Biking in Baton Rouge

A photo-processing archivist at LSU’s Hill Memorial Library, Mark Martin has not owned a car for twenty-five years and has traveled only by bike for ten. In 2006, he started BRASS, Baton Rouge Advocates for Safe Streets, which later morphed into Bike Baton Rouge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “making trips by bicycling or walking so safe and enjoyable that people will choose to leave the car at home.”

Over the years, plans to ease Baton Rouge’s infamous traffic woes have been proposed; but consensus has not coalesced around any one solution. While remedies for the traffic congestion continue to be negotiated by state and city planners, bicycle enthusiasts such as Martin are promoting one alternative: drive less and ride bicycles more. Walking and using public transit also relieve traffic congestion. In urban planning circles, making alternative modes of transportation safe and convenient is a priority. 

Several recent events have brought bicycle solutions to the forefront. One is the recent discovery of the Comprehensive Bikeway Plan for the City of Baton Rouge and Parish of East Baton Rouge that was adopted by the city and parish councils in August 1974—forty-one years ago. “Just think of all the time and frustration we could have saved working to get safe streets for bikes all these years,” said Pamela Volentine Rushing, a bicycle enthusiast who was just two years old when the plan was enacted.

The 1974 plan is described as “a master plan for designating routes of various bikeway types” to ensure “continuity of routes through various parts of the City and Parish.” The plan encompasses three classes of bike paths—trails for the exclusive use of bicycles; lanes for the exclusive use of bicycles, with a curb, paint stripe, or other device separating it from the car lane; and shared roadways, which are open to bicycles but have no designated lanes. “This plan had to be passed by the city and the parish [councils],” said Martin. “I don’t know why they never acted on it. For 1974 it’s not great, but it would have been a great place to start. Baton Rouge has got lots and lots of plans. I have copies of many of them.”

Currently underway is a plan called Street Smart, directed by the nonprofit Center for Planning Excellence. CPEX is working with residents from Bernard Terrace, Capital Heights, Valley Park, and Webb Park to calm traffic, improve connectivity, and increase bike and pedestrian access. These sorts of plans have had success in cities like Davis, California, where commitment to multi-modal transportation networks has resulted in fourteen percent of the workforce commuting to work by bicycle, according to a report posted at smartgrowthamerica.org, an urban planning research and advocacy group. Many other U.S. cities that have instituted such measures have recorded similar upticks in bicycle riding as well as a decrease in accidents involving bicyclists and pedestrians.

Local bike riders are painfully aware of the need for safer streets. Louisiana has the third-highest rate of bicyclist deaths in the nation, according to a report released in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To members of the bicycling community, the numbers are very personal.

In Baton Rouge, veteran rider Clifford Gouner was struck and killed on Goodwood Boulevard near the Main Library on the afternoon of August 3. The following evening, while returning from a memorial ride for Gouner, Capital Heights resident and business owner Gordon Mese was severely injured when a driver blew through a stop sign, leaving Mese with a bleeding head and three hip fractures. A month later, Mese was still using crutches. On August 24, a high school boy riding to school was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Glenmore at Wells Street. (He was treated and released at the emergency room.) Last June, popular LSU English professor Elisabeth Oliver was struck and killed while walking her bicycle along a highway in East Feliciana Parish.

Noting that the driver of the SUV that struck Gouner was not charged, Martin said, “Cliff got killed, but they can’t find a reason to charge the driver. Last year a woman went off the road in Ascension Parish and killed two kids who were fishing. The grand jury couldn’t find anything to charge her with. In Louisiana, you can kill someone with impunity if you use a car.”

Court reporter Rushing bikes to work downtown every day and recently started a group called Baton Rouge Moms Demand Safe Streets. “Moms, especially when they are transporting their kids [on bikes], need safe, comfortable routes,” she said.

Rushing said she was inspired to start Baton Rouge Moms Demand Safe Streets by the more bike-friendly cultures of Europe. “I read a lot about what happened in the Netherlands,” said Rushing, whose own bicycle was made in that country.  “As the Dutch became more car-centric, children and adults on bikes were being hit by cars and killed in unprecedented numbers. That was the catalyst for the Dutch moms to stand up to ‘stop the child murder.’ The mothers said, ‘We’re not going to take it.’ I thought, ‘This is really great. Why don’t more people do it?’

“The focus of the moms’ group is physically separated infrastructure for all users—cars, bikes, and people on foot. We need to focus on everybody.

“On my neighborhood’s website, people were asking, ‘Is parking in the bike lanes illegal?’ A lot of people don’t know that it’s against the law to park in a bike lane.” In fact, a vehicle parked in a bike lane can be slapped with a fifteen-dollar ticket. In neighborhoods where bike-lane laws are enforced, safety improves, said Rushing. “I’ve seen it in Capital Heights. That area has gotten a thousand percent better with No Parking signs and enforcement of the law.”

Martin cited the law that states that a bicycle is a vehicle like any other and has the right to occupy the full lane, not just a narrow portion of it.

Rushing noted the outright hostility expressed toward bicycle riders locally. On her daily commute to work, she chooses safety over convenience, sometimes going out of her way to take less-traveled streets. At one particularly busy intersection, she regularly pulls over to let vehicles  pass if there is a line of traffic behind her. Her rides are usually peaceful, “But every now and then somebody passes me really close or goes past me and then guns it,” she said.

Whenever the local newspaper runs an article about bicycling, she said, the online comments are predictably hostile. “I use the word bikelash, although I didn’t invent it,” she said. “You can post anything about bike riding on the newspaper website and you get that.

“There’s a lack of education on both sides. People need to know the rules of the road for both cars and bikes. I see people who ride bikes for economic reasons who don’t necessarily know the rules. It doesn’t matter which mode of transportation you’re using, you can be a bad driver.

“When was the last educational campaign about safety? The law requiring motorists to allow a three-foot clearance when passing a bicyclist only came into effect after somebody was killed. There need to be TV commercials, billboards, social-media campaigns.”

Rushing is organizing a traditional jazz funeral for the 1974 plan on October 24, Election Day. “We will probably burn a copy of the plan and bury the ashes at City Hall where it was born,” she said. “We’ll have sad music before the burial and happy music on the way to the repast.”

While the bicycling community in Baton Rouge is expanding, with commensurate growing pains, both Martin and Rushing are committed to their lifestyle. “We’re at a turning point in this city—make it or break it,” said Rushing. “Young people will leave in droves and others won’t want to come here if this community isn’t friendly to bikers and walkers.”

Martin agrees. “Younger people want to live in cities where they don’t have to drive. Even baby boomers no longer want to live isolated in suburbs. More and more people want to live in cities and not have to drive.”

Rushing, who got rid of her car a year ago, said her life has improved. “The quality of life is higher the less time you spend in a car. When I’m on my bike, I’m looking at blue sky and flowers blooming, breathing fresh air, greeting people. That’s living. You can’t do that trapped in a metal box.”

Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.