WHERE BEAUTIFUL HOMES BEGIN!

The Chic Cyclist

Name: Lacey Mahone

Age: 25

Occupation: Owns a company that develops social and digital strategies

Neighborhood: Anita and Skillman

Bike: Mercier Kilo road bike

Mahone built up her fixed-gear bike herself, with the help of Switching

Gears Cyclery in Expo Park. “It’s my first bike that I built up,” she says.

“After a while, you figure out what you like and don’t like, so it makes sense to customize.” She started riding bikes about three years ago after she began work on a film project documenting “this new casual Dallas riding scene,” she says. She met a lot of people she really liked and decided to start riding herself. Mahone rides around the city, along the Katy Trail or out to dinner, but “it’s rare that I would go out to White Rock and do 30 miles,” she says. She is involved with dallascyclestyle.com, which aims to increase interest in cycling through fashion and lifestyle. Even though we might not see a bike helmet on a Paris runway, Mahone always wears one. “I didn’t initially because they look stupid,” she says. But recently, helmets saved the lives of two friends injured in separate bike accidents. “I have a master’s degree, and I worked really hard on my brain, so it’s worth protecting,” she says. “I always wear a helmet, even with a dress.”

Laying down a new infrastructure, he says, would basically rewrite the rules of the road that have been established for more than a century—that bicycles are vehicles and should be treated as such via integration, not segregation.

“I’m not against the Bike Plan. I’m against the placement of education at the bottom of the list. [Education is] cheap, it’s efficient and it’s quick.”

Wharton makes an interesting point. There is something empowering about riding a bike on a busy thoroughfare during rush hour. Pumping along as two-ton vehicles approach from behind, slow down and pass. You own your lane. You are confident and you understand your rights as a cyclist. Wharton, owner of the Cycling Center of Dallas, demonstrates that bicycles can share the road harmoniously with cars no bike lanes needed.

Assessing the needs of a person during the early stages of Alzheimer’s can be difficult. It is very important to know when the time is right to seek help in caring for a person who is showing changes in mood, behavior or appearance, all of which can be indicators of Alzheimer’s disease.

Thrilling though it may be, most people won’t do it, Kalhammer says.

“I just want [the vehicular cyclists] to understand that their way of riding is not for everyone. We’re never going to have a significant number of riders using bikes for work or recreation if we don’t provide these other types of facilities.”

The guys at the bike store say there is evidence that plans similar to the Dallas Bike Plan work well. “Just look at where it has been introduced in other cities and you will see that it works,” Smith says, adding that — as most seem to agree — “education needs to be a significant component of the overall plan.”

FOR THE TIME BEING, education might be the only affordable solution. With the city facing a slim bond program in November and a best-case-scenario budget deficit of $50 million, it could be a while before the bike plan is realized. The city council approved the grandiose plan eight months ago, but the $16 million price tag to be paid out over 10 years, implementing $1.6-$1.8 million worth of on-street bike facilities per year, seemed to catch council members off guard. “I think much of the council was surprised by that,” says council member Linda Koop, who was an early supporter of updating the bikeway system. She and council member Angela Hunt traveled to Portland about four years ago to study the network. They met with the bike coordinator there to learn strategies they could apply to Dallas.

A Street Services briefing in December revealed that in addition to the original expense, maintenance alone would cost up to $3.2 million annually. That raises questions about priorities since the city already struggles to maintain roads, sidewalks and alleys. One possible solution is to bundle city services to cut costs. When crews re-stripe a road, they add a bike lane while they’re at it. “We’re still hopeful we’ll get some early wind through the bond program,” Koop says. The cost for striping and signage is pretty typical for any successful on-street bike facilities. The city’s Sustainable Development and Construction office is seeking grants, includ- ing one that would pay for a fundraising position to help raise money in the private sector. Advocacy groups also are trying to raise their own money to help get the plan moving. “The funding for the infrastructure is the biggest obstacle,” Kalhammer says.

IF OUR CITY can hurdle the financial obstacles, the Dallas Bike Plan, if implemented correctly, will improve conditions for everyone, Kalhammer says.

“I don’t see it impeding [anyone’s] way of life. It is my hope that once they see how useful riding a bicycle can be, they might even want to try it themselves one day and realize the health benefits of it.”

The city is moving forward with the bike plan, Kalhammer says, and the public will be invited to get involved in the process.

“As we’re implementing the facilities for the different neighborhoods, and we finalize the layouts for each street, we’re probably going to have public meetings to get their input on the amendments.”

One of the first projects will be a Jefferson Avenue viaduct downtown that would connect the Santa Fe Trail to the Katy Trail (and the White Rock Trail, which winds through our neighborhood, as of last summer is connected to Santa Fe, just south of the lake).

As for getting people prepared to live in a city built for bicycles, education is indeed vital, Kalhammer says, but the more people we get on bikes, the safer cycling will be.

“We can promote the safe use of the roadways through public address, radio TV billboards, brochures and even safety workshops,” he says.

“But honestly, I think once the momentum of the bicycle culture starts, I think it’s going to happen organically. Once people start seeing the bike lanes and how they operate, [everyone] will get used to it.”

Park Board member Kleinman agrees that getting more bikes out there, even a few, will spark the culture change that needs to happen before the bike plan, down the road, can become successful.

“It does require a cultural change with neighbors and neighborhoods,” he says. “I don’t think we’re ever going to live in this Danish utopia where 40 percent or so of the population goes everyone on their bikes [however] I don’t think it takes a lot of bikes to make a difference.”