[Utah Statesman Viewpoint 4-Feb-1995] USU planners and administration should reject their role in the proposed Smithfield-to-USU bike trail project. USU has little financial incentive to participate in the project but bears a potential credibility risk as an educational institution. The project is based on a popular but unsound premise of danger and proposes a flawed response to perceived risks. Local governments along the canal's route have given various indications of commitment to the proposal which has been developed by Hyde Park City. The proposal seeks 80% funding from Utah's share of federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) money, administered by Utah-DOT, to develop transportation alternatives. What benefits will USU derive from supporting and participating in the development of this trail? The trail will provide a potential commuting route for USU staff and students who live in its vicinity. Logan's bike/pedestrian master plan cites a number of surveys which suggest that 6 to 10% of local commuting could be accomplished by bicycle under certain conditions. By examination of the campus phone book, home addresses of USU staff indicate that as many as 240 USU employees might live within the vicinity of the proposed trail. I have generously estimated that vicinity to include all of Smithfield east of Main street, all of Hyde Park, and all of North Logan and northeast Logan east of 8th East but not up on Logan's northeast bench. Six to ten percent of that group amounts to 14 to 24 commuters. Who might those employees be? For only $400,000 of someone else's money we can save 14 to 24 parking spaces when the weather is nice. What does it cost us? One cost is the 20% local contribution. The local contribution can be "in kind" - labor and property. Guess where the plan expects to get much of the local 20%? USU's Stadium Parking lot is the southern intermodal endpoint facility. That's where cycle commuters will be expected to park their bikes and hop on the campus shuttle to go the last 4 blocks to work. Another cost is the damage to the university's reputation as an institution committed to education. The whole notion of a bike trail as a transportation facility panders to the myth and superstition that transportation cycling on the public roads is prohibitively unsafe. Logan's bike plan and Hyde Park's proposed bike plan repeatedly assert that safety concerns are a deterrent to citizens who might otherwise choose cycling for some transportation. But a growing number of cyclists, planners and transportation engineers recognize that much of the danger is the result of a lack of understanding, training and skill and can be corrected with education, awareness and promotion. Everyone starts out uneducated. Do we build separate facilities for 16 year olds to drive on, so they will be safe the first time they get the car keys? No, we teach them to be informed and law abiding users of the existing system of public roads. Then law enforcement urges them to stay that way. Likewise, for cyclists, we must teach how the rules of the road work for cycling. Cyclists must be able to go where their transportation needs take them, not just where a few trails go. We will never be able to build a separate system of bike trails to meet all of those needs. Our attempts to do so will be thwarted first by the fact that a bike trail system must intersect frequently with the existing road system. Those intersections will be new points of right-of-way conflict where cyclists will always lose. Traffic engineers know that accidents happen at traffic flow intersections. But our untrained cyclists think that the danger to them is the overtaking motorist. Bike paths protect cyclists from the imaginary danger behind them while creating more intersection hazards in front of them. To avoid those real dangers, the cyclist on trails must yield at every intersection. Cyclists on roads must yield at half of the intersections on average. Like motorists, cyclists can choose roads with relatively few yields or stops. Safe cycling is achieved through some combination of experience and education. I began using a bicycle for some transportation needs over 25 years ago. I started with many of the same fears and misunderstandings that are expressed in the local bike plans. Through trial and error, and with a little prudence, luck and self education, I have come to recognize a different set of obstacles which deter citizens from using cycling as a transportation mode. Education programs are in place in many communities. Those programs have the support of local law enforcement. One major cycle education program is "Effective Cycling," a textbook and on- the-road training program developed by the League of American Bicyclists. If such an educational program were available locally, I'd be among the first to sign up. I'm sure there are still some gaps in my self-education. The success of education programs is measured both by increased use of cycling as a transportation mode and by a low accident rate involving cyclists. This is the solution that USU and the community should support in order to make cycling an attractive transportation alternative in Cache Valley.