Wisconsin
BicyclistVolume 6, No. 3
Wintertime, 2000-2001
Official Newsletter of
the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin
BicyclistVolume 6, No. 3Wintertime, 2000-2001Official Newsletter of |
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August 19th was a day of celebration shared by elected officials and trail supporters as the Department of Natural Resources and several hundred well-wishers dedicated a one-third mile segment in the Menomonee Valley and unveiled the new sign marking the Hank Aaron State Trail. Governor Thompson, Senator Brian Burke, Representative Peter Bock, Alderman Michael Murphy, and others spoke of the trail's benefits and Hank Aaron's impact on local history. At the dedication, Hank Aaron stated, "Now, thanks to the Hank Aaron State Trail, I feel I'll be a part of Milwaukee and Wisconsin forever; because of this trail, people who never saw me play are going to know what this wonderful city and state have meant in my life."
On
the same day, Metropolitan Milwaukee Civic Alliance (MMCA) held a fund-raising
run/walk with proceeds benefiting the Hank Aaron State Trail. Many bicyclists
locked up their bikes in the bike corral monitored by BFW, Wheel & Sprocket,
and Peter Lee, Milwaukee Bicycle Task Force Chair, and then donned their walking
or running shoes to lend their support to the fund raiser. The event attracted
500 participants and raised over $7000 for the trail. Major donors included
MMCA, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Today¹s TMJ4, Potawatomi Casino, M&I Bank,
the Milwaukee Brewers, and Miller Brewing Company.
The dedication location, formerly a "brownfield" east of the new Brewers stadium, has been vastly improved. Green riverbanks, park pavilions, and four acres of trees and prairie have replaced the steel sheet piling, which stood guard over the Menomonee River for almost a century. The establishment of the trail corridor has led to improvements in water quality and has assisted in providing habitat improvements for fish, bird, and other wildlife.
When completed, the trail will cover approximately seven miles, starting at
Lake Michigan and linking to the Milwaukee County Park System Oak Leaf Trail
at its western end. Interpretive signs along the route will focus on the rich
cultural/historic value of the area, the natural resources along the route,
and interesting facts about its namesake, baseball great Hank Aaron.
Currently, 44th Street east of Doyne Park can be used to connect to the new segment on the east bank of the river across from the new stadium. The South Access Bridge from the Miller Park East parking lot can be used to cross the Menomonee River and link up with a temporary trail on the railroad's gravel access road. It runs between the south bank of the river and active railroad tracks from approximately 44th to 27th Streets. (An active rail yard is located east of 27th Street and should not be entered under any circumstances due to its dangerous activity.) The preliminary engineering and design report for the permanent segment is expected by the end of the year. The entire trail will be paved with asphalt and will feature several scenic overlooks of the river and city. It will eventually be connected with another portion of the trail, which runs along the Menomonee River from 25th to 13th Streets, by means of a bridge spanning the active rail yard.
Trail segments between 25th and 13th Streets are being developed by the City of Milwaukee with the assistance of a Wisconsin Coastal Management Grant. This temporary gravel trail will be paved in the spring. In addition, several bump-out areas will be created to offer handicapped fishing access.
While the trail is a couple years from completion, the August 19th celebration brought individuals together from throughout the region to show their support for this much anticipated project. For trail maps or more information, contact Trail Manager Melissa Cook at 414-263-8559 or e-mail at cookm@dnr.state.wi.us.
After riding more than 10,000 miles around all 48 of the contiguous United States on his bicycle, Shorewood native Bryan Crites, 24, was killed on April 24, 1999 by a drunken driver in the Marathon County Town of Guenther. Crites was doing everything right-riding in broad daylight, wearing a helmet, riding safely near the edge of the road, but all to no avail. He was killed immediately when struck by Ronald Cherek, who was driving under the influence with a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit. Cherek was charged with homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle and could have received a prison sentence of up to 40 years. Cherek had several empty beer cans in his vehicle at the time of his arrest.
While Wisconsin bicyclists lost a great ambassador for their sport, and the world lost a great student and outstanding human being, such accidents are all too common here in Wisconsin. Another unfortunate reality is that our criminal justice system routinely hands down minimal sentences for such tragic crimes, often with only a few months of jail time. In this case, however, Gary and Mayda Crites (the victim's parents), Rachel Crites, Bryan's sister, Dean Crites (his 93 year old grandfather), and a host of other bicycling enthusiasts from the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point and around the state worked together to assure that a sentence more fitting to the crime would be considered.
Assisted by WTMJ Radio host Jeff Wagner, the Crites family encouraged other bicyclists around Wisconsin to send letters to share during the court proceedings to emphasize the seriousness of this tragedy. Over three dozen friends joined members of the Crites family as they shared more than five hours of emotional testimony to underscore the terrible loss they experienced.
In addition to being an avid bicyclist, Crites was also a licensed airplane pilot, a commercial fisherman, and a member of the soccer team at UW-Stevens Point where he majored in forestry. In hopes of a lenient sentence for his client, Ronald Cherek's attorney cited the fact that other offenders rarely received prison time for similar crimes.
Unmoved by this argument, Marathon County Circuit Judge Gregory Grau confronted Cherek with the seriousness of his offense, "You are evidence that what has been done in the past isn't enough. You have handed down a life sentence to Bryan Crites, and the sentence I give you will reflect that." Grau sentenced Cherek to 18 years in prison - a far tougher sentence than many similar crimes on record.
This sentence not only gives Wisconsin bicyclists the hope for safer riding conditions, but also brings the possibility of a new era of law enforcement where stiffer sentences will encourage others who might consider driving under the influence to find a designated driver!
It was the first really beautiful, warm spring day in May, and three friends and I took advantage of the weather by riding out to Spring Green. The pace was leisurely with good conversation and beautiful countryside. The land was literally coming alive with the fresh green grass, wild flowers blooming, and the hum of bees. As we neared Spring Green, the afternoon sun shone in slanted shafts of warm, golden light. This was so absolutely beautiful that we feared conversation would somehow change what we were seeing. As we started heading north through a green valley, we saw black and white cows farther down in the rich grassy meadow. A stream meandered through the valley, dotted with dairy farms of pale red barns and simple farmhouses. This was so idyllic that I realized I would never find anything more beautiful in all my life. It was more than a thought or realization; it was a feeling that went throughout my entire body. It made me think of how lucky I was to be able to witness this, that thousands of people in the world would never see anything so beautiful.
This issue has an article (see cover page) about Bryan Crites a young man who, after bicycling the circumference of the United States, was hit and killed by a drunk driver near Wausau, Wisconsin. I have to wonder how many times Bryan felt awestruck by the beauty that he saw as he biked around the United States, or how many people he had met on his journey, how many adventures he had had. Bryan is not alone; there have been several deaths in Wisconsin over the last couple of years where a bicyclist was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The penalties for this crime have varied greatly from a sentence of one year in jail plus a fine to (in Bryan"s case) 18 years in prison. Prior drunk driving convictions do play a part in the severity of the sentence, but oftentimes it is the work of the victim"s family and friends who lobby the District Attorney"s office and then the judge to get the stiffest sentence and jail time.
Wisconsin, with its powerful Tavern League, is the only state in the country that has no criminal sanctions for the first drunk-driving conviction. The statutory fine for the first DWI conviction (a civil forfeiture) is $150 - $300. In contrast, the first offense shoplifting is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and/or up to nine months in jail. Only if a motorist is convicted of a second DWI within ten years does Wisconsin recognize that a crime has been committed; yet five out of six DWI homicides are committed by drivers with no prior convictions for DWI. In Wisconsin, there seems to be a certain level of acceptance for drunk driving, the "everybody-has-done-it," good ol" boys excuse. However, a startling statistic is that on average a drunk driver will be out on the roads 1,000 times before (s)he is apprehended. This is serious information for bicyclists who, for the most part, are riding on the same roads that these motorists drive on.
There is some bipartisan work being done to criminalize drunk driving. Currently a Committee on Recodification of Operating While Intoxicated and Safety Laws Pertaining to Motor Vehicles is looking at adding minimal jail time to first-time drunk driving offenses. Currently, the penalties for snowmobiling under the influence are tougher than for driving a motor vehicle under the influence. The rationale is that intoxicated drivers are better at operating a motor vehicle than operating a snowmobile.
The BFW sent a letter to this committee urging them to step up the penalties for drunk driving. We want you to be safe out there biking on the roads of Wisconsin and enjoying the beautiful countryside we all know and love. If you are interested in this issue, contact the BFW at 608/251-4456 or contact your state legislator.
Gasoline prices spiked upwards this summer, both in Europe and in the U.S. People in Europe, primarily commercial fuel-users, shut down parts of their countries, and demanded a decrease in fuel taxes. In the U.S., which has some of the lowest gas prices in the world, and where, adjusted for inflation, this year"s gas prices are far from the highest ever, people also demanded a decrease in fuel taxes, a misguided effort where a few pennies saved per gallon at the pump result in millions of dollars less for transportation budgets.
In the U.S., people were mostly overreacting to the change in prices from a year or two ago, which were, due to an OPEC miscalculation, the lowest ever, when adjusted for inflation. In this country, the government released a little bit of the strategic petroleum reserve, a move with little short- or long-term effect on prices or supply. It sent a message to the oil industry, though, to lower prices until OPEC production increased again. Prices have now stabilized at lower than peak prices, although considerably above those of last year.
Are there any lessons in this? What is the long-term future of oil prices and, more importantly, oil supplies? One of the foremost authorities on petroleum geology and oil production in the world today, C. J. Campbell, wrote a book entitled The End of Cheap Oil. In it he argues that world production of oil will peak in the year 2005 at current usage rates. From then on, while our total oil supply will not be depleted for several more decades, supply will decrease resulting in increased gas prices.
Well, you might say, these predictions have been made before and, Chicken Little-like, they always failed to materialize. Besides, there are other ways to produce energy, and the world is no longer as dependent on oil as earlier. A Canadian economist estimates the economy is 30-35% less dependent on energy than it was 20 years ago, yet our demand has continued to increase while supply is slowly waning. And, while the world has huge deposits of non-conventional oil in the form of heavy oil, bitumen, oil shale, polar, and deep water oil, extracting it is a slow and expensive process, meaning these sources will have no significant impact on peak.
While
the public is lulled by shallow corporate-influenced media into thinking the
temporary price blip will do nothing to force it to curb its current wasteful
oil usage, economists are less optimistic. Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist for
the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Canada"s second largest bank, puts it
bluntly, "After rising for 140 years, world oil production is about to peak."
He warns against moves to cushion consumers against higher prices, such as cutting
energy taxes. He predicts that the price of crude will rise to $40 a barrel
next year and to as much as $50 a barrel by 2004, increasing gas prices another
40% or so.
So, what does this have to do with bicycling? Unless these predictions turn out to be one more Chicken Little alarm, it could mean an entirely different outlook for our society and a way of doing things over the next generation or two. No longer will we have myopic, unsustainable massive highway-building plans such as those proposed by our Department of "Transportation" or moves by cities to turn every bicycling escape route into a four-lane highway to accommodate the sprawlburbs, as is now happening in Madison and no doubt everywhere else.
When gas costs four times as much as today, people who built their eco-mansions on a hillside 40 miles from town won"t be as smug. In-fill and higher-density housing will likely increase, and those developers who pave over what should remain farmland with sprawling mansions for the rich may find their market diminished. Cities may then realize how wasteful it is to devote blocks and blocks to parking structures when that land could be devoted to much-in-demand commercial and residential uses. Parking prices will rise steeply, so that none but the most selfish commuter will want to pollute and park. More money will be given to transit systems, whose managers will?unlike currently?be transit users themselves and therefore make decisions that increase rather than decrease ridership on new commuter rail and complementary bus systems. Downtown air may be breathable again.
Back to the real world. The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was passed in 1997 to get nations to agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to reduce global warming. We have seen that the covenant agreed to in the 1980s to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons emissions which were depleting our ozone layer was effective, as the hole in the ozone layer is getting smaller. Yet the United States is arousing the anger of the rest of the world by refusing to agree to a serious effort to curb current emissions. Instead the U.S. is insisting that its forests be considered "carbon sinks" (places that absorb carbon dioxide) and that this "business as usual forestry" be considered an adequate substitution for reduced emissions by automotive and industrial sources. This is preposterous, of course, and shows how far the U.S. needs to go‹regardless of which corporate-controlled party is in power‹in seriously confronting our energy and global warming crises. Europeans have proven over the past decade that adopting environmental-friendly policies actually increase productivity. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will be able to make a serious contribution to decreasing pollution, as the U.S., with less than 5% of the population, uses a quarter of the world's energy.
In the meantime, though, be forewarned and take some steps that will minimize the effects the upcoming energy crisis will have on you: choose to live near where you work, live near grocery and shopping areas, and ride your bicycle everywhere you can.
About 110 people attended the fourth Governor's Bicycle Conference, September 20-22 at the Park Plaza Valley Inn in Neenah. Many more local residents attended the special evening sessions on advocacy and bicycle touring, the latter with national commentator Willie Weir. With past conferences held in Madison, Milwaukee, and La Crosse, this year's event offered an excellent example of how smaller communities can embrace and support bicycling. "This is my fourth conference and I"ve always been impressed with the line-up of quality speakers from around the world and U.S., but also with the talents and experiences of our bicycling experts here in Wisconsin," stated Stan Solheim of the Governor's Bicycle Advisory Council.
This year's highlights included Jurg Tschopp of the Swiss Transport Association who provided an excellent overview of bicycle facilities in Switzerland, spurring a discussion about their potential applications here in Wisconsin.
Gayle Cummins of the Texas Bicycle Coalition gave an inspirational keynote presentation on how to make bicycle safety and education a standard component of a school's curriculum. "If we can do it in Texas, you can do it right here in Wisconsin," said Cummins in her friendly Texas style.
Many other nuts-and-bolts workshops like funding opportunities, retrofitting and intersection design, and education and training opportunities gave attendees many Wisconsin examples that can be applied to other communities.
Wisconsin's bicycle conference takes place every other year with the financial and managing support of the Governor's Bicycle Coordinating Council, the Governor's Office, and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. There were many other co-sponsors of this year's event, with exceptional support from the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin and the City of Neenah. The next conference is being planned for the spring of 2002 at a site to be determined.
Communities in the southwestern part of the state have plenty of federally funded bike/ped and bike-planning projects in the works. In addition, about $3.5 million-worth of projects have been added in the latest cycle of Local Transportation Enhancement awards from the DOT.
In the Madison area, the town of Madison was awarded a project for putting bike lanes on the West Beltline Service Road. The city of Madison won one new project and an extension award for the Southwest Commuter Trail, currently under construction.
The city of Beloit received a large grant for commuter bike/ped trails in the Lenigan and Turtle Creek drainageways. Elsewhere, Waterloo and Dodgeville secured grants to design and build their cities' first bike facilities.
The WisDOT also awarded bike/ped projects on USH 12 and STH 123 to the City of Baraboo. Other DOT plans include a project for district-wide traffic signal actuators at state highway intersections, an underpass near Madison at the interchange of Stoughton Rd. and USH 12/18. DOT's most ambitious bike/ped project, though, will be a 4.8-mile trail in Iowa County, between Main Street in Dodgeville and Shake Rag Street in Mineral Point. This trail will connect the western terminus of DNR's Military Ridge Trail and the Cheese Country Trail in Lafayette and Grant counties. The new trail will be called the "Shake Rag" and will be constructed in conjunction with an expanded USH 151, beginning in 2001.
Some Folks Do Trails by Themselves, Thanks: Active bicycling groups are making improvements to local bike facilities in Jefferson and Grant Counties without federal dollars. In Platteville, the Friends of Rountree Branch are building a bike trail in the Rountree Branch drainage. Their trail crosses the southern edge of the city and extends on to the UW-Platteville's trail and arboretum. In Jefferson County, a citizen named Craig Roost began to build a covered bike-trail bridge across Johnson Creek on the Jefferson County Glacial River Trail with material salvaged from an old barn. He has also received help from the Tour de Fort Bicycle Club and donations from the Fort Atkinson-area community.
WisDOT District 2 currently has an opening for a Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator. The Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator has an important role at the District 2 office, which covers 7+ counties in southeastern Wisconsin. This individual conducts research and studies bicycle facility planning and design techniques for application to a wide variety of projects, including those managed by the district and local projects, which the district may be asked to review or fund. The coordinator works individually, as a team member, as a specialist, or as a manager of a specific project or program. Many of the tasks are associated with the review of state highway projects for ways to better accommodate bicyclists. However, some work also involves independent, freestanding bicycle/pedestrian projects.
This position offers great opportunity for an individual to work at all levels of planning, design and implementation of bicycle and pedestrian facilities, as well as interacting with bicycle and pedestrian advocates to educate them on WisDOT policies and practices regarding project and program development.
If you are interested in this exciting opportunity to work for WisDOT in District 2, contact Al Stanek at 262-548-8768 or albert.stanek@dot.state.wi.us.