Walk It, Bike It, Bus It! Just Do It!

Donna Merlina, longtime bicycle commuter/advocate, started bicycling for her health and to save money.

Get out and Bike! May is National Bike to Work and School month and Bellingham/Whatcom County’s Bike to Work and School committee invites you to join in the fun celebrating the most thermodynamically efficient transportation device ever created and the most widely used private vehicle in the world!

Do you like the noise, air and water pollution imposed on all of us by motor vehicles? How about traffic congestion and road rage, oil wars, urban sprawl and acres and acres of our beautiful community turned over for parking lots? Would you like to live on a polluted traffic filled street? “No,” you say, well then, join us in being Part of the Solution! As Ghandi said: “Be a part of the change you want to see in the world!”

“Bikes let individuals travel three times as far on a plateful of calories as a person could walking. Moreover, they are 53 times more energy efficient (comparing food and gasoline calories) than the typical car. They don’t pollute the air or water, lead to oil spills (and oil wars), change the climate, send cities sprawling over the countryside,* lock up half of urban space in roads and parking lots,* or kill a quarter-million people in traffic accidents each year!” (from Alan Durning)

Bicycling is for all ages, shapes and sizes of folks! Try it! You’ll like it and start getting physical activity while you’re getting where you’re going!

You’d like to bike and Be Part of the Solution, but…well, then walk, take transit and choose to be car free at least one day a week! Every little bit helps!

We love the “Think Local—Buy Local” campaign and we’d like to encourage you to Walk/Bike/Bus Locally! Why?? Besides the noise, air, water pollution, land devastation and economic woes that cars impose on our community, $0.85 of every dollar spent on gas promptly leaves our local economy. For every $1 spent on transit, however, that same $0.85 stays in our community, going directly to local wages.

Here are some other great reasons to bike to get where you’re going!

•There’s an obesity epidemic! Sedentary living is a major cause of obesity and soon will overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in America.

•The Center for Disease Control reports that the number one strategy for reducing inactivity-related diseases is shifting from auto trips to walking and bicycling. Commuting by bike is within easy reach of people of any fitness level. Get physical activity while you’re getting where you’re going!

•Obesity rates in America (where 1 percent bike to work) are three times as high as in the Netherlands (where 28 percent bike to work! “This is the likely result of so much driving around.” (from American Journal of Public Health—September 2003)

•Put your car on a diet. Substitute one regular driving trip for walking or a bike trip and you’ll be well on your way to a healthier family. Forty percent of car trips in U.S. cities are shorter than two miles. It only takes about 10 minutes to walk half a mile or bike over a mile.

•Thirty years ago in the U.S., 60 percent of kids walked or biked to school. Now only 10 percent do. Most arrive by private car; a missed opportunity for physical activity and a major contributor to rush hour congestion, making streets more dangerous for kids who do walk and bike.

3. Save Your Economic Health!

•The average U.S. household spends more on transport (car, insurance, repairs, fuel, etc.) than on food! Trimming one vehicle from your household, saves you $340/month. (from city of Seattle)

•There are hidden costs in driving alone to work every day, beyond fuel costs. According to the American Automobile Association, it costs an average of 39 cents per mile to drive a car: this includes gasoline, oil, maintenance, tires and depreciation. See the commute calculator on http://www.rides.org.

•The average cost for a mile of one lane road in Whatcom County is more than $1.6 million. This figure does not include environmental mitigation or right of way acquisition.

•Traffic kills four times as many people as wars. (from World Health Organization)

•Bicycling/walking/busing involves leaving behind the social isolation of the car, thus repopulating our streets and making them safer and reclaiming our community.

•About 60 percent of the pollutants from a typical car trip are given off in the first few minutes of operation. (from World Resources Institute)

•We try to ignore it and focus on boats, pesticides and animal feces… but cars have a significant, measurable impact on our drinking water quality! Contaminants from vehicles have been detected in our Lake Whatcom watershed at several water-quality monitoring sites. Contaminants associated with vehicles include metals like copper, zinc, chromium, nickel, lead, cadmium and mercury. There is an average of 5,400 daily vehicle trips, 365 days a year on the 1.2-mile section of Lake Whatcom Boulevard between the foot of Cable Street and Strawberry Point. (from 2001 Your City Newsletter)

•How much of our precious Whatcom County land will we allow to be smothered over for roads, and more and more car parking?

•One hundred bicycles can be produced for the same energy and resources it takes to build one medium-sized automobile.

The time is now! Join in our May fun and bike for a day, a week or a lifetime. The more people walking, biking, taking transit, the healthier our community and world will be for all of us! §