Running, Riding, Walking, Blading and Whatever around town

I've lived in alot of active cities for a guy in his mid-30's. Portland, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and SF Bay to name a few of the big ones. Heck, I grew up outside of Eugene during the tail-end of the running boom.

Every year a few magazines vote on which city is the most active, most bike friendly, cleanest/greenest city, and so on. The voting for that stuff is pretty laughable, it's the same ten or so cities in the running every year. On top of that, it's usually not fair to throw small cities like Boulder, Durango or Eugene into the mix, the scale is so far off compared to say, Portland, Oregon that any real, measurable comparison makes little sense even when you use the "per capita" qualifier.

Mildly tangential here but why even bother chatting about this?

I raise the subject because it's a policy issue that touches people in endurance sports by way of use of the infrastructure (as starting point).

Anyhow, my lifestyle in each of these cities was different also, for obvious reasons, when I was younger and in the military, I was stationed in San Diego. Later, my first job out of undergrad took me to SF Bay; when I lived in Boulder I was post-grad school and commuted to work over an hour each way. The one thing that remained the same in what appears to be a semi-nomadic lifestyle is that I've been active. Go figure.

When I lived in San Diego I was stationed on a base in Point Loma, not far from the city. I was a sailor learning how to operate decades old radio equipment and in my spare time, aside from drinking (alot) legally at the age of 19 on the base bar, I would sometimes run from the base on a nice path that I could step onto from the west side of the base.

It was pretty awesome actually, the path ran at least the length of the bay shore all the way into downtown San Diego, near the famous old sailing ship whose name I forget and is moored for all the tourists to see. The area and base, as a point of trivia, has multiple landmarks where the film "Top Gun" was filmed. In fact, I was stationed on this base for over a year and lived basically near all the areas it was shot in.

Needless to say, it was less glamourous for me.. And Kelly McGillis, the blonde love interest- I never dated, in spite of the rumours.

Anyhow, the path is pretty narrow, there are parking lots adjacent to parks along it because of the great views; hopefully you get the picture. It's also used by alot of people.

In Seattle there is another path just like the one in San Diego called the Burke-Gilliman trail and it is about 60 miles total, the difference is that it's not in a sunny place. Seriously. Alot of it actually runs along various lakes, small creeks and rivers. It's also heavily used.

Portland has a system like this, but mostly relies on organically grown byways that people have traditionally used as bike and pedestrain friendly streets. Boulder and Eugene are alot like Portland. The funny thing about these cities is that if you go and use the systems intended to move around town sans a car, it's highly likely you will be with cars; and for the most part the incidence of contact with other people on bikes, blades, etc. is pretty reduced.

SF Bay has none of this, I'm not kidding, there is no sembalence of multi-use trail system.

Strategic vision or lack of it shaped all of these approaches to creating these solutions for folks that attempt to exercise, recreate or commute around their respective cities. I don't have a preference for any of the solutions. Each of them has its pros and cons.

For instance, Seattle's Burke-Gilliman has so many cyclists on it that the path actually has a speed limit of 15mph, which is rarely obeyed. Cyclists ride it in full Tour de France team kits on carbon race bikes, with get this: bells.

They have to contend with toddlers learning to ride their bikes. They also deal with joggers (triathletes?) equipped with fuel belts, ipods and other accoutrements to distract them from the fact that they are running too slow to lose any weight. This is compounded by consumption of a Luna bar while running 13 minute miles.

Toddlers and runners face near certain collisions with future Tdf cyclists (with bells) who strangely choose a heavily used path for what appear to be some form of intervals on their bikes.

Contrast that with Portland. Bike City USA, or something like that.

I can't complain I lived there a long time. I've trained there as an athlete on a bike for the better part of five years. But Portland unlike Seattle doesn't keep cyclists, runners, bladers and the like safe from traffic, because their isn't much multi-use path. Sure, as a cyclist, you can pretty much drill it on your morning commute and not worry too much about putting your front wheel into a soccer mom's behind. The downside, (and it's become pretty apparent lately as I think the city may literally be approaching a critical mass of users on the bicycle by-ways) is that there are more and more accidents involving cars and non-motorists.

On one hand, you ride safely but annoyed & other the is bliss until a driver cuts you off causing an accident.

Let's get back to strategic vision.

In Seattle's case, they were able to convert a ton of rail beds to trails in small towns that developed into bedroom communities for companies in the area and link the trails. This was mostly luck that enabled this; the trail system is actually an impediment to light rail development in some ways because voters can be swayed with a pro-bus/status quo argument of "we already have green infrastructure"; no one knew Microsoft would grow as it did or that Boeing would spawn these vertically intergrated partners between it Seattle and Redmond.

Portland has no public strategic vision for the this, the measures are on balance reactionary. Portland gets kudos from Bicycling Magazine for having signs in downtown encouraging not cyclists to use a path but people roller blading too. I like the attitude the city council has to foster a culture where everyone is encouraged to exercise and get around without a car, but it isn't strategic, it is tactical.

This is the issue with all of the cities mentioned is that we have policy details being added to a flawed overaching policy/strategy. Projecting growth in Seattle circa 1973 when nobody could envision a community that grew east vs. north/south (to accomodate Boeing's growth) was improbable.

Who knew that "software" would become an industry that required a fraction of the space to engineer/deliver vs. the aerospace industry in the south sound?

As far as anyone at that point knew the computer industry was mainframes and technology was aerospace. It would not have been reasonable to anticipate such growth. The city was small, people did not have to worry about much traffic, and, if they decided to ride a bike from an outlying community into the city the highways were literally small lightly used country roads.

Net, I'm not sure there is any "right" answer on these policy issues.