Laurie Paulson “Wows” PBOT Bicycle Brown Bag

Last Thursday, Beach Bike Train leader Laurie Paulson “wowed” a full room at the Portland Building talking about the explosion of biking at Beach School. You could hear the “awes” and envy as she showed pictures of full bike racks at Beach. There was a round of applause after she showed a picture from last years walk and bike to school day that had over 100 riders. In her presentation Laurie said there were three things that really made biking a thing at Beach.

1. The Bike Fairy (who leaves notes and prizes on kids bikes)
2. Bike Trains
3. All the new Neighborhood Greenways being built around Beach

Parents from Cesar Chavez and Reike also talked about walking and biking at their schools. The Ronda from Maplewood talked about a punch card raffle they had put together for kids that walk to school. The winner got a singed pair of shoes from the Trailbrazers. The competition sounded like a good idea but she seemed moderately impressed with the turn out it drew. She said 45 (which seemed pretty good to me) kids took part.

It is always nice to hear parents talk about what works and doesn’t. They are much more objective and critical. When civic employees talk it is much more about the long term and trends, where parents want things to be better sooner rather than later (it is only a few years before their kids move on to the next school). In the question and answer section I asked whether, “given that many infrastructure improvements cost millions of dollar, would be more effective to spend some of the money on paying kids to walk and bike to school?” I was surprised that each parent agreed that the infrastructure was the best place to spend money. (a proposed one mile side walk infill on Capitol Highway near Maplewood is set to cost 10 million dollars) Laurie was the only one that said it was more of a balance and money should be spent on both.