Apr 12 '06 - 1386 W, 1 I - Vote Good + 9 :: Bad - 14 Oberstar Forum Features Germany Bike City Mayor
Published April 12, 2006 by MNTrails.com
By Rick Moore
Most liveable city in the world 35 percent of citizens bike to work
Minnesota
Congressman James Oberstar (left) and Berthold Tillmann, mayor of
Munster, Germany, pose before a bike ride on the Twin Cities campus.
In the town of
Munster, Germany, more than 35 percent of daily travel is by bicycle,
and if you tack on walking and mass transit that share becomes about 60
percent. There are about 300,000 residents in the city, who between
them make about 370,000 bicycle trips daily, aided by clearly marked
bike lanes and streets and intersections that often give an advantage
to bicycles, rather than automobiles. Its bike-friendliness is one
reason why Munster was named the Most Livable City in the World in 2004.
Granted,
the Twin Cities metro area--with its significant sprawl--shares few
similarities with 1,200-year-old Munster, and Minnesota hardly
resembles Germany, but examining ways to embrace non-motorized modes of
transportation was the focus of Monday's James L. Oberstar Forum on
Transportation Policy and Technology, titled "Transportation Choices:
The Important Role of Walking and Biking."
The fifth annual
forum was sponsored by the U's Center for Transportation Studies and
bears the name of the Congressman from Minnesota's 8tth District, who
has served since 1975 and is the longest tenured Minnesotan in Congress
and the highest-ranking Democrat on the Committee on Transportation
Infrastructure.
Oberstar has been a longtime leader in
developing national transportation policy, and believes strongly in the
importance of expanding non-motorized modes of transportation.
He
pointed out in the opening session that while transportation planners
are trying to make travel economical, comfortable, safe, and pleasant,
there is increasing pressure "to create livability."
While
biking and walking can decrease the amount of congestion on roads,
there is another pressing reason for Americans to step away from the
automobile--the obesity epidemic. Oberstar pointed out some of the grim
and growing statistics: 36 percent of Americans are obese; about
300,000 people die each year from causes related to obesity; 10 percent
of children are obese; and the percentages of children who walk or bike
regularly are less than 10 and less than 2 percent, respectively.
Conversely,
European countries with the highest levels of walking and cycling have
the lowest levels of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, Oberstar
said. Four countries in particular--Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and the
Netherlands--spend less than half on health-care expenditures per
capita than the United States, and their citizens live up to four years
longer, on average, than Americans.
Oberstar also quipped that
reducing automobile traffic is a moral issue, too. "The name of the
Lord is taken [in vain] more often in traffic on weekdays than it is
[mentioned] in church on Sundays," he said.
"We have to provide
the funding, but we [also] have to change attitudes," Oberstar added.
"We have to change the habits of an entire generation and make this the
bicycling century."
The forum featured a panel discussion on
plans for non-motorized transportation in four U.S. communities--the
Twin Cities; Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Columbia, Missouri; and Marin County
in California. The four pilot sites have begun a four-year program
funded through SAFETEA-LU--the transportation bill authorized by
Congress last year.
A representative of each community described
the concerns and climate for non-motorized transportation that each
faces. Lea Schuster, executive director for St. Paul's Transit for
Livable Communities, said that the Twin Cities is the most urbanized of
the four sites, but is blessed by having a strong history of investment
in biking infrastructure. "There is a culture here [for biking] in rain
or snow," Schuster said, but generally weather is a disincentive in
Minnesota. She also said that it's up to the public to create the
political will for investing in bicycling and walking. "To have the
highest level of cultural shift, you need to have the highest level of
public involvement."
Sheboygan County is one of the top 10
counties for golf courses in the United States but is not necessarily
known for its biking, according to planning director Shannon Haydin.
Her goals include having tourists use bikes to explore the region, and
to convince residents--half of whom have a commute of 15 minutes or
less--that biking amenities should be more of a need than a want.
In
Marin County, Steve Kinsey of the Board of Supervisors also wants to
change public attitude toward non-motorized transportation and create
strong advocacy organizations to envision what the county of 200,000
people can be as a community. Kinsey said the county is focusing on
low-cost, high-return investments, and that 9 of 11 cities in the
county have master plans to turn "dreams into drawings."
Columbia
mayor Darwin Hindman noted that his city, which has about 95,000
residents (including about 30,000 students from the University of
Missouri), has been a trailblazer before. Twenty years ago it built one
of nation's first trails in a former railroad bed. While there was
originally skepticism for the idea, the trail has been a huge success,
which has convinced Hindman that, "If you provide people with a
comfortable, safe [biking] system, they're going to go out and use it."
Columbia has recruited a 35-member advisory committee and will also use
a consultant to develop its own bicycling master plan. "We're hoping to
become the Munster of Missouri, at least," Hindman said.
Munster's
mayor Berthold Tillmann was the keynote speaker for the event, and he
described some of the details behind the cultural shift in Munster that
has more people getting around on foot and by bicycle than by
automobile.
Munster tries to approach all development with a
sense of its history. The town that began with the founding of a
monastery in 793 A.D. had to be rebuilt after 90 percent of it was
destroyed in World War II, Tillmann said. A 4.5-kilometer (or 3-mile)
promenade encircles the center of town, and there are another 500
kilometers of bicycle lanes and paths in the city.
?Berthold Tillmann
Many
of the bike lanes are colored red and are at least two meters wide,
allowing adequate room for passing. In certain bus lanes where speeds
are slower, bicycles are permitted, and there are specific bicycle
streets where, Tillman said, "motor vehicle traffic is permitted
secondarily." Stoplights at intersections may have special signals and
timing for bikers, and some intersections even have a bicycle
"floodgate." In these areas, bicyclists gather en masse, and when the
light turns green they get up to a 20-second head start to clear the
intersection and make their turns.
In addition, there are 8,000
bike racks downtown that supplement a 3,000-bike facility beneath the
central train station. As for service, Tillmann said there are 40
bicycle stores in town, and if a bike breaks down during a trip, people
can phone the Leezendoc service, which dispatches a vehicle Tillmann
said is "packed with replacement parts to get their bicycle back on the
road."
And while cyclists do not uniformly wear helmets,
Tillmann said the roads are relatively safe. Of 370,000 bike trips only
848 accidents were reported all last year, and they happen "so seldom
that every accident is noticed in the papers," he said.
While
Munster's may be a model to emulate, every area has its own innate
challenges. Kevin Krizek, an assistant professor in the Humphrey
Institute of Public Affairs, pointed that local bicycle commuters tend
to be male, white, aged 18-44, and of relatively high income.
Communities need to look at who chooses to use non-motorized
transportation and why, and address their plans accordingly.
The
2006 Oberstar Forum drew a crowd of about 300 to the Great Hall of
Coffman Memorial Union on the Twin Cities campus. Out the windows to
the west stood the two-tiered Washington Avenue Bridge, whose lower
level transports cars over the Mississippi River while up above,
thousands more cross from the East to West Banks by bike or on foot.
Even more fittingly, the forum aligned with the first breakout day of
spring, when temperatures climbed to the upper 70s and bikes came out
of the woodwork.
When the event ended just after 4:30 p.m.,
Oberstar announced his next activity, which he would share with Mayor
Tillmann and some other guests--a bike ride around campus.
Would you like to contribute to C.I.C.L.E.? Do you a have bike-related article, news story, event, idea, suggestion, etc...? Check out our submissions page.