Early in this blog's life, I posted a little something in which I mused on how cycling changes how we think about that thing we call a neighborhood. Over at Carbon Trace, Andy Cline has a proposition for us to consider that's very much in keeping with the spirit of that post of mine:
The idea is simple: Find your home on a map. Draw a circle with a 1-mile radius around your home. Try to replace one car trip per week within that circle by riding a bicycle or walking. At an easy riding pace you can travel one mile on a bicycle in about seven minutes. Walking takes about 20 minutes at an easy pace.He's right, of course: Not only can almost all of us physically do this easily; most of us--even us suburbanites--live in places where, logistically, we can do this. Here, for example, is my neighborhood's walk score. I happen to live just on the outer edge of downtown, so my neighborhood's score is high, but I suspect that most neighborhoods in Wichita won't score much lower than mine does.
I realize that if you're reading this, I'm preaching to the choir. The thing, though, is to spread this idea like a (real) meme: via blog posts, through writing our representatives in support of legislation that would facilitate this, and of course through our own example.
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