Map identifying geographic areas for improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists, as noted in the 2013 non-motorized transportation plan update.

The 182-page update will be an amendment to the main non-motorized transportation plan, which was adopted in 2007. The new document is organized into three sections: (1) planning and policy updates; (2) updates to near-term recommendations; and (3) long-term recommendations.

Examples of planning and policy issues include design guidelines, recommendations for approaches like bike boulevards and bike share programs, and planning practices that cover education campaigns, maintenance, crosswalks and other non-motorized elements for pedestrians and bicyclists.

For example, the update recommends that the city begin developing a planning process for bike boulevards, which are described as “a low-traffic, low-speed road where bicycle interests are prioritized.” Sections of West Washington (from Revena to First), Elmwood (from Platt to Canterbury) and Broadway (from its southern intersection with Plymouth to where it rejoins Plymouth about a mile to the northeast are suggested for potential bike boulevards.

Near-term recommendations include lower-cost efforts like re-striping roads to install bike lanes and adding crossing islands. Longer-term projects that were included in the 2007 plan are re-emphasized: the Allen Creek Greenway, Border to Border Trail, Gallup Park & Fuller Road paths, and and a Briarwood-Pittsfield pedestrian bridge.

Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, was on hand to review the update and answer questions. No one spoke at a public hearing on this item.

This brief was filed from the second floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

Top to bottom: Tom Wright, Frank Schwende, Thomas Kula. (Photos by the writer.)

And as the weather gets warmer, the primary election season will also start to heat up – just as surely as journalists will appeal to hackneyed clichés to describe it. For local office candidates, as well as commentators on local races, part of the sport is to categorize the community into convenient groupings – like parents, homeowners, renters, students, landlords, environmentalists, developers, new urbanists, preservationists, park-lovers, young professionals, old hippies, the handicapped, business people, transit riders, etc.

I’m not certain that bicyclists would make the list as a voter group. But they’ll serve to make the point I want to make.

Yes, that non-exhaustive list of groupings is a sometimes useful and convenient set of labels. But just as the word “zebra” is a convenient label for those horse-shaped animals with a black and white pattern of stripes, that doesn’t mean that all of those “zebras” are necessarily biologically related.

The title of this column, in fact, is a play on the title of a fairly famous essay by Stephen Jay Gould: “What, If Anything, Is a Zebra?” That essay was written back in the early ’80s and I’m not sure if the evolutionary biologists ever settled the question. I don’t really care – zebras don’t live around these parts, and even if they did, they’re notorious non-voters.

But bicyclists do live around here. And they’ll serve as well as any grouping to illustrate the fact that among any “community” we include in a list of labels, there’ll be smaller sub-communities that have more specialized interests. So we’d do well to avoid thinking of these convenient labels as reflective of any one coherent community.

This column takes a look at three groups of people that could fairly be labeled “bicyclists,” with the idea that they’re separate groups, with maybe some overlap in people, but which are fundamentally different: Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition, Bicycles Are Traffic, and Common Cycle. I look at each group through the lens of one of their events I’ve attended over the last week and a half.

Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition: RAT

Friday two weeks ago was Frank Schwende’s final Ride Around Town (RAT), an advocacy ride sponsored by the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition (WBWC). Schwende has led the ride on a couple of loops through downtown Ann Arbor – rain or shine, snow or dry – almost every second Friday of the month since Friday, Oct. 12, 2007. The ride starts from Liberty Plaza at Liberty & Division.

Frank Schwende, left, helps Aren Stobby affix a toy stuffed rat to his helmet. Stuffed rats are the unofficial mascot for the Ride Around Town (RAT).

That inaugural RAT was documented on ArborUpdate (AU), a recently-defunct community discussion and information source. Its online archives continue to serve as useful public history from roughly 2005-10. Steve Bean, now a candidate for mayor, participated in that first ride and reported back to AU that there had been eight participants: “We got several supportive comments from pedestrians, a few honks, and lots of curious looks.”

The point of the ride, as Schwende explained to the gathering of bicyclists at Liberty Plaza over a week ago Friday, was to “take to the streets, not take over the streets.” It would be  a demonstration, he said, of how bicycles could be operated like vehicles. The group would be signaling turns and stopping at stop signs, he told the roughly 15 riders assembled on the plaza.

As we headed west on Liberty towards the State Street area, an Ann Arbor fire department ladder truck sped past us with siren and lights going. We caught up to it as it parked near the intersection of North University and State, but it wasn’t clear what the nature of the emergency call was.

Kris Talley, left, and Karen Moorhead, right, as the RAT pauses on Main Street at Washington for a traffic light.

Cycling along with the group, I chatted with Kris Talley, who’s a current board member and past chair of the WBWC. The group recently achieved official nonprofit status, effective April 1, 2010, which she said was an important step in positioning the group to be a strong advocate for cycling and walking. Donations to the coalition are now tax exempt.

The RAT is one of several different projects the WBWC works on. Others include participation in local and regional non-motorized planning efforts with the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, and sponsorship of valet bicycle parking at the Ann Arbor art fairs.

The post-ride meal, which has evolved into a tradition for the RAT, was at Tios. The first “rat hole” – as Schwende is fond of calling the rotating location for the post-ride meal – was also at Tios. At that time, though, Tios was located on Huron Street. [The building was purchased by the city of Ann Arbor and demolished. In their new location, and equipped with a liquor license, business at Tios appears to be good.]

Why was last Friday’s ride Schwende’s last RAT? He’s moving to Colorado – to Fort Collins to be exact. The 60-year-old Schwende will work his last day at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Ann Arbor site on May 27, and will head to Colorado on June 15, where the “roads are wide and the beer is good.”

But in Ann Arbor, the RAT will continue. Among those who gathered at Tios after the ride was Pete Hines, recently elected chair of the WBWC board, who’ll be ensuring that the rides have a leader. Though Hines did not ride on Friday – he was nursing some “road rash” from a spill he took on his bike – he’s ridden most of the RATs over the last two and a half years.

Bicycles Are Traffic

Among the 15 or so riders on last Friday’s RAT were several folks under 30 years old, including Tom Wright and Aren Stobby – they’re housemates and work together at the Black Pearl restaurant on Main Street.

Tom Wright on the University of Michigan Diag ready to head out for a ride.

Stobby was riding a 1976 vintage 10-speed that belonged to his dad, and was still adorned with its Michigan State University campus bike registration from that era. Wright was astride a 1964 Hiawatha Gambler that he’d acquired from his friend Bob a few days earlier.

Dave Fanslow, who rode the RAT on Friday and is not, ahem, under 30, offered to buy the first round at Tios for anyone who was under 30. The invitation didn’t result in any of the under-30 crowd sticking around for the post-RAT meal.

But Wright told the group that he was planning a ride a week later – on Saturday, leaving from the University of Michigan Diag, organized under the name Bikes are Traffic. That’s just a name, as far as I can tell – it’s not an entity on its way to formal organization as a nonprofit.

Figuring I’d give a nod to bridging the generational gap – I’m also not under 30 – I headed over the the Diag at the appointed 1 p.m. gathering time for the 1:30 p.m. ride-out. Wright and I were the only two who showed up. Wright attributed the poor turnout to a schedule conflict with a DIY craft fair the same day. Undeterred, the pair of us headed out of the Diag north towards the intersection of State and Liberty.

Heading west on Liberty past the Michigan Theater on the right.

We quickly picked up a friend of Wright’s, Liam Carroll, who was riding a green-rimmed fixed-gear bike. A few years earlier, Wright and Carroll had both sung in the Ann Arbor boy’s choir. Carroll  hadn’t planned to ride, but responded to Wright’s invitation to ride along: “Where?” “Just around.” “Oh, I’ve been there before, but wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”

And so we wound through the downtown, with the helmetless Wright  signaling his turns, hewing to the traffic laws – even those requiring vehicles to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.

When Wright braked to a halt at a mid-block crossing between William and South University on State Street, it earned him a thank-you from the pedestrians who were standing in the walk waiting for traffic to clear.

Wright said there’s often more of his cohorts from the downtown food-retail scene – he works at Cafe Ambrosia as well as at The Black Pearl – who take to the streets late on Monday nights for a spin through the downtown.

Whereas WBWC is more of a formal advocacy group adorned with the trappings of nonprofit status, Tom Wright and Bicycles are Traffic are more of a loose federation whose enthusiasm for bicycles is realized in somewhat more spontaneous form.

Common Cycle

Common Cycle is a relatively new group, self-described on its website as in its “infancy” and looking to empower “Ann Arbor to ride bicycles by providing access to education, workspace, and resources.” They’re looking for help from like-minded people. One missing ingredient so far is a permanent space to work.

At Common Cycle's mobile repair stand, Jonathan Roe, left, gets some mechanical advice from Jimmy Raggett.

So their mission is currently being realized in the form of a mobile repair stand they’ve operated for the last few weeks at the Sunday Artisan Market in Kerrytown.

This Sunday found Jimmy Raggett, who heads up the service department for Two-Wheel Tango‘s Jackson Road store,  running the repair stand. The previous week, Jonathon Roe had noticed Common Cycle at the market, so on Sunday he brought his bicycle over for a diagnosis.

Raggett’s verdict: The front disk brake needed a new caliper, but the rear V-brakes could be restored to working order with some cabling and pads. Raggett offered to take Roe’s email address and coordinate tracking down parts for next Sunday. And Roe took him up on the offer.

Hanging out with the Common Cyclers was Jimmy White Bull, 42, who grew up in Ann Arbor. “Are you with Common Cycle?” “No, but I’m commonly around.” White Bull recalled how the brick paving of the streets used to be more prevalent than just around Kerrytown – he enjoyed the feeling of riding a bike along the brick, he said. White Bull said he’d participated in several of the alley cat bike races Raggett has organized over the last few years.

Thomas Kula, seated, gets his spoke tension evaluated by Jimmy Raggett. In the background (with a green water bottle) is Evan Williams.

Also fitting that description at the Common Cycle mobile repair stand on Sunday was Thomas Kula, who was learning from Raggett how to true wheels. Kula, I knew, helped organize the most recent Cranksgiving event, an alley cat bicycle race which donates its proceeds to Food Gatherers. The first Cranksgiving event in the Ann Arbor area was spearheaded by Andy Hromadka, a board member of WBWC.

So given the apparent connections, why is Common Cycle pedaling down a path to become its own nonprofit organization? Why not just fit themselves under the umbrella of WBWC?

Part of the explanation that Common Cycler Bill Merrill sent to me by email is that members of this like-minded group – committed to a common workspace and the programs that could come from that – didn’t first meet in the context of the WBWC.

And Pieter Kleymeer, also via email, stressed that Common Cycle is talking to groups like WBWC, as well as the Kiwanis Club, and getDowntown, but that Common Cycle has a specific strategy for their advocacy. While the WBWC can put pressure on local governments to build infrastructure, he wrote, Common Cycle wants to “put more bikes on the road than the current infrastructure can handle.”

Kleymeer might have something in mind like this bicycle rush hour video shot in Utrecht in the Netherlands. [By way of comparison, Ann Arbor has a population of a bit over 100,000, while around 300,000 people live in Utrecht.]

Coda

Of course, the three bicycling communities I covered in this piece aren’t exhaustive of all bicyclists. Some readers are perhaps most familiar with another species of bicyclist – the skin-tight-shorts-and-jersey-wearing, energy-gel-slurping recreational athletes who zip along Huron River Drive. But even they will fall into smaller subsets – there are the triathletes who are thinking about their next swim or their next run, and the pure road cyclists, who just stick to cycling.

There’s also folks who toodle along on a quiet cul-de-sac with their children riding little 16-inch wheel bikes with training wheels. And there are myriad others who can’t be excluded from the classification of “bicyclist” – but it would be a mistake to draw conclusions about what “bicyclists” think based on any one of these subgroups.

And the same is true, I think, of any other broad category label that’s likely to be applied to other groups of people during primary election season.

Elizabeth Tidd saddled up at the Fourth Avenue parking structure after attending the first organizational meeting for an Ann Arbor Bike Choir.

The idea crystallized for Susan Zielinski 16 years ago, when she was was riding her bike through traffic in Toronto, trying to keep Beethoven’s ninth symphony in her mind as the incessant traffic noises threatened to drive it out.

“What I need,” she thought, “is 20 people riding with me, singing in four-part harmony to drown out the sound of the traffic.”

To humor her, a handful of her friends planned what they thought would be a one-time bike chorale performance during Toronto’s bike week. They called themselves Song Cycles – the Choir on Bikes.

CBC radio called for an interview before they’d even had a rehearsal, and minor celebrity ensued.

Zielinski moved to Ann Arbor three years ago to work on a sustainable transportation project at the University of Michigan, and with the help of Michigan Peaceworks executive director Laura Russello, she’s once again at the hub of a burgeoning bike choir.

The Ann Arbor Bike Choir will make its debut on May 15, as part of getDowntown‘s Bike to Work Day. They’ll perform selections from the Song Cycles repertoire of cheerful, bike-adapted songs, which includes  “The Bicyclized Ode to Joy” and “Way’O” (Adapted from Day ‘O, with the chorus “Freeway is not de only way home.”)

The group is still looking for a director, but 15 people showed up at Arbor Brewing Co. Monday for the bike choir’s first meeting, a healthy start considering the Toronto group began with about five people and maxed out at 25. The Chronicle dropped by to check it out, too.

“I think a lot of us were feeling like we didn’t fit the activist, critical mass stuff,” Zielinski said. “We wanted to show the beauty of the bicycle through music and fun.”

Doug and Elizabeth Tidd ride with the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society and sing in their church choir. Doug found out about the bike choir meeting an hour and a half before it started. He called Elizabeth and headed down to Arbor Brewing to hold down a booth as singer/cyclists and cyclist/singers trickled in. Elizabeth, who’d spent most of her day on jury duty and the rest at work, really wanted to go home. But by the time she unlocked her bike to head home, she couldn’t stop grinning.

“It’s really a fun idea; I’m excited about it,” she said. “I have a friend who rides my speed and we make up songs and sing, scare the animals. I picture (the choir) just singing as we’re riding and promoting happy bicycling.”

As a Peaceworks venture, Russello says this could be something that brings the factions of the cycling community together – road riders, trail riders, commuters, anarchists.

“There’s a club called the Bang Gang,” Russello said. “I don’t know how big they are, but they wear leather jackets and stuff, and do most of their rides at night. I told a couple of members about this and they were really excited.”

Russello met Zielinski at a Peaceworks lecture series on sustainability, and the more they talked about starting a bike choir in Ann Arbor, the more it seems to fit the city’s sensibilities. There’s an environmental part, a social part, an activist part, a just-crazy-enough-to-work part.

Tom Bartlett, owner of Circumference Bicycles, offered use of his conference bike, which – for the six people who get to ride it – will eliminate the challenge of steering while reading music.

Two Wheel Tango founder Dennis Pontius unknowingly primed the Ann Arbor cycling community by naming his store after one of the Toronto choir’s original tunes. Pontius heard Song Cycles perform “Two Wheel Tango” – a song about the virtues of men on bikes – as the background music in a CBC television piece about men’s bike saddles. He thought it was a perfect name for a bike shop, so when he opened his in 1989, that’s what he called it.

“It’s just amazing,”  Zielinski said. “It’s a wonderful mix of people with a good, funny energy. They’re really serious about it, and they’ve got some great ideas. I’m loving being a part of it.”

The Toronto Choir on Bikes performed at festivals, conferences, concerts and demonstrations for 10 years before going their separate ways. They had choreography and bicycle-bell percussion. The director would ride in the front, sharing a tandem bike with a guy playing an accordion. And sometimes, true to Zielinski’s vision, they’d just take over a street with their symphony of self-propelled humanity.

“People just loved it,” said Zielinski, “I think that’s what kept us going. They were so surprised; they’d stop on the streets and laugh and listen. You’d have police officers and you could tell they were thinking, ‘Wait, aren’t you supposed to be in one lane?’ and ‘I really should stop you, but…’ We never had confrontations with them; we didn’t want to push those limits. We pushed enough other limits as it was.”