Vermont Environmental Consortium

May 8, 2007
Bikes and Feet: Older Tech That Can't be Beat
by
Daniel Hecht

History is full of examples of delayed or interrupted technological progress. Through some quirk of culture or fate, a sophisticated technology is sometimes invented but languishes largely unused, its broader potentials remaining untapped for centuries.

The woodstove is a perfect example. Ben Franklin’s semi-freestanding metal box was a superior technology, radiating far more heat into the interior of a building than a traditional fireplace. But why wasn’t it invented before 1742? The same basic metallurgy and fabrication techniques had been available for a thousand years, and could have saved billions of trees and trillions of hours of chopping. A suit of armor is also a metal box, yet no one thought to adapt it to the basic needs of daily life.

Nancy Schulz can readily name one superior but under-used older technology: the bicycle. It was invented in 1839 and is still an unsurpassed means of fast, clean, healthful transportation, but in the United States we’ve never exploited its full functionality in our daily lives.

Nancy directs the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition, a Montpelier-based nonprofit group advocating for non-car transportation. Founded in 1993, VBPC works to make Vermont a better place to bike and walk through education and advocacy.

Their school programs and bike safety and skills workshops focus on personal benefits – biking promotes health and saves commuting costs; bikes cut street congestion and are easy to park. But recently VBPC’s mission has taken on more resonance. As we grow more concerned with energy supply and greenhouse gas emissions, we’re starting to recognize the value of bikes and feet in a larger context.

Originally from New Jersey, Nancy finished college with a major in English. From there, it made sense to gravitate toward the publishing world; but through life’s vicissitudes, her career arc took her into the paper manufacturing industry. For years, she held jobs in the corporate world, working for giant firms like Georgia Pacific and IP.

“But then I had an ‘environmental crisis,’” she says. “I thought, I was an English major – how did I end up here?” She had always been an environmentalist, always loved the outdoors, but she increasingly felt like a hypocrite: “I realized I was part of a machine that was destroying the forest and polluting the air and water.”

So, like most environmental professionals, her values steered her toward a different life. In 1993, she moved to Montpelier to take a job in the National Wildlife Federation’s field office.

A 4,000 mile bike trip from Washington to Washington (State to D.C.) and several years of guiding bike tours gave her direct experience of the bicycle’s potentials. Now she helps present numerous initiatives throughout the state that encourage people to walk and bike, working with organizations such as the Vermont Dept. of Health, municipal recreation departments, Green Mountain Transit Authority (GMTA), planning districts, school associations, and local bike groups. Bikes are hopping in Vermont.

The “Way to Go Montpelier” initiative, launched May 7, offers five weeks of activities that encourage alternatives to the “one car, one person” mode of travel, promoting biking, walking, using public transportation, and ride sharing. The Montpelier Rec Department offered a Bike Rodeo for young riders on May 3; on May 11, GMTA will hold DimeDay, offering 10 cent bus rides; the statewide Commuter Challenge, May 7 to 11, is “a friendly competition among workplaces and schools” to get people commuting via non-car locomotion.
The Boomer Bike Ride Series, weekly workshops at Montpelier’s Kellogg-Hubbard Library, encourages adults to get back on bikes with safety and riding trainings and fun group rides, June 25 - July 30.
Montpelier Street Walkers is an intentionally risqué name for a great four- week series of walks through every neighborhood of Montpelier, starting June 28.

Bicycling is certainly fun, but one of VBPC’s goals is to help policymakers understand that bikes are not just toys – they’re vehicles. VBPC recommends using 1% of the Traffic and Safety Operations funds to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety, expanding road shoulder sweeping programs, and restoring funding to projects such as bike lanes, paths, and parking.

Right now, it’s hard for self-propelled travelers to compete with hurtling gas-guzzlers. But increased awareness of the practical uses of biking, along with improved infrastructure, will make it easier. With support from the state and cities, VBPC’s recommendations on how to create bike-friendly communities can help people get safely where they want to go while cutting energy use and combating global warming.

Increased use of pedal-powered wheels -- and the ancient and still champion technology of legs and feet – should be considered a key component in the broad, systemic transformation we’ll need to achieve sustainability.

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For information on VBPC’s statewide activities, visit www.vtbikeped.org or call (802) 225-8904. For more information on any Green Grapevine column, contact Vermont Environmental Consortium at vec@norwich.edu, (802) 485-2455.

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