Wednesday, May 16

Bike Friendly Dallas, Er, Richardson


Richardson, Dallas County Did NOT Ignore Bike to Work Day. Yippee!
I'm going to celebrate "Ride Your Bike to Work Day" this year with more fervor than ever before. Really, riding my bike to work is something that I do every work day, and I'm under no illusions that such events will result in some groundswell of cycling support around DFW, much less the world. However, I send flowers on Valentine's Day and on Mother's Day and those holidays don't change things much either. Instead, they remind us of things we ought to remember anyway. In my case, I DO appreciate the ride to work, despite less than ideal conditions.

In my post, here, I looked into celebrating in Dallas, only to find that Dallas doesn't seem to be doing anything. Instead, its little neighbor to the west, Fort Worth is pulling out the stops and so I'll be going to the ITC in order to score some loot. I'll forswear the ceremonial rides and speeches, since I'm not going to take the whole day off, but I'll think kind thoughts about Mayor Betsy as I drink coffee at work, about the second meeting into a long day.

However, as it turns out, I gave Dallas a BAD RAP. Well, that is, if you consider Dallas as the communities within Dallas County. You see, RICHARDSON, and specifically BIKE FRIENDLY RICHARDSON is sponsoring their very own event. Of all the "Bike Friendly" sites, the Richardson one is among my favorites. Richard W, of "Suburban Assault" is one of the people behind it. Richard was in a TS101 course I helped teach and is now also a CyclingSavvy graduate. While I'm following the advice to "GO WEST" on Friday, I'll be with our Dallas County Richardson cousins in spirit.

As I often say, "YOU GO, GUYS AND GALS!"

3 comments:

dickdavid said...

Thanks for the mention! I'll eat a taco in your honor. :)

WarrenC said...

And, Steve, I will do likewise! Have a great day of celebrating what you do every day. You do make a difference!

Jenny Rilling said...

Thanks for the shout out, Steve. We had a great turnout for our first Bike to Work day event. We hope our event will inspire some of the other communities around Dallas to hold their own Bike to Work events next year. DART was very supportive and BikeDFW, RBM, and local restaurants and businesses were essential in making the event happen, since Bike Friendly Richardson doesn't have a budget. The City of Richardson also contributed by providing map handouts of the bicycle facilities.

With the timing of the event (7-9:30 AM) and the amenities provided, we tried to make it for cyclists instead of about cyclists, and I think we succeeded in that!

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