For those of you that missed it, 2013 was Salt Lake City’s Year of the Bike. Personally, a claim like that brings to mind the far reaching social and infrastructural changes required to undermine urban motorized transportation, make cycling the primary mode of personal transportation, and take a big step towards ending the air pollution or “inversion” that has become a near constant threat to the health of SLC’s Residents. Laws prohibiting single occupancy vehicles, expanded bike lanes and trails, economic incentives for cycling… Basically shutting down all vehicular traffic inside city limits except for trucks, buses and trains is pretty much what I have in mind when I think of a city giving over an entire year for the advocacy and awareness of bicycling. Claiming anything as “Year of” should mean it’s influence is far greater than any other social or political force. Think, Year of the Axe Murdering Homeless Man, or, Year of the West Valley City Gonorrhea Infection. Although those might be titles you’d affix after the point, they pretty well capture what has happened. So looking back on the last year, it’s hard to notice any real changes in Salt Lake’s transportation hierarchy. Although I’m not a resident of SLC, and my time spent there usually amounts to a few weeks in the spring and fall, from my perch atop Little Cottonwood Canyon it’s easy to look down and see the murky, poisonous soup, and know damn well that it’s not a bunch of cyclists that’ve caused it. But while SLC didn’t under go any major cycling-themed transformations, they’ve still managed to put together a few initiatives worth mentioning. Also, in honor and celebration of the year gone by, I’ve dumped a bunch of pictures and captions in the following post that wrap up our bike-powered adventures in and around SLC this fall.
Year of the Bike
