Bicycle advocacy moved into high gear in SLO County with the hiring of a professional director by the SLO Bicycle Coalition in May, 2003. You may have read a feature article in the Tribune on Septem-ber 10th, introducing the new Executive Director of the Bike Coalition, Joe Gilpin.

A 2001 graduate of Cal Poly with a Master’s degree in Transport Planning from Oxford University, Gilpin’s training and experience, combined with his passion for biking and his commitment to sustainabil-ity, make him well suited for this position.

More than 60 members of the biking community turned out for a membership meeting October 3rd at the SLO Library, billed as the "First Annual Bike-In Movie," which included two documentary films about cycling, as well as an update on current activities of the Bike Coalition, presented by Joe Gilpin.

As an advocacy organization, the SLO Bike Coalition is working in three areas to increase public awareness of the benefits of bicycling and to help improve the biking infrastructure. Their efforts include facilita-tion of projects already in planning and de-velopment; cooperation with other regional advocacy groups to promote pro-biking legislation at local, state and national lev-els; and promotion of educational programs to raise public aware-ness. The audience was heartened to learn of the Bike Coalition’s progress in helping move several longstanding projects toward comple-tion throughout the County of San Luis Obispo.

Two noteworthy additions to bik-ing infrastructure in the City of San Luis Obispo will be com-pleted by the end of 2003. A new class-2 bike lane has already been installed on Pismo Street, and an exciting new "Bike Boulevard" on Morro Street will provide a safe thoroughfare for bikers and pedestrians through downtown SLO.

The Bike Coalition is currently focusing its attention toward speeding up completion of the Railroad Bike Trail from the Amtrak station to the Cal Poly campus. This important project, requiring the construction of three new bridges, has been on the drawing board since the early 1990s. Once completed, this Clas-1 bikeway will provide a major thoroughfare for cyclists connecting the north and south ends of town. University students, commuters, and recreational bikers will all benefit from this precedent-setting collaboration among the City of San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly State University, and Union Pacific Railroad.

The Bob Jones City-to-Sea Bike Trail, a Class-1 recreational bike route from downtown SLO to Avila Beach, will be a major focus once Railroad Bike Trail has been completed.

Gilpin announced the receipt of a ma-jor grant by the SLOBC. Providing funding for the purchase of 200 commuter bikes, this award is intended to encourage workers now commuting by car to make the switch to bicycles.

For a survey of a broad range of proj-ects throughout SLO County now being spearheaded by the SLOBC, see Table 1. (Courtesy of the Fall 2003 issue of The Spoken Wheel, the SLOBC newsletter).

Bracketing Gilpin’s presentation was the airing of two documentary films by Ted White. Both demonstrate the positive impact of bicycling on the economy, envi-ronment, and quality of human life, making the link between bicycling and sustainabil-ity vividly clear.

"Return of the Scorcher" [1992] compared bicycling in America with China and Holland, where bike riding is a routine form of transportation. In countries where biking is an accepted part of the culture, the bicycle takes the place of the automo-bile in ways we Americans can barely begin to imagine. For me, the most significant impact of this film was its depiction of rid-ers not as athletes but as ordinary people. Around the world, biking is a form of trans-portation, not a sport, and bike riding spans the human lifetime from early childhood through a ripe old age.

"We’re Not Blocking Traffic, We Are Traffic" [1999] followed the development of a grass roots protest movement from its modest origins in San Francisco, growing steadily larger year by year and spreading around the globe. An important impetus for the Critical Mass movement, as well as its name, sprang directly from White’s ear-lier film, "Return of the Scorcher." [Watch for our film showings. We will be showing both of these films in the Spring of 2004.]

If we are interested in Sustainability, we need to support biking! Each trip by bicycle rather than car represents a 100% savings in the cost of fossil fuel, and a radical difference in terms of environmental and lifestyle stressors. Every effort to im-prove the infrastructure and educate the public makes it easier for ordinary citizens to become bikers.