2014. Street open to humans during the July 4th Parade. Bike Walk Dunwoody on a roll as plans were made that promised access for all. See the joy in the video below.
Not one person will volunteer to lead it now. If interested, see update on this post for reason stated by one Millenial who was interested in doing so.
If u got what it takes to overcome known barriers here, contact City Councilor Joe Seconder (who founded the group) and he will surely welcome you with open arms and generously fill you in. Brookhaven, Roswell, and Alpharetta all have active and effective groups.
Reminder: You can’t feel like a kid the rest of your life when you ride a bike . . . if you didn’t ride a bike as a kid. Your baby not yet born will be in college before a network that meets NACTO guidelines will be built here unless you get involved to accelerate real change that eliminates greenwashing. And your current kids won’t wait. They’ll grow up. Mine have. (They came to City Hall when they were 8 and 13 when where we live became the newest city in the USA and they helped bake principles of sustainability into the city’s DNA. They are now 21 and 26. The ground has been laid for you. Rubber-hits-the-road implementation, and misrepresentation about that from the city, has been the problem.)
I know u r busy with the whole school saga and juggling jobs during this pandemic. Did u know less than .001% of kids ride their bikes to school here? Making that safe and supported* could provide so many benefits to your family.
Here’s a mom (shown in that video) who showed up and made a measurable difference for families in this entire city. However, her husband is a survivor of road violence (like me) and her son, who has had frighteningly-close calls while riding his bike to visit friends, is now almost grown . . . and still we wait for safe access that meets NACTO guidelines.
Who’s next? U have many people’s shoulders to stand on. U r not alone.
*When my kids rode bikes to school (with me as a bodyguard, as unfortunately necessary), they had to wait to leave the school building at the end of the day until every single bus and carpool left. Also, it was considered a “special circumstance” that they rode bikes to/from the JCC camps one mile from our home (at which there is not even a crosswalk, FYI, despite there being a bus stop right there and very robust programs for children, seniors, and people with disabilities), and I had to arrange their specific dismissal every year. Those are policies that disincentivized bike riding and need to change, if they haven’t already. If interested, there are three chapters in particular in my book — chapters 3, 6, and the epilogue — that share local rubber-hits-the-road lived experience.
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 