Autumn is fast approaching, which leaves just a few months left to go out on a comfortable bike ride before colder weather arrives.
With Champaign County Bike Month underway, some community members are getting a taste of riding on two wheels for the first time in the area.
On Wednesday’s Bike to Work Day event, IPM Senior Editor Arjun Thakkar rode to a welcome station in Urbana. He asked cyclists who gathered there what they liked about biking in the community — and what could make the area more bike-friendly.
Several residents said biking feels liberating and allows them to notice details about their community they would not see while driving a car. Others said they would like to see more bike and pedestrian-friendly streets as well as more awareness from drivers.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.
Kathy Adams: So we’ve been looking for excuses to ride our bikes to school, and this event actually got [my son] excited to come to school today. We got our bikes ready this weekend, and it’s been really hot this summer, so I feel like we didn’t do as much bike riding as we normally do, but now that the weather’s cooled down, it’s beautiful out and [a] great reason to come outside and see other people riding their bike.
I love getting outside in general, and so I feel like you get to see more of the community and visiting the parks, and there’s a lot of great places all around the city to explore.
I know where we live, it’s not as easy because there’s not bike lanes, and so it’s not always safe for him, like my kids, to ride on their own. Traffic is a concern. And so I know those are things that the city has done exploratory studies around and trying to find, like, where do we need to add more bike paths? Where do we need to kind of expand accessibility for biking?
Mary Heather Jingco: So I’m actually a new graduate student over at [the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]. I moved here from Guam, and back home, it’s not really as commutable. This is, like I said, this is my first time like, biking around. And as much as I love the bus system, sometimes it’s nice being able to have my own autonomy. Hence why my friends gave me a bike. And as I mentioned, this is my first time doing the Bike to Work day. I think it’s like a really cool initiative, just encouraging people to like bike more and not be as reliable, like, or not using like cars as much.
I’ve only biked a couple of times, mostly going to and from campus, from my home. What I noticed is it’s nice how there’s bike lanes, like, at least within the Urbana downtown and on campus. The only thing I’m having a little trouble with is, in terms of the roads, there’s potholes here and there. So I just have to be, like, mindful about where I’m biking, because I don’t want to get into an accident.
But otherwise, I think more bike lanes would be nice. I mean, there’s some areas where there [are] no bike lanes, and being like a new biker, having to bike, with lots of cars going past me, sharing the same lane, it’s a little bit scary. I forgot how tiring biking can be. So, like, just even to and from campus, I feel like it’s a great way to get a workout in. Another thing is autonomy, like, especially since the bus schedule at least around my area, is not as reliable and it’s not as frequent. Having a bike now means I can get to and from places without having to worry about, like a bus schedule, like limiting me in terms of being able to go around.
Percy Hernandez: I bike because, first of all, I really enjoy biking. It feels good. It’s good cardio. It also just is much more liberating than being in a car, getting somewhere on your own two feet, and that just feels pretty powerful. I think that we’re slowly destroying our planet, and we should try to destroy it … a little more slowly if we possibly can, and just try to do what we can. I think a lot of people who drive also don’t consider that biking — if you can bike rather than drive when you have a car, it also is great for your car. It means you’re not using your car as much for the sort of shorter trips that can lead to more mechanical problems.
Champaign-Urbana has some real advantages for cyclists. A lot of those advantages are simply the topography of Champaign-Urbana. It’s pretty flat, it’s somewhat dense. Like I said, you’re never really biking more than, like, six miles to get from point A to point B, unless you’re really, really far out there.
I think the biggest issues are infrastructure. I don’t mean, you know, painting a bike lane on. I mean paying attention to the roads, which benefits everybody. And I think the other issue is driver education. I think that a lot of people driving are not bike-conscious. They’ll whip around corners. They’re going pretty quickly. I think that my commutes would be a lot easier if people were a little bit more patient with bicycles. Bikes have the right to take the lane, and that often isn’t respected. So if you’re biking, you have to choose between either taking the lane and getting essentially tailgated by a much larger vehicle that could kill you, or trying to kind of pull up by the side, and then people will pass, but they’ll pass with like, you know, less than a foot, which is not safe. So I think ensuring that drivers understand that, when people are biking, they’re actually doing them a favor, because it means less wear and tear on the roads, it means more parking spaces for them, and being respectful of that, and treating bikes as vehicles that have human beings on them.