The Tour de Bluff was Saturday, and it's a little hard to believe that this was the 18th such event. It's also a little hard to believe that Pine Bluff hasn't made more progress on providing bike lanes and trails for its residents and others.
Sandra Fisher, who is with Novel-T's, the sponsoring and organizing force behind the annual bike-riding event, was asked to give the city's bicycle paths a grade, and she just couldn't, perhaps preferring not to pen an F on a hypothetical report card.
"It's just hard to ride in the city," she said.
And it's not for a lack of trying. She has reached out to city developers about including more bike paths when streets are developed or upgraded. And while there is more attention being paid to the pedestrian, she said, nothing much happens for the cyclist.
Fisher makes good points for why that's not a good place to be for a city. For one, bicycle riding is good exercise and good recreation. Beyond that, however, is the fact that many people use bicycles as their main source of transportation. For both of those pursuits, Pine Bluff is ideally suited because it's flat. Other than roads going up and over bridges, pretty much anyone can pedal a bicycle around our town.
And then there's something new that Fisher mentioned: tourism. If you have something cool in your town, people will travel there to experience it. On a larger scale, bike trails that go for many miles attract folks who will spend the night, eat and continue on as they traverse the whole thing. But it could also be a trail that is just a comfortable ride around and through a town that brings people in because such trails are desirable rides.
The problem in Pine Bluff, Fisher said, is that when people try to do that here, they are sharing the road with cars. Drivers don't see cyclists or don't yield to them and then they drive too close to those on bikes and it becomes an uncomfortable if not dangerous affair.
We ran across a bike trail in the northeast recently that was its own dedicated path that went for scores of miles, and it was said that people hopped on the trail to get from city to city, and no cars were allowed. How nice for them. And if you go to Little Rock, there's the trail around the Arkansas River and the Big Dam Bridge and the Two Rivers Bridge and that trail and on and on.
Pine Bluff could do more, a lot more, but it will take leadership and a commitment to making it happen. When people talk about quality of life -- efforts at providing safe places for bicyclists should be part of the conversation. The fact that it hasn't been part of the conversation to date is a failure.