Gas prices have gone up again and with this I am grateful I commute on a bicycle. It takes more effort to get from point A to point B, but after being car-less for a year I find myself to be in better shape and with less stress in my life. Biking is also a cheap way to get around, but even though Sacramento is easy to ride because it’s flat, it can be dangerous due to the amount of cars and lack of bike lanes in the road.
For the first few months I had my bicycle, I would take the streets I knew when driving: J Street, 16th Street, Freeport, and occasionally Watt Avenue. To me, these streets were the quickest way to get around because they are the most direct, but oddly enough, these are the streets that do not have any bike lanes.
This posed a dilemma to me. I now had to find safer routes to ride my bike and my trip took about 15 minutes longer as I was forced to avoid dangerous traffic.
In 2009 the Capitol Area Development Authority (CADA) held a meeting to discuss improving the look of 16th Street. Their goal was to make 16th Street look more appealing instead of creating a safer street that incorporates cars, pedestrians, and bikers.
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Often, I use the thorough fare to get to the K Street mall and to my gym at C Street and 16th Street. As my confidence as a biker has grown, I can ride with traffic from Broadway to C Street along 16th, but each time I ride, I must be more alert because there is no safe lane for me. The cars of Sacramento are oblivious to bicycles.
It is a shame to me that our city development cares more about the aesthetic value of our streets rather than the safety of our citizens. In a city meeting held in 2009, topics of priority were “plantings, furniture, lighting, public art, sidewalk and crosswalk treatments, bus shelters and signs” according to Suzanne Hurt of The Sacramento Press. It is clear from their agenda that bikers’ safety apparently comes after art.
As citizens of Sacramento, we need to help fund Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates and support them in their decisions. They are the group creating safe bike routes throughout our city. And with gas prices increasing, many people are going to turn to bicycles to get around. The more people in Sacramento start biking, the more we need safer roads to share.
