A Bikeable Community Workshop Thursday brought together leaders who can make decisions that can lead to creating a more bicycle-friendly community.
Nancy Lee, Koochiching County Public Health nurse and Statewide Health Improvement Program, known as SHIP, organized the event in an effort to discuss how to educate people on bicycle safety, enforce bicycle laws, and to encourage more people to bike.
In addition, the workshop encouraged the leaders to consider how bicycling can affect the economy.
“We learned a lot about the community,” Lee told the International Falls City Council Monday. “We learned how bikeable our community already is and the challenges to make it more bike friendly.”
The workshop included a 5 mile bike ride of the city, so the group could get a hands-on look at problem areas for bicyclists in the city, and then return to discuss what they saw and how to fix or make these areas safer.
Lee said following the ride, the participants used a score card to rate the community. Lee said the scorecards showed that the community does well in providing encouragement to bike and to find out more bout bicycling, as well as has good enforcement — officers know the laws.
She said the community needs to work on educating bicyclists and motorists on how to share the road safely.
She said some engineering changes can be made fairly easily to improve safety, including painting strips on shoulders for bicycle routes and to make new roads wider for bicycle routes.
The workshop invited engineers, law enforcement, parks and recreation, planners, public health practitioners, school administrators, elected officials, and advocates.
Falls Mayor Bob Anderson, who took part in the workshop, said he appreciated hearing from agency officials who shared what other communities do about bicycling.
Falls Police Chief Mike Musich also participated in the event and said he learned a lot.
Falls Fire Chief Jerry Jensen said he learned about the laws. “I wasn’t aware of half of the stuff we were told that day,” he said. “We need to educate riders and the community.”
Lee said she would push to bring a bicycle program, Bicycling 101, to the community, where a core group would learn the program and then teach others.
She encouraged people with questions about bicycling or the rules of the road to call her.
“We’re not looking for anything big, yet,” she said. “Just to raise awareness.”
Participants received a folder containing a copy of the workshop’s presentation, the course outline, an evaluation sheet of the course, a brochure from the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota, a planning guide for a walkable community, a sheet on the principles of traffic law, a share the road card outlining guidelines and laws for how motorists and bicyclists can be safe around one another, a pocket guide to Minnesota bicycle laws, and more.
While instructors went over certain points of the course, the group asked many questions, and shared stories about their own experiences with the 5 E’s — evaluation, engineering, education, enforcement, and encouragement, and also about problem areas for cyclists in the city, and how to remain safe in dangerous situations on the road.
Participants also discussed the importance of motorists recognizing cyclists on the road as users, and how vehicle drivers they need to know about bicycle laws, and their rights on the road. An example would be a bicyclists right to become a part of traffic by riding down the middle of a lane, called ‘owning the lane’. Most motorists don’t know about a bicyclist’s right to do this, and can become a serious safety hazard.
The objectives of the workshop were to explain Minnesota’s traffic laws related to bicycling, describe how the 5 E’s improve the safety of bicycling in communities, recognize the importance of collaboration and the roles others have in supporting bicycling, and the application of effective strategies in communities to facilitate bicycling as an easy, safe, and healthy choice.
