longer cycling seasons in such places.  Also, it makes sense when you realize that many retirees live in and around those cities, and that in some, "snowbirds" spend at least part of the year.  Moreover, some residents of colder climes take vacations in those places, and their cycling is, almost by definition, recreational.

The study notes another trend that I have witnessed here in New York:  More and more share bikes are used for transportation.  If someone is living, say, on the Upper West or East Sides and working in Midtown or the Financial District, riding a bike to work is almost as fast, even for a slow cyclist, as taking the subway.  Also, since many office buildings and some residential buildings have Citibike ports in front of, or within 50 meters, of them, it can be more convenient than having to walk several blocks to or from a subway station.

If a commuter is fortunate enough to have a Citibike port near his or her residence or workplace, there is another convenience:  The bike can simply be taken from, or wheeled into, the port.  The cyclist does not have to look for a free parking meter, telephone pole or other spot where he or she can lock up a bike in relative safety.

The study also makes another interesting observation about transportation uses of bike share programs:  Workers use them to run lunchtime errands or simply to get lunch if they don't want to use their cars or mass transit but the distance is too great to walk.  This could be a very important fact to consider when starting new bike-share programs or expanding those that already exist in lower-density cities like Houston and Denver, which are more highway-oriented and car-centric than cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco.

Even though a city might be lower in population density, it can still experience problems with traffic congestion--and, in the case of Denver or Los Angeles, air pollution.  The Rice study seems to show that expanding bike share programs in those cities, and starting new ones in other cities like them, can help to unsnarl traffic tie-ups and improve air quality--which, of course, can only improve overall public health and safety.