Category: colorado

Colorado teacher continuing education

One of the goals of the State’s Safe Routes program is to reach children statewide with bicycle and pedestrian safety education. Bicycle Colorado educators are traveling around the state bringing Safe Routes to Durango, Buena Vista, Yuma, La Junta, and Steamboat Springs to train teachers and administrators to implement Safe Routes programs in their areas by teaching students, parents, and teachers safe bicycling and walking practices. Teachers leave the training with classroom toolkits, including complete lesson plans and worksheets.

Upcoming training sessions in these areas:

    Yuma – Friday, March 21st, 9am-5pm
    Buena Vista – Friday, April 4th, 9am-5pm
    La Junta – Thursday, April 24th, 9am-5pm
    Steamboat Springs – Friday, May 2nd, 9-5

These bicycle education courses are accredited through Adams State College, providing participating teachers with continuing education credits required by the state.

For online registration for these classes and more information about the Safe Routes to School program in Colorado, visit the Bicycle Colorado Safe Routes page.

Good life cyclist

Mike the cyclist commutes 24 miles from Centennial, Colorado to Lakewood. He recently started spreading the good word about cycling on Good Life Cyclist, where he shares all things good about riding a bicycle in Colorado.

Mike enjoys mountain biking in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. “I call the foothills my backyard playground,” he writes. “From my house I can ride 20 to 30 minutes and explore Green Mountain, Red Rocks Park, Mount Falcon and Lair Of The Bear. I loop these all together for a 40 mile training ride.”

Regarding his commute, Mike writes, “I love it – this is my main way to get in the training hours while still doing something I have to anyway (get to work) and saves gas, wear and tear on the car. However the money I have been spending on bicycle gear might balance out the gas savings.”

What is he training for?

My main cycling goal right now is to train, prepare and finish the Great Divide Race in 2008. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (aka GDMBR) was put together by Adventure Cycling and is the longest off-pavement bike route in the world. It crosses the continental divide a total of 27 times. Its total length is 2,490 miles starting in Montana at the Canadian border and finishing in New Mexico at the Mexican border.

The route is the longest and most challenging off road bicycle tour in the world. It is the Holy Grail of the mountain bike world. My goal is to complete it in under 20 days. The record is 15 days 4 hours and 18 minutes. Only 5 people have ever completed this in under 20 days.

Mike, as a television commercial producer, plans to record his experience of the Great Divide Race 2008 and produce a documentary. Check out Good Life Cyclist.

Denver 16th Street Pedestrian Mall

I feel like ranting today.

Yield To Mall Shuttles

What’s wrong with this picture?

The 16th Street Pedestrian Mall is a 16-block long pedestrian mall running through downtown Denver. 16th Street is closed to absolutely all vehicular traffic — including bicycles — EXCEPT for the free mall shuttle buses that circulate regularly up and down 16th Street.

I didn’t think to take a photo of it while I was there, but this pedestrian mall is completely devoid of (wait for it…) pedestrian traffic! Actually, there are plenty of pedestrians, but they’re all jammed onto the ridiculously narrow sidewalks, just like anywhere else in downtown Denver. The street portion is given completely to the mall shuttles, and in fact jaywalking is illegal. Did I mention you can’t bike on 16th? Not only that, pedestrian traffic is so heavy that walking a bike through the sidewalks is impractical.

When I crossed mid-block before taking this photo, a shuttle bus driver actually accelerated and came within inches of running me down! Shortly after taking this photo, I was standing at the edge of the sidewalk — a bus pulled along side me skimming the curb and the side mirror would have hit my head if I didn’t move away at the last minute! One woman on the crosswalk near this sign screamed when the bus driver didn’t slow for her until the very last second.

These shuttle drivers on the pedestrian mall are belligerent to the pedestrians who are in "their" street. I wrote a letter to my RTD representative about this, who ignored it just like the previous two letters I’ve written to him.