Maps and Crashes
Hello beauties! Here’s some riveting background on this ancient post about tracking the locations where people on bikes are struck by people in cars.
Trampoline Jump Before Travel
In October 2009, I went on an unexpected road trip when some friends stopped at our house in DC to jump on the trampoline before a short jaunt for the weekend to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I decided I liked the city and, skipping some details, moved there a few weeks later.
Since I’d recently started my blog, Reimagine an Urban Paradise, I was thrilled to be learning all about a new city and writing about it as I explored. It was almost like I was the houndstooth-clad-reporter-in Paris-during-the-1940s of my childhood dreams! (Clearly we hadn’t gotten to World War II in history class by the time I was nine years old).
Metro for Me!
In my final year of college, I decided I didn’t want to bother with all the expense and complications of owning a car so I would just plan to always live in cities where professionals drove me instead on buses and subways.
After graduating with my infuriating history degree, I moved to Chicago and DC, both cities with great transit (at least for the US).
But then in 2005 I rode a crappy bike to work ONE TIME and it changed my life forever. I immediately became an insufferable bike person. (note: this does not happen to everyone but it very much happened to me and for that, world, I am sorry).
“Now Bikes are Her Whole Personality”
It is, in fact, completely possible to discover riding bikes as an adult and still hold conversations about other topics.
I swear: some of my best friends ride bikes without making it their whole personality.
But, like I said, I wasn’t one of them! I was giddy about riding a bike everywhere so I could make my own schedule and still not need a car. It was magnificent! And basically free, after getting a bike. At the time, bike share barely existed in US cities so you pretty much had to own your own bike.
Bikes Open Up Smaller Cities
It was only because I was used to riding a bicycle year-round by then that I considered moving to a city the size of Pittsburgh (about 320,000) without a car.
It’s almost impossible IN THIS DAY AND AGE for cities of any size in the US to allocate the kind of funding necessary to make a transit system functional, let alone spectacular, especially if they have a small and shrinking population.
Riding a bike to get around made me a giant fan of every nonprofit organization that worked to make it easier and safer to get around by bike.
Membership at Bike Pittsburgh
I wrote the swoony post below about the organization Bike Pittsburgh in January 2010 and five months later I was hired to manage their membership, outreach, and volunteer programs. It was incredible!
Anyway, I didn’t write this post to try to get a job, I didn’t know they would eventually be looking to hire someone, I was just impressed by how much they had accomplished in such a short time, with such a small staff.
Maps and Crashes
“Bike Pittsburgh is a fairly young organization with a small staff but they have accomplished much in just over seven years.
Among their many successes, they worked with Pittsburgh design firm Deeplocal to develop an award winning bicycle map, which I keep with me at all times and consult daily. The map is clear and the graphics are superb.
Paper Maps!
I found an older version of the map hanging in the hallway of my old bike group house, along with bike maps of DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Portland, Virginia, Maryland. I snagged it on the way to the bus station for a one am bus to Pittsburgh to volunteer at the Three Rivers Bioneers Conference.
The 2009 edition is more compact, glossy, modern. It is essential to any newcomer and also long term residents with information about bike routes, hill difficulty, amenities like Free Ride!, a volunteer run bike co-op.
One useful resource Bike Pittsburgh provides is a map variation charting the crashes that have been reported. Only one accident has been marked on the North Side where I live! What does this mean? Good drivers? Good bikers? Lack of reporting?
If a bicycle falls on a quiet urban street, does anyone count it?
I’m excited to see Pittsburgh’s biking scene grow and to see what creative ideas are generated by Bike Pittsburgh’s staff, members, and disconnected cyclists to promote bikes as a free/cheap, healthy, invigorating, sustainable form of transportation.
And now that I know where the problem areas are, I can be more diligent. Now I’d like to borrow from WABA and copy their “What to do after a traffic crash” spoke card and distribute it in those areas particularly. “| The end.
Back to 2026
Not again!
It’s been almost six years since I last rode a bike, thanks to an unpleasant crash in Pittsburgh that I still don’t remember but that mashed up my brain and face. I’m better now but I still don’t feel safe enough to ride a bike.
And I can’t advocate for other people to ride bikes the way I used to, if I don’t do it myself… so that was a disheartening side effect of the crash.
Riding a bike is still one of the greatest things ever. I will enjoy riding again. Oh yes, I will enjoy it.
Questions for You
If you ride a bike, what is your favorite thing about it? And if you don’t ride a bike now, what would make you feel better about starting to ride?